Terri Prather
Age 2120 Jun 1990
Houston, Texas (USA)
Pushed down stairs
Terri died in hospital a month after being pushed down a flight of stairs by her boyfriend Sean.
Her name was Terri Prather. She was born in 1969. She died June 20th 1990, after hanging on and fighting for her life for almost a month. She had confronted her boyfriend Sean (don't remember his last name. They weren't commonly shared on the streets) she confronted him about cheating on her. Verbally only! But they had an apartment on Bourbon St and he shoved her down a long flight of those ancient wooden staircases.
She seemed ok the next day except for a broken toe and a bump on her head that she said hurt. The bump on her head turned out to be an aneurism on her brain from the fall. She was misdiagnosed in the New Orleans Charity Hospital several times as just having a flu. She finally begged me to please send her home to her momma. I did, and her mom was a nurse.
I got the call 4 days later from her mom telling me that she had slipped into a coma. I knew because we'd talked about death a lot being in our world. Terri used to say that what scared her about death, was that after a little while it's like you never existed at all. I took my favorite photo of her to the best tattoo artist in New Orleans, and she tattooed her portrait and name on me. I immediately went to Houston to see her in the ICU.
Another sister made the trip with me, I don't know if it was my voice or what, but our friend was holding her hand while I was telling her about the tattoo, and telling her no matter what that people would always know she was here as long as I lived. She opened her eyes and squeezed our friend's hand, and I showed it to her. Tears ran down her face and she passed four days later.
Omg you should have seen the giant gang of trans women all walking into this Catholic church together during morning mass to light candles for her. We buried her by having her ashes spread out in the Gulf off of Galveston, and we had a service on the beach there. Her death was when I really started to become an adult hard and fast. I was determined to build the kind of life her and I used to daydream about having someday. I don't just live my life for myself. I'm living for a lot of people who cannot.
Terri's death was not recorded by tdor.info at the time. Details were received via Facebook and are reproduced here by kind permission of Jamie Gendron.
