5 years.
5 years ago.
The night that changed everything.
I remember some of it.
It was an unusual occasion.
My youngest half brother and I singing together at a bar overlooking Tampa Bay.
My mothers second son is an incredibly gifted singer.
Born to perform.
In 2016 we reconnected.
During that time, I was trying hard to bring the broken pieces of our family together.
If only they could see what I saw.
Then they’d love each other.
Of course, that’s not how love works.
My mind was lovesick.
On the way to the venue I stopped to pick up some rum for the drive over.
The pain that had no name had become unbearable.
Inside my head, the noise was deafening.
Alcohol provided moments of silence.
Temporary relief.
At this point in my alcoholism, I was consuming
up to three bottles of wine each night.
Alone.
My goal was to do so undetected.
I preferred cardboard boxes of wine.
They were easier to fold up and hide at the bottom of the wastebasket.
No clinking.
Hiding in my bathroom, I’d slam a box o’ wine.
That equaled 4 glasses.
Most nights my husband came home from work around 7:45 pm.
He never knew what to expect when he walked through the front door.
My “Unhappy Hour” was between 4 and 8 PM.
Of course I could start earlier, but that was risky.
Occasionally, I’d have just one box.
Eventually, I worked my way up to three.
Those were the blackout nights.
Dinner forgotten, or burned.
Waking up at 3 am in a cold sweat, I’d desperately try to remember what happened the night before so I could start formulating excuses and apologies for the next morning.
When I did venture out to sing, it was not unusual for my to-go cup to be filled with alcohol as I traveled.
I drank throughout the 2 1/2 hour drive to the venue.
❤️❤️❤️
In 1971 my mother lost primary custody of her first two children and left the state of Florida.
3 years later, my family received the birth announcement for her new baby.
As a child, I believed my parents won full custody of me and my brother Mike.
My mother had to move away.
There was no way she could come see us.
She wasn’t allowed.
She had done such a terrible job as a mother
she had to leave forever.
Gone.
In reality, the custody agreement was simply reversed.
Rather than primary custody, she had visitation during Christmas and summers.
She never exercised that right.
Considering the damage done, I find it hard to believe she retained any rights at all.
I guess that was child welfare in the 1970s.
Her actions were not lost on me.
I made a promise to myself.
I would never leave my children.
❤️❤️❤️
In 1975 Maureen and Country Sunshine took the act on the road and never looked back.
Dragging emotional baggage and a new baby around the country,
my tormented mother eventually worked her young son into the act.
My brother is an incredibly gifted human.
Intelligent, talented, empathetic.
A people pleaser.
His world revolved around her back then.
They only had each other.
He was so eager to please.
The first time we met, he was 6 years old.
I was a 14 year old runaway.
I’d just spent 4 months held against my will
forced to do things I can never forget.
I’m still working up the courage to write about the nightmare that was Cleveland, Ohio.
Against all odds, I had managed to escape my captors.
I called the only person I thought could help me at the time.
The woman I loathed and feared becoming.
Mother.
How bad could she be?
My father had been wrong about so many things.
Maybe he was wrong about her.
I had nothing to lose.
Hearing my voice over the phone,
my mother began to cry.
She told me she loved me, again and again.
This annoyed me.
I didn’t need drama.
I needed to get the fuck out of Cleveland!
Stepping off the Greyhound bus in Hampton Beach NH, I saw my little brother for the first time.
Bowl haircut, ivory skin.
He behaved like a little adult.
Bursting with unconditional love.
I adored him immediately .
❤️❤️❤️
In June 2018, after completing one year of EMDR therapy , I was still struggling to stay sober.
Alcohol was my only coping mechanism.
Revisiting my childhood trauma each week as I stumbled through life, I thought,
“Will I ever feel better?”
Life was painful. I’d been numb for 35 years.
Feeling my feelings was new to me.
I decided what I needed was a project to fill my time.
Maybe that would keep me out of trouble.
Finding my courage, I sent out an email to a few people I thought might be able to help me.
