I Chose Death. . . is an inspirational story of one man's struggle through the very dark times of dealing with drug addiction and family tragedy. What brings us to the edge of life where we feel like our life is not worth living anymore? The most important discovery that he made was that when he put God first in his life, he finally discovered the true meaning of the grace of God. Due to his deep involvement in his local community and because he is a professional motivational speaker, he wanted to share his story to inspire others to feel hope even when times may seem hopeless. I Chose Death. . . will inspire readers to take charge of their lives, finding the positive path to survival by putting their reckless past behaviors behind them. The path to a better life is filled with tough lessons, Marty Byars shows you how to take those lessons and make a positive difference in your life and the lives of those around you!

I Chose Death ...

The Methodical JourneyBy Marty L. Byars

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2009 Marty L. Byars
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4401-4484-4

Contents

Acknowledgments.............................................vPrologue....................................................ixChapter 1 The Beginning.....................................1Chapter 2 Gary, Indiana.....................................5Chapter 3 Hobart Township Dreams............................7Chapter 4 The Terrible Third................................9Chapter 5 Horsing Around in Tennessee.......................11Chapter 6 New Town New School...............................13Chapter 7 Miracle in Hobart, Indiana........................17Chapter 8 Finally Divorced..................................21Chapter 9 Sad Sunday........................................23Chapter 10 Finding a Lifelong Purpose.......................27Chapter 11 Government Housing...............................29Chapter 12 College in Alabama...............................33Chapter 13 Summer of Decisions..............................37Chapter 14 Back to My Roots.................................39Chapter 15 Becoming a Funeral Director......................41Chapter 16 Life in Nashville, Tennessee.....................43Chapter 17 King of the World................................47Chapter 18 Danger in Dallas, Texas..........................51Chapter 19 Rocky Journey....................................55Chapter 20 Turned Upside Down...............................59Chapter 21 The Reality of Jail..............................65Chapter 22 Court Date.......................................67Chapter 23 Casket Store.....................................69Chapter 24 Finding the Passion..............................71Chapter 25 Third Time Around................................73Chapter 26 Going out on my own..............................77Chapter 27 Men of Mortuaries................................83Epilogue....................................................85

Chapter One

THE BEGINNING

I was born in Dyersburg, Tennessee, in 1961, which was a rural, blue-collar, farming town near the Mississippi river. My mother and father's families all worked very hard. Most of them were either farmers or factory workers. As a young girl, my mother picked cotton to buy her own clothes for school.

My parents met and grew up on the same gravel road in a community called Willisville, which was also my mother's maiden name. The people in that community were very kind, and gave much of themselves and their time. They were always willing to help anyone in need, and had a strong sense of love for each other. When my mother and father met they literally lived a stone's throw from each other. My mother grew up thinking marriage was the next step after graduating from high school. However, my dad dropped out of high school and joined the Navy at the age of eighteen. He and my mother married before he left for the service, and I was born while he was in Guam.

While my father was away, my mother and I lived with my grandparents in Willisville. I was the apple of my grandparents' eye. My grandfather was a farmer and involved in local politics. He also had a little grocery store that served as a local hangout for the farmers in the community. They would all sit around playing dominoes, eating sliced bologna sandwiches, and talking about how if they were in charge of the country things would be better.

My father met me, his son, when I turned four months. I was scared of him, my mother told me, because I viewed him as a stranger. That disconnect would continue throughout my life. I really don't think my dad knew what to do with a child. My dad's parents both died before he was five years old, and he never knew them. His oldest sister raised him and he had a difficult childhood.

My mom worked in a garment factory for minimum wage and was very much a god-fearing woman. Going to church was a part of my life and always seemed normal to me. Hell, fire, and brimstone I learned in church from birth.

When my father returned from the service we lived with my grandparents. After my father got a job in a local factory, we rented a small house in the city of Dyersburg. My mother tells a story that is still amazing to me. When I was two years old we lived in a house on Merriman Street. My mother kept a chair next to the crib in case I needed to crawl out in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. One morning, I got out of my crib. After using the restroom, I decided it would be a good idea to walk three blocks to my uncle's house. This trip across a busy street was dangerous even for an adult, but off I went. Of course, when my mother woke up to find me gone, she was frantic and had everyone in the neighborhood looking for me. Then, she said, all of a sudden here I come walking down the street back home. My uncle was not home and I had tried knocking on the front and back door to no avail. So not only did I cross that busy street once, but twice. When I tell this story and when I truly think about the magnitude of that trip, this is when I truly get a sense that God had a greater purpose for me. We lived in that house until we had a complete change of scenery and moved to Gary, Indiana.

Chapter Two

Gary, Indiana

When I was four years old we moved to Gary, Indiana. My father was trying to make a better life for us. Believe me, this was a whole different world. I believe at age four you start to remember events in your life, and I certainly remember that move. Leaving Tennessee was especially hard on my mother. Her parents did not want us to move and I was very close to my grandmother and grandfather, especially my grandfather. So it was a tearful departure. My father started working at United States Steel, and made much more money that he would have ever made in Dyersburg. The culture shock had to impact my parents.

