Excerpt from “Hostage of a Fifteen Year Silence” by Lidija Alvarez:

Chapter 1

Fear wrapped my chest, heart beats jumped into my throat. A single fire cracker noise had wakened my motherly instinct; something was terribly wrong. I jumped out of my warm bed and ran into Dijana’s dark makeshift room in the den, tripping over shoes and school bags. Her bed, in the far corner of the room, was barely visible; lighted only by the street lights coming through the window. The smell of burnt gunpowder spread throughout the house as my screams disturbed the silence of the night.

“Dijana, I love you,” I cried through my tears, while grabbing my daughter’s limp body in my arms. A sticky warm substance soaked into her hair; made hard to clear from her face.

“Dijana, I love you! Dijana!”

No answer, only darkness, and the smell of fresh blood and gun powder.

I had to do something. I grabbed something hard and hot. Realizing it was a gun, I threw it across the room. I reached, searching around in the darkness, and felt cloth of some sort. I grabbed it and wrapped it around Dijana’s head. She was not breathing; there was no pulse. I started CPR. At the hand-made door with a curtain, my family gathered, all screaming something; I didn’t understand what.

“Call 911!”  I screamed.

“They’re on their way!”  A voice yelled back.

As though through a tunnel, I heard my husband say, “Lift her head.”

I did. As I breathed into my baby’s mouth, the taste of her blood was nauseating. One, one thousand, two, one thousand, I counted. Continuing the compressions, I screamed again, “Dijana, I love you,” trying to reach into the depths of her darkness, hoping to pull her back.

Time stood still as I waited for her to respond. A slurping sound finally came out of her mouth, and hope entered my broken down heart as I positioned my daughter on her side to allow blood to exit and clear her air passage. The firemen rushed in. For them to take over, we had to clear the room and bring in more light. We removed the frame and the curtain-the entrance to her room- and brought another lamp. From a distance, I heard my younger daughter crying; my mother repeating in Croatian, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” All I cared for in that moment was that Dijana was alive.

I stood there in shock, soaked in blood, while paramedics worked on my baby. My husband watched in disbelief, standing on his only leg supported by crutches, with his stump swaying back and forth. My eyes searched for my younger daughter Angela. The expression of pain and fear mixed with confusion, showed on her face as she silently cried. Poor baby, she was only twelve.  I reached for her, not thinking of my bloody hands, and squeezed her next to me. Our bodies shook. I was glad that Dijana’s part of the room was not lit up like the rest of the house, so Angela couldn’t see all the blood from where she was standing. My mother, the palms of her hands clasped together, close to her face, was praying. Dijana was taken into the ambulance. Someone said to get dressed to go to the hospital. I went into our room and saw my husband’s rifle collection through the glass door of the locked cabinet.

“John!” I called him into the room and told him,” Hide the automatic rifle. I don’t want to lose you, too. You will go to jail if they see what you got in here.”

Hurriedly, I put some clothes on. I didn’t want to lose a minute away from Dijana. John put his prosthetic leg on and met me in the den.

Sarah, our neighbor, took over in my house and said, “Lidija, don’t worry. Just go! Angela can stay with my kids at my house.”

Before we left, the policeman approached the car carrying something in his hands.

“Mrs. Carter, I am so sorry, but we need to test your hands for GPR before you leave to the hospital.”He said trough the passenger window.

“What is GPR?” I looked at him, puzzled.

“It’s gun powder residue. It will be quick, I promise.” He pulled out a white, round piece of paper and pressed it on my hands and fingers.

“That’s it– you can go now. And I am so sorry, Mrs. Carter.” He said again in a soft tone of voice.

I don’t remember how I got to the hospital, just that the wait was long and it was cold. I shivered as I paced back and forth. All of a sudden, I realized that my hands were still bloody, and I went to the bathroom. I turned on the water and stared at its flow. After a while, I looked into the mirror. My face was pale except for traces of blood on it. Whoever wiped her blood off my face hadn’t done a good job. I washed my face and hands, trying to wash down my tears, which just now started to fall uncontrollably. In my mind, I repeated all the prayers I knew, pleading with God to spare Dijana’s life. She was so young, so beautiful. Panic captured my thoughts. “What if…..oh, no, no, no. Think positively,” I thought, “She was breathing when they took her. There still is hope. Oh, God, please, please!”

I collected myself and left the bathroom. For the life of me, I can’t remember who was there with me; only Dijana and I existed.

