Revelations about my father and why M.E. Tudor is my pen name.

Someone asked me recently why I chose M.E. Tudor as my pen name.  I told them that one reason was because I thought my real name, Tina Brewster was a boring name. The other reason is because it is in honor of my paternal grandmother, Mina Ellie Tudor (Tudor being her maiden name), who my mother said was a story teller.  I didn't meet either of my paternal grandparents. My grandmother died at the age of 48 from ovarian cancer about 4 or 5 years before I was born. My grandfather died of a heart attack two years before I was born.

Interestingly, my mother had more fond memories of her mother-in-law that she did of her own mother. She told me many stories but when I started taking an interest in drawing and writing as a teenager, my mother said that my dad's mom had been the family story teller and my Aunt Pat, my dad's only sister, had been an artist.

My dad didn't talk much about his family. I learned through other family members that my grandfather had been an alcoholic who had beaten his wife and children often.  There were other stories about him but I'll save them for another time.  But, apparently, my father's childhood had not been a happy one. 

When I was about nine I started going to a Baptist Church in a town not far from us and decided I wanted to be baptized. Dad had staunchly refused to allow me to do it but my brother finally talked him into it.  I couldn't get Dad to tell me why until one day, not long after I'd been baptized, we were sitting in the front yard under the shade tree talking. Dad was drunk and he would often been more open than normal when he was drunk. We were discussing, once again, why he didn't want me to get baptized and why he didn't want to talk about God, he teared up and said, "My mother was a devout Christian. You could not have asked for a better woman and no one loved God more than she did. When she died of cancer, I never could understand how God could make someone who loved him so much suffer the way she did."

We didn't talk about it again after that and at nine I was too young to really understand his pain.  As an adult, I understood more why he didn't ever talk about religion. It was too painful for him to think about how God had made his mother suffer. She had already suffered a violent marriage, why did she have to die a painful death.  It just occurred to me this morning, as I was thinking about why I chose her name as my pen name, that Dad didn't want me to become a Christian because he was afraid that God would make me suffer the way his mom had. I was the baby of the family and his favorite. He didn't want me suffer a painful life or death. Wow, what a revelation.

Dad died when I was seventeen, a week and a half after I graduated from high school. It's amazing that after 28 years I still miss him and the pain is sometimes just as strong today as it was then. Anyway, that's the story of why I chose M.E. Tudor for my pen name.

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