Overview
This is a Black family history that spans five generations: from post slavery in the eighteen hundreds. The story begins with my grandmother and my aunt, who watched their mother die a horrible slow death while living with their insane Grandfather, John Randolph, an ex-slave who became a sharecropper. He tortured and abused their mother until she died at age thirty-five. This caused my grandmother a great deal of emotional trauma as they had to take care of her until she passed. My grandmother loved her father dearly but had to watch him die in her arms at the age of nineteen due to a robber who stabbed him to death while heading home after running an errand in town. My grandmother's name was Hattie Mildred Boykins and after her father was killed, she was able to get a job as a primary school teacher in Eagle Lake, Texas. She had one child; my mother, who showed signs of mental illness at an early age. My mother quit school after completing the eighth grade; had fourteen children. Seven of us lived and the others died before and after birth. The title of this story was derived from an old wives tale that if a child touched a mourning dove, it would bring sorrow and pain to the child and all who had the misfortune of knowing her.