My most precise memory of the first few weeks in Gary is about a little boy who lived upstairs from us. He stole one of my trucks after we played together one afternoon, and never returned it. As a child, I did not understand how someone could do that. Maybe that event made me a very untrusting person. I am not sure if that day changed my mindset toward people, but as I got older, I became very protective of people and possessions. After our move I noticed that my father drank a lot, and often passed out on the couch. He worked in shifts at the mill, so I never knew when he would be home. This lifestyle became normal to me: drinking, little structure, and looking over your shoulder to be protective of what you had. I believe my father's drinking problem began in the Navy, and he never really recovered from it. The amazing thing to me is that during this time his job never suffered from it. To this day I believe that my strong work ethic developed from the fact that my dad never missed work for any reason. Maybe he held on to his job because we simply needed the money, or maybe he felt he had something to prove. I can't imagine how he felt never knowing his parents. What a tragedy. As my father moved up through the ranks, my mother wanted a place with a yard for me to play in, and, in general, a better sense of stability for the family. She searched for a home in our price range and found the perfect house in Hobart Township, which was only five or six miles from our apartment. It seemed like a whole different country to me as a kid. In my head, I thought this move would keep my father at home and help him to stop drinking so much. So off we go to a whole new adventure, town, and dream of a better life.

Chapter Three

Hobart Township Dreams

As a five year old, I remember our move to our new house. At the time, the house seemed so big to me. Going back and seeing it today, wow was it small! It had two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and one bathroom. It was maybe 1,500 square feet. I did not know it at the time, but many tragic events would happen to me in that house.

Our start in the house was actually very good. I started kindergarten; my mother was a stay at home mom, and my dad even started going to church with us. My father's church going made my mother so happy. Her upbringing had taught her that if you did not go to church you were damned to hell. She certainly does not feel that way now, but my father's church attendance meant everything to her. My father even became a deacon in the church, which amazes me. I still to this day cannot picture him as a deacon. During this time he had stopped drinking and attended alcoholic anonymous meetings regularly. This was definitely the happiest time in my childhood. My father was a completely different person when he was not drinking. He became very close to our minister at church, who became a father figure to him. Since he never knew his father, our minister was very important to him.

For two years things were great. I loved school, my father was not drinking, and I really felt like that we had a structured environment for the first time in my life. Then I remember one pivotal night in church when I was seven years old. Our minister told us he had decided to leave the church. There apparently were some major issues between him and the elders of the church. I remember people just getting up and leaving after he made that announcement. My parents both stayed, but after that service was over my dad never returned to church again. To this day he has no faith in people who run the church. After that day his drinking became an issue again, and it was as bad as you could imagine. I can remember him being sent home from work numerous times for showing up at work drunk, but since he was so deeply involved in the union, he never lost his job. As our home life degenerated, I constantly wondered if my father was going to drink or not. I never felt comfortable in that house from day to day. I remember going to church with my mother, praying every day that my dad would not drink at home anymore. Even at that age, I was very much aware of what it did to him and his personality. My father was great to be around when he was not drinking, but when he was, he was almost unbearable.

My mother became pregnant with my sister during this period. I was so excited to have a sibling. My mother even let me name her. One evening, when my mother was eight months pregnant, we had a lot of friends and relatives at the house. I always loved having all my cousins over because we would all play together and have such a great time. It was a welcome departure from always worrying about our family's inner turmoil. On this night I remember sitting on the couch with two of my cousins watching television, when the phone rang. We had one phone in the kitchen, but you could hear it ring throughout the house. My father answered the phone and all I remember was silence, then my mother screaming and fainting on the kitchen floor. I was so scared and unable to process what had happened. My mother told me years later that she could hear me crying and telling her to wake up.

My grandfather had died of a massive heart attack in Tennessee at my uncle's house. (The same uncle that I tried to visit crossing that busy street in Dyersburg.) They say nothing could have been done to save him; he was dead before he hit the floor. That evening everyone was crying-especially the adults. My grandfather seemed so bulletproof to everyone; a strong physical person with a strong personality. I really did not process his death until we went to the funeral home and my father held me up to the casket and told me to say goodbye to Big Daddy. All the grandkids called him that. As an adult I am so thankful that my father and mother took me to the funeral home. Saying goodbye is never easy, but it does help you to process death better as you get older. I am so grateful to my father for holding me up to that casket to see my grandfather. I never realized it then, but it would completely change the way I looked at life forever.

Chapter Four

The Terrible Third

When I started third grade, we still lived in the same house. The alcohol abuse issues continued and began to escalate. By this time my sister was a toddler and had no concept of our family's dysfunction. As a boy back then, I can remember lying in my bed at night and hearing my father in a drunken rage telling my mother, actually threatening her that if she got out of bed, he had a butcher knife under his pillow and would kill her. I remember going to sleep many nights wondering if my mother would not be there when I woke up. When she was, it was always such a relief. I felt lucky to have such a great mom.