❤️❤️❤️
”Hey friends,” I wrote in a Facebook group message.
“I recently took a DNA test.
I think my story might make a good book or play,
but that’s not my area of expertise.
Could you spare an hour over coffee to help me figure out what I have?”
One person responded.
The person I thought least likely to respond.
Bandleader, vocalist, writer, producer, really nice guy,
We arranged to meet at a local diner.
I brought my photograph collection and genealogy research.
Sitting in the parking lot, I began to doubt myself.
Maybe I would just go home.
My desire to find my purpose propelled me inside.
I knew what I was looking for.
Bread crumbs. Direction. Something to hold onto.
What I got that day was so much more.
I’m certain Michael has no idea how much our meeting meant to me that day.
I entered the diner with a folder full of possibilities.
I left with the inspiration I desperately needed to keep going.
After exchanging pleasantries and ordering breakfast,
I took a deep breath and began to tell him my story.
The real story.
I showed him my research and photographs.
My heart was pounding.
Finally, I stopped talking to catch a breath.
Looking at me with perfect hair and a sparkle in his eye Michael Andrew exclaimed,
“Naome!
This is a one woman show!
Starring YOU , as yourself, your mother
AND your grandmother!”
Aha!
Suddenly it all made sense!
A show.
My story.
Their stories.
I would talk about my struggles, sing a song.
Change costume, become my grandmother.
Tell her tale. Sing another song.
Change again.
Become my mother, tell her story, sing some more.
It sounded simple enough.
Except for one thing.
I knew next to nothing about my mother or her upbringing.
It was time to research my mothers family.
❤️❤️❤️
My maternal grandmother was married for the first time at age 17 in 1945.
I found this clipping from Newspapers.com.
It’s interesting to me that they got married so suddenly.
Back then, grandma’s name was Marie.
My grandpa was a dashing Navy man going off to war.
James O’ Connor.
I never met him.
In 1949, the year my mother was born,
the couple had 2 daughters and lived in
Campton, NewHampshire.
The White Mountains.
My grandmother’s family name is Comeau.
The Comeau family settled in Campton in 1902.
What happened next was a pivotal moment in my grandmother’s life.
January 7, 1951.
The night her beloved father died.
My great grandfather Peter Parris.
He was born in France.
I have heard the story of my great grandfather’s death from my grandmother, mother and Aunt K.
Something seems strange about this story.
For one thing, the kids were ages 2 and 4 at the time.
What could they remember?
My grandmother said she took my mom and sister to visit her parents, Pete and Eva.
The two children were in the living room on the couch.
In the bedroom, Marie sat in a chair.
Her father stood behind her brushing her hair.
Minutes later Peter Parris died of a massive heart attack.
He was 50 years old.
January 1951.
My grandmother was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for the first time.
It was also the first time she put her children into foster care.
My mother was 2 years old.
❤️❤️❤️
Traveling to New Hampshire and interviewing my relatives helped to unravel the mystery of how my grandmother became a singer.
I’d always been curious to know where my singing talent originated.
First hand accounts reveal the story.
There was an ametuer talent contest in the city.
Sister Ethel tagged along, cheering from the audience.
By all accounts, something monumental happened that night.
A shift in the universe.
My grandmother took on a new identity.
Nya, the singer.
In the beginning of her singing career,
Nya had two roommates.
Shirley Devine and Terry Swope.
She was able to put her children in the finest Catholic boarding schools.
I found a lot of Newspaper.com adverts for the shows featuring her roommates .
I didn’t find any for my grandmother.
By any name.
They were 3 singing divas in a Boston apartment,
living the high life.
Or so the story goes.
In the beginning, the girls would hop on a Cessna 152
and fly to engagements all over the East Coast.
She called it “ barnstorming”.
I remember my grandma telling me these stories.
Dating William Shatner. ( She called him Bill.)
Throwing a drink in Red Sox great Ted Williams face.
She told me her band was called
4 Jacks and Jill.
After a little research, I discovered what really happened.
There were lawsuits.
