It Wasn’t Supposed to Be Like This

They are women who buried their children.

And for them, the day to honor mothers was never meant to be anything like what it has become -- a day that would also carry the heavy burden of painful memories.

It has been 16 months since Bettye Sweet lost her 18-year-old son Jason, and the wounds are still fresh.

“He had just graduated from high school, was going to college in Long Beach,” she said, sobbing. “My biggest fear was that one day he would be shot, not killed in a car accident or drowned. Shot! Do you think you attract what you fear?”

Sweet sought to ease the pain of celebrating Mother’s Day without her son by going to a Sunday brunch in Baldwin Hills, one of two weekend events in Southwest Los Angeles for mothers who have lost children to gang violence. The gatherings allow women to be around those who understand their grief firsthand.

“This is a club you don’t want people to join,” said Sandra Evers-Manley, head of the Black Hollywood Education and Resource Center, which sponsored the brunch. “It’s a painful day, and for some mothers it’s hard to get out of bed.”

Charlotte Austin-Jordan has attended brunches and marched to end gang violence in the years since she lost two children to violence: her 13-year-old daughter in 1988 and her 25-year-old son in 1996.

“I stand there with two flowers, and when we go on marches I carry two pictures,” she said. “When they gave that baby to you in your arms, that is when you started dreaming, planning the things you are gong to do. It is a sense of pride that day. And then to have that child taken from you, a part of you suddenly is missing.”

Being surrounded by women who have shared similar fates is comforting, said Austin-Jordan, who owns a Leimert Park restaurant and is the founder of Save Our Future, which held a lunch Saturday for mothers.

“You want the world to know that they had lives and that they were taken away so brutally,” she said. “People don’t want to hear about our tragedies. [The lunch] gives you a chance to bond. We know the pain we are going through.”

After the deaths of her children, Los Angeles became a dark and gloomy place for Austin-Jordan, who moved to Valencia to escape.

But her life was tormented by thoughts of her children at the moment of their deaths. She was terrified by an unexpected knock on the door, a phone call in the night.

Other mothers talked about how tragedy cheated them of their children’s future: high school or college graduations, marriages, grandchildren. Most of all, they said, there is the fear of losing touch.

“I can feel my son every day, even though I know in my heart he’s not coming back,” said Pamela Daniels-Moore, her eyes quick to well up over the loss of her 22-year-old son Tony, who was murdered in 1992.

“If you are used to seeing, imagine someone taking away your eyes. Would you still see the colors?” she asked.

Rita Norwood-Belfrey, who buried her 19-year-old son, an 18-year-old nephew and a fiance, said she simply snapped.

“I didn’t want to lose them,” she said. “I was so bitter. I felt like I didn’t want anybody to like me. ‘Don’t love me! I don’t want to love you!’ ”

It took her 10 years to recover.

“Life just stood still on Feb. 7, 1989,” she said. “Finally, I realized that there was nothing I could do to change [her son’s] death. I had to accept it, to deal with it. I threw away his bloody clothes I kept under my bed, and his shoes.”

Dealing with the hurt meant finding ways to help others who have suffered similar losses.

“There’s not much you can say,” Norwood-Belfrey said. “I just rub their hands and show my concern, my love.”

Judy Gibson said her life has been torn in two directions every Mother’s Day since her son Gregg was murdered in November 2002.

“You have to be happy and strong, put the smile on for your other children, because they need you,” she said. “You may appear normal, but you’re not. There’s always someone missing, an empty chair at the table.”

Gibson said her son and his best friend were killed while waiting for a traffic light on a freeway onramp in Inglewood, victims of what police said was a mistaken act of retaliation or a gang initiation.

Since that day, she said, she has suffered flashbacks and nightmares, waking at 2 a.m. thinking about her son lying in a car bleeding to death from four bullet wounds. She has pretended it was all a dream, even called his cellphone hoping for a response.

“For us moms who have had their children murdered, the biggest fear is that our child will be forgotten by society,” she said. “When your child dies or is murdered, people go on with their everyday lives. After the memorial, the sympathy cards, they go back to their families.

“They started off the morning with three kids and they go to bed with three kids. Us, our days are changed forever. We don’t have that child to walk in the door and say: ‘I love you!’ or ‘Happy Mother’s Day!’ It is really hard.”