The doctor finally came out and asked for the parents. I approached him, full of hope. His face showed no emotion; only his eyes were full of sympathy.

He said, “We did what we could. With that injury, it’s better this way. I am sorry. Would you like to see her?”

I nodded.

“They’re getting her ready. As soon as they’re done, they’ll call you in.”  Somehow no one uttered the words, “She died.”

My daughter was only a few doors away from me; and yet, I felt a separation anxiety. Her presence in my whole being and in my soul wasn’t enough; I wanted her with me.

“Mrs. and Mr. Carter,” a nurse said as she looked at each of us for a response. I stepped toward her.  Now, knowing it was me, she added, “You can come in.”

Cool air brushed against my face. My body trembled; trying to shake off the cold chills that entered my spine as I slowly raised my eyes toward the metal table where Dijana lay. Her head was wrapped with loads of white gauze, as if she had on a helmet, and the tubes were still hanging out of her mouth. She looked peaceful, as if she was sleeping. I leaned closer to her and caressed her face, looking at her with disbelief.

“Oh, my Dijana, what have you done?”

I cried quietly, just looking and shaking my head. I kissed her cold face and said my goodbye, silently. Angela was at home, waiting for me. She needs me, and I couldn’t do anything else here anyway.

For Chords for Change

My daughter Dijana, only fifteen years old, killed herself with my husband’s handgun. The week before her death, I grounded her for taking the family truck for a midnight joy ride. No one supported me as I tried to teach my daughter a lesson, not even the sheriff’s office. To my worried comments that she could have hurt herself, hurt someone else or been arrested for driving without a license, they laughed, saying, “We all did it at that age.”

I had no other way to teach her what she did was dangerous, so I grounded her, giving her time to think. She was not to use the phone, not to see her friends other than for study, not to hang out until we could talk about what she’d done; a talk she had to initiate.

That evening, about half an hour before she shot herself in the head, Dijana came to our bedroom, where my husband and I were watching television, and asked if she could use the phone.

I said, “Not until we talk about what happened with the truck.”

She nodded and gave me a challenging stare as she left the doorway. I didn’t make much of that stare because I’d received a lot of them lately. My husband didn’t say anything then, but, he used my grounding her against me after she died, calling me an overprotective mother and blaming me for her death.

It took a long time to free myself of the guilt for grounding her. But, how else could I make her understand the danger she put herself and others in? In that case, all the parents who have punished their children should live in fear of their children killing themselves. My husband didn’t take in consideration that she was under the influence of LSD when she killed herself. He didn’t consider that the injury and scarring to her brain during the meningitis and encephalitis she’d had when she was twelve could have caused confusion in her judgment. He didn’t take responsibility for teaching her how to use the gun, and having the guns so accessible.

The pain of losing her turned us all against each other, each fighting our own guilty feelings of anything we’d said or done to Dijana during her rebellious moments. We became statistics.

After the storm, the calm remained. Emptiness and loneliness replaced a full house of well wishers. The family, friends, and neighbors retreated, leaving us alone with our torturous thoughts. Even buying the company of some, paying for things and taking them places, didn’t keep them around. When they were gone, they were completely gone. Pain, masked by our busy schedule, burrowed into every cell of our beings, waiting for eruption. It would turn into finger-pointing, which would later destroy the family.

During one of those finger-pointing moments, I left the master bedroom and slept in the living room. My mother went back to war-torn Croatia. Referring to Dijana’s death she said,” War is everywhere. At least there, I’ll be able to talk to people.”

I moved into her room.

Later, in trips out of the country, I hoped to find understanding from family and oldest friends; however, the time spent with them turned into interrogations. I often hid in the bathroom crying and waiting for the verbal attack to change its course. Most were suggesting that I must have done something wrong to cause such tragedy because my outward survival mode didn’t reveal my bleeding heart. But, how can one show a bleeding heart, when such is covered with an armor of flesh in survival mode?

When therapy and bereavement groups didn’t help, divorce followed. Resentment from family, neighbors and friends spread like a disease and divided loyalties. I moved away as far as possible to avoid confrontations during the divorce proceedings, yet stayed close enough to have some relationship with Angela, now my only living daughter. She chose to stay with her father, afraid of my potential homelessness. I had no job or family and, to make things worse, Systemic Lupus exploded in my susceptible and broken body. Uncertainty brought new fears about tomorrow.