Two bands fought over one singer
Benny Goodman’s band and 4 Jacks and a Jill.
She was the most successful of the three singing roommates.
Her name was Terry Swope.
❤️❤️❤️
Most of what I know about 1950s Boston I learned from Richard Vacca, author of The Boston Jazz Chronicles. (available here)
He was one of the first people I interviewed when I started my research.
I wanted to know what it was like way back then.
In the early part of the 1950’s
The music scene in Beantown was on fire.
Live music in every club.
Entertainment 24 hours a day.
Musicians worked in shifts.
The Navy was in town and the booze was flowing.
It seemed like the good times would never end.
As the end of the decade approached, the once vibrant jazz scene on Scollay Square had all but disappeared.
No more bright lights, 24 hour music and good times.
Life in grandmother’s world took on a desperate tone.
On more than one occasion , a lady had to keep company with a gentleman to survive.
Part time lovers resulted in children that needed care.
Nya had given birth to four souls by this time.
My mother, two girls and a boy.
In 1959, something happened in her apartment on
Tremont Street that caused my grandmother to leave town and never look back.
I found another clue at newspapers.com.
One sentence that said my
grandmother was admitted to a psychiatric hospital
in Bellows Falls, Vermont dated April 1959.
They printed odd things in the newspaper back then.
Nya never returned to Boston.
My mother and her older sister were put back into foster care.
My mother was 10 years old.
❤️❤️❤️
Over the years I’ve heard two names repeatedly from several different sources.
Shannon and Shane.
In the past I didn’t think they were real people.
It’s hard to figure out what the truth is in this family.
As I learned more about what really happened to my grandmother, I discovered something incredible.
Shannon and Shane are my Aunt and Uncle.
When my grandmother left Boston,
they got lost in the shuffle.
What happened to them?
Gone.
❤️❤️❤️
Gone.
separated from everything I’d ever known.
Sent away.
Forgotten.
My therapist once told me that being cut from the herd is one of the most devastating things that can happen to a person.
I can vouch for that.
My father signed me over to the state of Florida in 1979.
Banished. Cast away. Expelled. Erased.
Healthy minds avoid pain.
My traumatized mind was trying to navigate 2003 with a map from 1979.
Stuck in a loop, I was driven by my subconscious to recreate the past.
This time I’d get it right.
Daddy would love me.
That primal mindset was behind every action.
Including the decision to let him back in my life.
“although we’ve had a significant impasse,”
the email began.
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
My estranged father, writing ME an email.
Thanking me for finding his birth mother after all these years.
Just like that, daddy was back.
He became Grandpa for the 3rd time in 2004 after
I gave birth to my youngest daughter.
In the beginning there were gifts of jewelry and college tuition payments.
Nothing else was spoken about my absence.
Life went on as if nothing happened.
Eventually, EMDR would help me find my voice.
Until that point, I was living in a trauma response 24 hours a day.
Fight. Flight. Freeze. Fawn. Drink, repeat.
That went on for 15 years.
❤️❤️❤️
Onstage with my brother, things were getting foggier.
I remember my husband’s sister being in the audience.
At some point during the evening I attempted to hoist her off the ground.
Losing my balance, I fell backwards,
striking my head on the pavement.
When it was finally time to go home,
I wandered around the parking garage looking for my car.
By the time I found it , I had pissed my pants.
Vaguely, I remember finding the rum bottle and pouring it into my cup.
Less than an hour later, blackout drunk,
I hit a car from behind on the Interstate.
The other vehicle, a large SUV, drove for another mile before pulling over.
In a cloud of dust my white Honda came to a stop
in the median, with a smashed front end and a very lucky woman strapped in the driver’s seat.
February 12, 2016.
The night everything changed.
Naome Bradshaw
Disclaimer: THIS WEBSITE DOES NOT PROVIDE MEDICAL ADVICE – The information, including but not limited to, text, graphics, images and other material contained on this website are for informational purposes only. No material on this site is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before undertaking a new health care regimen, and never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website.
