by Aimee Ross
Mom was by my side during that very bad year of The Trifecta of Shit, helping me fight. Helping me to be strong. She witnessed my story. But in her final weeks, Mom wanted to know how I had made sense of it all. She wanted to know how to not be afraid. She wanted to know she was not alone.
Our relationship led to a significant shared connection, one that eased both of our pains. One that everyone deserves.
Mom helped me to live again, and then I helped her to die.
• • •
Mom’s been gone just over a year.
“You are our miracle, Aimee,” Dad still tells me—even though it’s been seven years since my trauma—often enough to remind me that my loved ones remember my story and are thankful I’m still here. His words also remind me I wasn’t alone when I faced my own mortality—not once, but twice—and lived to tell about it. In fact, lived to question it: Why was I still alive?
But now I know the answer to my question—finally.
My story—the one I need to share as part of the human collective—isn’t over yet. Nor am I done saving others’ stories to learn from either.
The stories of my children. My mom. My new husband and his family. My dad. My sister and her husband and their son. My brother and his wife and their three children. My friends, far and near.
My students and colleagues.
The relationships that are a part of my life’s narrative.
Through them, I live. I thrive. We share attachments and connections—we share stories—which creates my very being. Nothing is more important.
Everyone has a story. All of us.
It’s what we do with our stories—what we learn and how we share it—that matters. It’s how we listen to each other, helping to fill the cracks and crevices of missing meaning for reparation. For healing. For shared understanding.
Storytelling is at the heart of the basic human condition, critical to what sets us apart as a life form. So, tell them. Listen to them. Help revise them again and again and again.
Until they provide answers. Until they feel right.
Until they leave a permanent mark.
Acknowledgments
Writing a book is hard. Especially when you have dedicated your life to teaching others to have respect for the written word. To have respect for the intricate ways writers weave together and communicate their stories. Especially when you want to get it just right. Each and every word.
This particular story was difficult to tell for many, many reasons. And yes, a story can have many sides, but this one is mine—my truth and what I remember, even after trauma and memory loss. This story is an effort to make sense of what happened to me during that horrible, bad year, so I can move forward. Most of the characters’ (or locations’) names have been changed—out of respect—unless permission was given.
Jerrica, Natalie, and Connor, thank you for giving me the understanding and support necessary to tell this story. I love you all so, so much.
Thank you, Mom, Dad, Tina, Brian, Heidi, and Bob, for visiting or taking care of me during the time after the accident, as well as filling the gaps for me when my memory failed later.
To Erin Wood, whom I hope to call my editor forever, I extend heartfelt gratitude. Your patience, ideas, recommendations, and love of the craft made this manuscript a book, and your intuitiveness and insight led to Permanent Marker’s actual completion.
I would also like to thank Jennifer Scroggins at KiCam Projects for her encouragement and help throughout the entire process.
A special thank you to Josette Kubaszyk for her special inspiration.
Thank you to the following early readers—all former students and one, also a colleague—Marissa Burd, Kari Reidenbach, Brennan Smith, Kirstie Swanson, and Caleb Westfall. Your reactions and suggestions shaped this story into what it is today.
Thank you to my therapists, Angela Steiner and Jill Karchella-Johnson, who keep me looking and feeling like a princess.
Thank you to my cheerleaders, those former and current students of mine from almost every year I taught—a lengthy quarter century—who believed in me when I said that someday I’d write my own book. Especially Paige.
And Jackson, thank you…for being my everything. (Your tattoo appointment has been scheduled.)
Bibliography
Camus, Albert, and Matthew Ward. The Stranger. A.A. Knopf, 2006.
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Penguin Classics, 2013.
Delistraty, Corey C. “The Psychological Comforts of Storytelling.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media.
Company, 2 Nov. 2014, www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/ 2014/11/the-psychological-comforts-of-storytelling/381964/.
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. C. Scribner’s Sons, 1990.
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. W.W. Norton & Co., 2005.
Pennebaker, James W., and Janel D. Seagal. “Forming a Story: The Health Benefits of Narrative.” Journal of Clinical Psychology, vol. 55, no. 10, 1999, pp. 1243–1254., doi:10.1002/(sici)1097-4679 (199910)55:10<1243::aid-jclp6>3.0.co;2-n.
Strauss, Darin. Half a Life: A Memoir. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2011.
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. Houghton Mifflin, 2005.
Underwood, Joseph W. Today I Made a Difference: A Collection of Inspirational Stories from America’s Top Educators. Adams Media, 2009.
About the Author
Aimee Ross is a nationally award-winning educator who has been a high school English teacher for the past twenty-five years and an aspiring writer for as long as she can remember. She completed her MFA in Creative Non-Fiction Writing at Ashland University in 2014, but she also dabbles in fiction and poetry. Her writing has been published on lifein10minutes.com and SixHens.com, as well as in Beauty around the World: A Cultural Encyclopedia (ABC-Clio, 2017); Scars: An Anthology (Et Alia Press, 2015); Today I Made a Difference: A Collection of Inspirational Stories from America’s Top Educators (Adams Media, 2009); and Teaching Tolerance magazine. You can follow Aimee at aimeerossblog.wordpress.com.
