Introducing Cecil Douglas Rowlett Jr.

A friend of mine suggested that I do an introduction blog.  She said that my life story is a great backdrop to my writing. You would think that a blog about one’s self would be easy to write, but this is not the case for me. To fully tell one’s story honestly, there has to be a lot of personal inventory of the soul and heart. The story we want to tell isn’t always the true honest story. We want to write a story that always shows us as the hero, when in reality, we are the villain. We always want to jam the story full of the triumphs of our lives, while hiding the tragedies. When we honestly look at our lives and take a personal inventory, we realize that the tragedies are as much a part of whom we are as the triumphs, maybe even more!

I was born October 16, 1976 to two high school dropouts, who quickly became my heroes, proving no matter your stature in life, you can still be someone’s hero.  My dad was a truck driver/entrepreneur in the making and my mom worked in the lower ranks of a nursing home. My childhood was pretty normal with two hard working parents and three older siblings who tried to kill me every chance they got, as I recall. Then when I was around eleven, my mom and dad took me into our dining room, sat me down at the dining room table to drop the “C” word. That day, I found out that my mother had Cancer and that Cancer can kill. My world shattered with one six letter word.

For the next four years, I watched my mom battle this dreaded disease. I saw her fight until there was no fight left. I remember her saying to my dad, “I don’t want to take any more treatments.  They are killing what little life I have left.” In my selfishness, I barged into my parent’s room and said, “If you don’t take the treatments you will die.” I remember her looking into my eyes for the longest time, she replied slowly, “for you I would do anything in this world, I will continue to fight just for you,” and she did. She fought bravely for the next year and died my freshman year of high school. I had never seen someone literally emotionally, physically, and mentally defeated like she was, yet somewhere inside find the will to summon the energy to fight again. I didn’t know it then, but in that moment she was crafting by example, what would become my never give up even in the face of death motto.

Life at fourteen suddenly motherless and watching my father turn to become an alcoholic wasn’t the best of times for me, yet I was still learning. I learned that heroes sometimes die.  There are some stories that don’t end happily ever after, and sometimes heroes lose their way. I learned that real men cry, God comforts, and the sun does eventually shine on the darkest of days. In those hours, I learned that loneliness can hurt so intense, that you can physically feel the pain and that sometimes the greatest accomplishment of the day is getting out of bed. In those years to come, I learned that friends and family can help ease the pain, though; you will carry it through your life.

Like most teenagers, I played sports, got my license, went to prom, and eventually graduated high school, all without my mother and with an alcoholic father by my side. I am going to back track just a little mainly because it’s my story and I can, yes I get my humor from my mom. When we found out my mom had Cancer, my dad quit his job and started a pallet business. We built pallets out of a barn next to the house. He would never admit it but I believe that he couldn’t stand to be away from the love of his life in her darkest hour. He waited on her hand and foot, day and night. When she barely had enough energy to go to work and taking a shower exhausted her, he bathed her. When she got home at night exhausted, he’d carry her from the car to the house. He did this until she was too weak to work anymore. In those actions, I learned the truest love between a man and woman. I learned that an honest day’s work was worth all the energy that you can give. Why did I add this to this part of the story?  Because I worked beside my dad from the first pallet at age eleven until I went off to college.  He was an annoying drunk from time to time, but in that pallet mill, I learned the ways of an entrepreneur. I watched as my dad turned nothing into supper, school clothes, and much more. I learned what it was to walk the tight rope, rob from Peter to pay Paul, to look the storm head on and say what else you got.

After college, I didn’t return to the pallet mill, though, years later I would. I went on to discover what it was to live on my own and make my own way. Here is one of those you have to be completely honest parts; one of the main reasons that I didn’t go back is because two weeks before my high school graduation, my dad and I had a huge falling out that forced me out of the house and living with my sister. We reconciled two weeks after the fight, but it was years before we would be tight again. I worked my way up with the company I worked for and dated off and on, but never was a ladies man. Then one day at the age of twenty three, an angel from heaven swept me off my feet. I dated this angel for three months and then made her my life. We bought a house, started planning a family, and I with the aid of a brother-in-law started my own pallet business. Shortly after starting this business, my dad moved his business next to ours and once again we were working side by side.

Everything was perfect for around two and half years, until we found out after an emergency surgery that my angel had something called Crohn's disease. I can still remember her surgeons words clear as day, “don’t worry nobody ever dies of Crohn's disease.  You will just have to learn to live with a mild discomfort.” So me the good husband I had been trained to be by a dad who cared for a dying wife, took my wife home to help her mend. I waited on her hand and foot, even cleaning out her wound. The sounds of her moaning in pain as I cleaned the incision still haunt me to this day, sometimes when I close my eyes at night. I did what I had to do for the woman I loved though.  We got her back on her feet and back to full speed. If only they always lived happily ever after.  Six months after her surgery, my angel went to heaven due to complications of Crohn's disease. We had only been married three years and seventeen days.

This concludes the first part of my story. I will finish this blog post on Friday, because Thursday I want to do a happy throwback Thursday blog. Too much tragedy in one night isn’t good for the writer, the reader, or my editor.