The investigators and officers were all baffled, but the more Mrs. Sheri spoke so confidently, the more a lot of their findings made sense for a match. She gave them her blood type, height, weight and picture for them to compare and add to their notes. They would continue to do their tests and their investigations, but keep her notified if anything solid appeared. Mrs. Sheri agreed; she had not expected them to understand how God worked, and allowed them to do their job, but told them to put a rush on their tests, so that she could put her baby girl in the ground. She wanted them to wrap up their testing and focus on finding her killer.
Once again, as she drove, she contacted Pastor Evans and discussed tentative funeral arrangements. By the time, she had gotten to the hospital, she and the pastor had concluded their business and he would as he had done before- head to the hospital with the First Lady and a few church members, to pray with her over Adele for rapid recovery and Estelle for a peaceful transition.
Chapter 18
The hospital kept Adele for the first two days after her surgery in the intensive care unit. On the fourth day of the whole ordeal, she was moved to her own private recovery room. Mrs. Sheri stopped going home at that point, she stayed in the room with her and ate when she ate and slept when she slept. She wanted her to think, they were just in their hanging out for a while. Adele couldn’t help but smile at her grandmother, as she watched her sleep in the recliner and fuss over her. She had stopped telling her long ago to go home, because that old woman was stubborn. She listened to no one except God.
Mrs. Sheri would often tell the nurses that they didn’t need to do anything, because she had already done their jobs. She made sure that Adele had been washed, changed, moved and started her exercises. She even re-seasoned her meals to her taste. When the tests and the head doctor came in to evaluate her, he realized keeping her in the hospital was unnecessary. Mrs. Sheri was doing the best job as caretaker, while her God had miraculously put a rush on improving Adele’s condition. He had no choice but to send her home.
Before the ink had dried on the paper, Mrs. Sheri had disappeared like a spry teenager to go get the wheelchair for their release ride! All of the medical professionals were so happy to see them go. It was the most wonderful success story within an extremely tragic one. How horrible was it to have your granddaughter raped and burned in a park, then have her twin go look for her and be shot so many times, while looking for her? It was too much to bear, but their grandmother, whose heart you thought would fail, from such pressure was the strongest of them all.
At home, Mrs. Sheri nursed her baby back to health. She was on a four- legged cane in no time. Adele used her cane to limp to Estelle’s funeral. Almost three weeks later, they had finally released the body over to them in addition to catching her killer, whom they linked back to the raggedy man and of course Cece.
It turns out that after Estelle’s murder, a couple of the nearby residents were so upset about what happened, they immediately had cameras on their property installed. Once Adele pulled up to the backside of the park, she was close enough to be caught in the lens of one of the cameras. The camera caught the shooting on tape and traced the license plates back to a raggedy burglar/tattoo artist on the West side of Chicago. He refused to admit knowing Adele or anything about her, but during his interrogation, they were able to squeeze out Cece’s information. Once they had them both, they used them against each other with promises of a lighter sentence.
The police tied up all of the loose ends of the two cases, except the one that they would talk about for years. How did the grandmother know that the burned body was her granddaughter’s?
Mrs. Sheri spent all of her waking hours catering to Adele, to nurse her back to health. She was the best nurse that never had any formal training. She was driven only by love, determination and her strong faith in God. As Adele grew stronger and stronger, she went back to school with a renewed respect for medical professionals. She finished high school at the top of her class and went on to college to be the great woman Mrs. Sheri told her that she would be.
Unfortunately, as Adele grew stronger, Mrs. Sheri’s health deteriorated with her diagnosis of the Alzheimer's disease. In the beginning, she’d ask Adele where Estelle was, when was report card day, or insisted that they were late for Sunday’s church service in the middle of a weeknight. While Adele was in college, she hired a home healthcare aid, to stay with Mrs. Sheri while she worked, because Adele would come home and find food in the silverware drawer, cereal boxes in the bathroom cabinet, new groceries in the trash can and garbage in the freezer.
In the end, it hurt Adele to put her in a nursing home, where she recalled a conversation that she had with Mrs. Sheri that would be the first of many similar ones to follow. Adele had brought some pizza over to share with her grandma, during her visit. As Adele sat at the table, opening up the box and pulling out napkins, Mrs. Sheri walked in and asked her what was in the box. Adele told her that it was pizza. Mrs. Sheri said what is that? Adele described to her what it was made of to explain what pizza was. In response, Mrs. Sheri simply said, “Oh okay,” and walked out of the room.
When she came back, she asked Adele what she was eating. Adele smiled and told her, “Pizza. Do you want some?”
Mrs. Sheri said, “What is that?” before she declined and left the kitchen again. Mrs. Sheri had come back into the kitchen several more times before she finished eating her pizza to ask her the same round of questions.
The doctor had given her a medicine patch to wear on her back to help, but it did not seem to work. Every day, Mrs. Sheri’s memory grew worse and worse, until she passed away. In the end, when her memory seemed to be completely gone and she no longer got around as she once could, she still remembered that she loved Adele, even though she didn’t always remember her name, and she remembered to say her prayers. Since she didn’t remember when to say them, she’d often say them all day.
At her grandmother’s burial, as church members and loved ones threw flowers into the ground as the casket was lowered, Adele walked up with a piece of paper in her hands and threw it down to rest with her grandmother, just in case she ever rose from the dead, she would have all she needed to find her.
Adele had thrown a piece of paper with her name, address and phone number printed on the letter head, torn off of her tablet with the prescription to the medicine Adele discovered would cure her Alzheimer’s disease. She added a personal message at the bottom that read:
Grandma, when you get this, I want you to get this patch and put it on. I will be at your house, where you will be proud to see that I have kept it the way you left it with some upgrades. Please hurry, I would like you to meet my fellow co-worker and the children who helped me break the cycle you always hated. I met him at the hospital, where we both did our internship to become doctors. Our children look just like you and we can’t wait to see you!
Love your grandbaby,
Dr. Adele Hathaway
The End.
~
To My Readers:
If anyone is experiencing any form of domestic violence, where you feel as though your life or the safety of your family member is jeopardized, please seek help. If it is an emergency dial 911, if it there is the slightest thought that you need help or even someone to talk to call The National Domestic Violence Hotline (800)799-SAFE
http://www.thehotline.org/
This is the real gift: you have been given the breath of life, designed with a unique one-of-a-kind soul that exists forever- the way that you choose to live it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve been given the gift of being now and forever. Priceless in value, you are handcrafted by God, who has a personal design and plan for each of us.
~Wendy Moore
~
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Wishing you peace and blessings to your homes!
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