The Sickness ( Prelude)

Now, before I get into his sickness and all the madness that ensued after his death, I must go back and explain his relationship with his family. After doing this, you will no doubt understand why I was shocked as to what took place later down the line. Shamar never had a close relationship to his mother or father. She had him at a very young age and never quite figured out how to be a mother. In fact, Shamar told me that he was with me, that he loved me because I was everything that his mother wasn't. He described growing up with her as that of having a room mate. She would parade guy after guy in front of him, even messed with a few of his friends along the way. He never truly had respect for her and despised every thing she stood for. Growing up, he said she never took him regularly to the doctor or dentist like a true mother would, he was left to go and come as he chose by the age of six. As for his father, he was never in the picture. Shamar told me that he had to reach out and start a relationship. In fact, the only time that they both showed interest was when he started getting recognition for being a great football player and they thought he was their meal ticket out of town. Shamar took him self to school and while his grades weren't the best, he stuck it out and graduated high school and went off to college. Given the way he was raised, I think he could have went down a very different path , especially since he was living in Asbury NJ. Yes, My Shamar was a special man.

When I first started dating Shamar, he told me that he was sick, that he had a stomach condition but that his medication kept it under control. He revealed that the reason why he left college was that he was in so much pain there that they sent him back home to see a doctor. After he found out what he had, he decided to stay home, as he had lost his passion for football, and that was what he was really going to college for. What did he have do you ask???? Well his condition is known as Auto immune Hepatitis , a disease where his own body was attacking his liver. Of course he never explained it to me like that, he made it seem as though he had a slight illness and I had nothing to worry about. About a year into our relationship, he stopped taking his medicine. He said he did not like the way it made him feel and that he felt much better off them. You see, he was on steroids and they were making him gain weight and he did not like that fact. At first I told him that I didn't think that was such a great idea, but he kept assuring me that he was fine and I dropped it. As the months turned into years, I noticed changes in him. He was losing weight rapidly and his eyes had started to turn a yellowish color. I told him about these changes, but he always had a reason why, he would say his eyes looked like that because he was tired and he was losing weight because he was working out more. I  didn't believe those reasons, but he was very stubborn and insisted he was fine. When he came home from jail, His feet were swollen and his skin now started to get the sick yellowish tint that his eyes had,  but again he had answers for it all. A few months after he came home, he went, well there is no other way to explain it, Shamar went mad. He became convinced that people from Asbury, his best friend was trying to kill him. At the time I had no idea that he had gotten so sick that it was starting to affect his brain. For a month or more, Shamar had me and Essence bouncing from hotel to hotel because he fared for our safety. No matter how hard I tired to tell him that we were not in danger, it's like he couldn't hear me. Finally one day after driving up and down the parkway for hours, I burst into tears in the car, told him to pull over, I then grabbed his hands and said baby I love you, but I can't keep driving around like this, I pleaded with him  to take me and the baby back home. His eyes, oh my God his eyes were so yellow, he looked so caged and frightened and in that moment I saw that he really believed that he was going to be killed and my heart filled with dread. How could I take care of him? I never encountered something like this before, I wanted to reach inside him and shake him, as if to say Shamar!!!! stop it, this isn't funny any more, but I could do no such thing.... I must stop here for it feels as though I'm reliving that very moment all over again.

Life With Sha

Tonight is a bad night. The devil has perched himself upon my shoulder and he is replaying Shamar s last months of life over and over for me. So before I cry my eyes out and completely destroy the work I've done so far to my heart, I decided to write for a bit. Now life with this man wasn't a bed of roses. He wanted me to stay home and take care of the house, but sometimes when he got stressed over the bills and stuff he would yell and say that I needed to get a job, and every time I got hired somewhere he would break down and beg me to stay home. That was one of the many continuous arguments we had. Shamar was a rare find. He danced with me for no reason, came home with random gifts and always made sure that I had what I needed. He was however very frugal with money. He never spent more than he had to and insisted that we lived a very simple life. He stopped working at Shoprite and picked up something else. I won't say what at this time. Still debating as to whether or not I should speak upon it. He always said he did what he did because I came and made him want to be a better man, that he felt he had to do that to keep a girl like me. As much as he was loving, he was also over protective. He would always tell me that he was afraid that one day I would find someone better and I would leave him, no matter how much I would try to tell him that would never happen, he never believed me. He liked when I stayed home, and it took him over a year before he formally introduced me to his family. There isn't really much more to stress on our home life, he did what he did and I cooked, cleaned etc, etc. On April 19th, 2008 I gave birth to our daughter, Essence Nyota Taylor and my life changed forever. Being a mother came natural to me and she was a good baby. Shamar was a proud as can be, which relieved me because so many men that age tend to take off and not stay with their family. having a child only made him work harder and he stayed out more and more, so majority of the time I was home alone. I admit I got stir crazy because I didn't drive and sometimes I just wanted to get out the house. Essence as I said before was an easy baby. Hardly cried and was very sociable. She never crawled, one day she just stood up and walked. She stopped her self on the bottle at nine months and gave up her pacifier soon after. Her first words was DaDa and the day when she finally said  mama I swear I almost melted into the ground. We settled into a routine and things were going smooth for a while. But with the good in life, there comes the bad. There was a girl, his best friends girl, that he came home on day and told me about... he said she was flirting with him but it wasn't nothing serious and that I didn't need to get angry. I believed him, because I was naive and because I never thought he would do that to me. However when I finally met this girl, I knew within my self that he lied about nothing happening  She acted as though she was wifey and I was the intruder. I confronted him about it and he denied it completely. To this day, Only God can tell me that he didn't cheat on me. After that my trust in him cracked and I never really looked at him the same. In 2010, he got arrested  after getting a fight. He was locked up for over a month and I stayed right by his side. I made sure he had money on his books and i wrote him everyday. I never thought that I would be one day visiting someone in jail, but I did it for him, because I loved him and a real woman dose not turn he back when things get rough. When he came home, it was like he was a different man. He wrapped me in his arms the minute he walked into the door and said I love you girl... and handed me a letter, a letter in which he told me how much he loved me, how much I changed him, how I made his future bright, that him plus I equaled Essence, eternal love. I was blown away by this change. He stopped going to his friends house and he was home more. I couldn't ask for any thing more. I strongly believed his time locked up made him realize that he had all he needed at home. But with most things in my life, this period of happiness was short lived, a few months later, he got very ill and passed away. I am tempted to continue on, but alas, I'm not quite ready to face what I must write next...