I always walked to and from school back then with friends from my street and I always remember the days when my dad would be sent home from work, because as I turned the corner to go down my street his car would be home. One afternoon as I turned that corner, I say my dad's car parked in front of the house and my heart sank as it had so many times before. My first thought was here we go again, he is drunk and it wasn't even four o'clock yet. My mother was not home and I heard nothing as I entered the house. Assuming he was asleep or passed out, I went into my room then I heard something in the bathroom. As I entered the bathroom my life changed forever, again. When I opened the door I found my father with blood everywhere. He had attempted suicide. I remember him yelling at me to close the door and leave him alone.

The events of the rest of that day are still foggy to me; maybe I blacked them out of my memory. I do remember that soon after my mother, sister, and I moved out of the house and never returned. That event changed my mother; Leaving her husband was difficult because of her religious beliefs. I remember wanting to leave, because we were going back to Tennessee-a place where I always felt at home and comfortable, because of family and friends with unconditional support. I felt happy that we were leaving, the stress that I felt as a child was immense. So I looked forward to a new chapter in my life with a sense of renewed hope of a better life.

Chapter Five

Horsing Around in Tennessee

I was uprooted half way through my third grade year because of my father's suicide attempt. The move from Gary should have been sad but it was not. We moved in with my grandmother for a short period of time, and then to a two-room duplex in Newbern, a little town a few miles away. Ironically enough my mother started working in that same garment factory that she worked in after graduating from high school. This was a very stable time for me, I enjoyed school because a lot my relatives went to the same school as me and we lived right across the street. Horseback riding was the big thing to do. There were several riding tracks with music playing, and concession stands. My grandmother worked in the concession stand at the Willisville Saddle Club and I loved going there on the weekends. Most of my cousins and relatives had horses and would ride every weekend. I remember asking my mother for a horse knowing full well that she could not afford it. She said she would try and find one, but could not promise me. Believe it or not my uncle knew someone who had a pony that he had to sell and he gave my uncle a deal for the pony. My mother paid only $25 for that pony! That was still a lot of money for my mom. I am sure it was a sacrifice for her, but we used my uncle's horse trailer to pick him up. I was ecstatic. I became very adept at riding.

I became a secure person when I began living in that town. I felt a sense of structure that I had not experienced in a long time. My mother is one of thirteen children, so we had so many relatives in Tennessee. It felt good to know that normalcy had returned to my life. However, just as we were really getting settled into our new lifestyle, my father reentered the picture. We had only been there for seven months. I wondered why he had returned. After a few months of pleading to her that our life would be different, she decided to give their marriage a second chance. I, to this day think that if she had that decision to make over again, she would not have made it. So after only eleven months of living in Tennessee, off we went to Indiana again. My sister was only three at the time and had no concept of what was going on. She probably thought it was some kind of cool vacation, but I knew better and it was not a happy time for me. Change of scenery again, and off we went for the unknown and uncertainty that lay ahead of us ...

Chapter Six

New Town-New School

I hated leaving Tennessee to join my father in Indiana. I guess my father promised my mother that things would be different, and they were for a short period of time. Starting a new school was a huge adjustment because I began halfway through the fourth grade. The culture shock of the change was huge too; going from rural Tennessee to very much city living was very difficult. As a few months passed things increasingly became much like they were before we left. In some ways it was even worse. Maybe it was because I was older and just understood things a little better.

The new friends that I made at my new school were all into sports, and I was totally about basketball, baseball, and hockey. I found that sports were a fantastic escape for me not only physically, but also a way to avoid life at home. I made some great friends because of all our common interests. I was also very good at sports, which made me a little cooler in their eyes. My home life became increasingly destructive and I really became protective of my mother's feelings because I could see what it was doing to her. It is an odd feeling loving a parent for the right reasons and loving one for the wrong reasons. I loved my dad because I felt sorry for him, and I loved my mother because she truly took care of us and loved us unconditionally. I can remember many nights that my mother, sister, and I would leave in the middle of the night to go to my aunt and uncle's house as a safe haven away from my dad. He was now psychologically abusive. I remember many nights my mother crying, and telling her brother than my dad did not love her anymore. I knew what was going on with our family and really just wanted my father to go away, so we could go back to Tennessee or just live a normal life here without him. Two years passed and things were never normal. My mother began to confide in me. She would always tell me, "your dad really loves you, but he has a disease." My response would always be "maybe the doctor can give him some medicine." I continued to excel in sports and realized I had found a true sense of normalcy. All my coaches that I had over those two years became mentors to me. I was fortunate to have such good coaches that were good people. They all went the extra mile to help all of us. My father was never involved in my sports activities, but my mother was. She played basketball in high school and was really proud that I enjoyed it so much. My coaches also knew that my home life was not good because my father showed no interest in my involvement with sports.

(Continues...)

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