It began with a death

Welcome to family and fiction, my blog about the novel I’m writing about my father’s life, Tracking the Human: nobody’s a long time.

It began with a death. My mother. Death opens up old stories and new possibilities as well as family dissension and conflict. My mother died 1 March 2011, peacefully in her bed, on her sleeping porch, in her house in Kansas City, Missouri, USA.

I was with her. She opened her eyes, looked at me. I smiled and said I love you Mom, and she was gone.

Notice the beaded bracelet she’s wearing that spells out KENYA.

After my mother’s death in Kansas City in 2011, I poked around in her attic to see what I could find. Her attic was a secret place, where people didn’t go – too hot in summer, too cold in winter, no insulation. The attic was only accessible through a pull-down ladder in the upstairs hall of her house.

Rummaging around in the attic, I found documents buried beneath keepsakes in a cedar chest. The documents I found started an off and on research project to learn more about my father’s life.

I had heard fleeting words from my mother that my father had been in prison for narcotics.

I went to the National Archives in Kansas City to see what I could find. At first nothing. BUT a document I found in my mother’s attic had listed aliases my father had used. Stephen Spence, an archivist tried to help me trace down my father through the aliases.

My father had been imprisoned at the Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth Kansas, but there were no further records relating to his incarceration. Fort Leavenworth was divided into a military fort and a federal prison… establishing an annex which had to be used when there were thousands being picked up by the “war on drugs” in the 1930’s. Spence suggested he could have been in the Federal Penitentiary Annex and gave me contacts for further information.

I tried emails, letters, and phone calls to get more information about my father’s incarceration in the Federal Penitentiary, but it led nowhere. I returned to Nairobi, Kenya (where I was living at the time), and put aside looking for information about my father. The life I was living in Nairobi was more compelling. Let sleeping dogs lie, I thought to myself.

I did start a blog in memory of my mother, BetteHutchisonSilver@ wordpress.com

Nothing more happened for a few years. I just couldn’t face it. I had other priorities at the time. Something made me change my mind. Find out in the next post.

Thanks for reading my blog.  Your comments are always welcome!

Author: Pamela Collett

I was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. I have a B.A. from Stanford University and a M.Sc. from Cornell University. I have lived and worked in San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland, California as well as in Washington, DC. Outside the United States, I lived and worked in Venezuela, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Uganda, Somalia and Kenya. I currently live in Canberra, Australia. I edited three books: Bold Plum: with the Guerillas in China's War against Japan by Hsiao Li Lindsay; Peace and Milk: Scenes of Northern Somalia by James Lindsay and Fatima Jibrell; and Solo vale si piensas rápido by Mehedy Lopez, a book of poetry in Spanish. In 2016, I published a book of my poetry and drawings, Silence Spoken. I have taught communication skills, English as a second language, and English for journalists (in Beijing, China) at university and secondary school levels. I was a features writer for the Daily Journal, (Caracas, Venezuela), and The Chronicle of Higher Education. I am a member of the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) Writers Centre, active in a writers’ group and a contributor to poetry readings, That Poetry Thing, in Canberra, Australia. View all posts by Pamela Collett