Longing for belonging, love and comfort, I rushed into a few relationships. One could have turned out tragically, if I hadn’t escaped in the middle of night only with what I could stuff into my van.  That night, on adopted grandmother’s driveway, I cried, waiting for her to wake up. I hoped she would take me in. As the morning approached, the rain pounded hard on Southern California. Big drops, hitting the windshield, mimicked the flow of my tears. In that moment, I realized that the predictions of me becoming homeless came true.

Grandma took me in for a while. A Croatian friend took me in for ten days only– her rule. Her friend had me for a couple of weeks and then my friend and her husband rented a room to me for almost three years. Here was where I felt most at home; no judgments and no curfew. I found some peace of mind, even though I hadn’t yet found the answers to the survival of Dijana’s soul. What troubled my sanity was that many religions closed the book on her; for them she had committed a mortal sin. Unable to change the doctrines of churches, I gave it to God. I hoped that he was a good God who wouldn’t cast a sick and confused child into eternal death, no matter what the books said, and surrendered to healing powers of music and dance.

My birthday came and my friend took me to a famous salsa club as her gift to me. I knew how to dance but not the structured steps of salsa. I was mesmerized with the acrobatic moves of some dancers, obviously showing off. My heart beat faster, my face felt hotter; my feet tapped, unable to stay still. I was happy and enjoying myself. My worries vanished and the past grew more distant as I accepted a gentleman’s hand to dance. The beat was merengue; easy steps of marching, swaying hips side to side, which I could definitely do. I liked the feeling of my body becoming one with the rhythm of congas that reached deep into it, silencing my injured heart. I got lost in the waves of notes, receptive and willing to swim with them to the end of the world.

For weeks, I couldn’t get this feeling out of my mind, and it felt as if I got a bug I couldn’t shake. Finally, I called the club and found out they gave salsa classes. The club was an hour and a half away from my home, but that didn’t stop me from going to that first salsa lesson. The teacher grabbed me to see how much I knew, only to find out ‘nothing’ was an understatement. He made many attempts to make me move the way he led me, but stopped trying after he realized I had absolutely no basics of salsa in me. I was put in the beginner class.

At first, I would go on Fridays for the class and dance. As I learned basic steps, more dancers asked me to dance. I loved it. At home, I put Latin music on and practiced the steps. My excitement spread. I wanted to learn the language, so I went to my junior college and took Spanish. Now, I was learning about the culture as well as dance and language; my time was occupied. My depression slowly slipped away, as did the pounds I had gained living a normal middle class life. I had something to look forward to. I wasn’t dwelling on the tragedy that happened to my family even though the reality of it never went away. Soon after, I found another place to dance and take lessons closer to home; then another, and another, until I had where to go dancing every night of the week.

I got really good and my talent was recognized throughout Southern California. Competitions followed. Radio announcements, newspaper photos of me dancing and music videos, led me to teaching. I met many people from the salsa world, even the ones from the movie Dance with Me, when one of my teachers was cast in it.

The most important person I met during dance was my husband, Francisco, whose gentle spirit swept me off my feet. We become inseparable, best friends. In the quiet moments without loud music, we learned more about each other and our faith. I told him how my search for Dijana’s soul’s life fell on the deaf ears of many religions, but how I wasn’t giving up. He told me how I didn’t have to search anymore and introduced me to a gospel that gave me my peace of mind. My nightmares, with chilling screams, subsided; until they were completely gone.

Now, my strength is visible. For total transformation of my body and my attitude, I first give gratitude to music and dance. They pulled me away from sorrow and gave me the opportunity to grow and see life through the eyes of hope.

I believe that finding Chords for Change and meeting Brian, Kristen and Kathryn was no coincidence. When I realized that, this year, there will not be a Mother’s Day card or phone call coming my way, the ad about the benefit concert popped in front of me on my facebook page. I felt something urging me to act on it. I gave myself a mother’s day present and went to the concert even though I’d never heard of the organization. During the concert, I was deeply moved by the talent performing on stage and off.

I have been ready for involvement with an organization like this for quite some time, so I volunteered. Chords for Change provides services using music and instruments as tools to alleviate the effects of trauma and abuse for people without advocates and financial security.

The pain of abuse or loss never goes away, but it gets easier to manage when we occupy our minds with productive thoughts. For most of us, therapeutic music and beats don’t leave space in our brain for destruction.  As I was growing up in Croatia, we had a saying that describes it the best,” Who sings, doesn’t harbor evil thoughts.”

When life threw trouble my way, I sang or hummed it away.