Daughter turns loss into life lessons
Lacey Huckaby was 18 when she met her mother for the first time. It was Mother’s Day 2005.
Their meeting was more fate than coincidental.
Huckaby, who is black and was adopted as an infant by a white family, knew her biological mother’s name, Bettie DeBruhl, when she was growing up. But she was told by her adopted family that her biological mother had died.
During Huckaby’s freshman year in college, she went looking for a clue, some detail about the woman who gave her life.
So on Mother’s Day a decade ago, Huckaby found a phone listing for a Bettie DeBruhl and called it from an H-E-B gas station in Huntsville, where she studied biology at Sam Houston State University.
DeBruhl, who was working as a vice president at a public relations firm and was living in Houston, answered the call. Their conversation was emotional and tearful. DeBruhl begged Huckaby to drive to Houston that day.
“We hugged for 15 minutes. It was the most emotional moment of my life,” says Huckaby, now 29.
The mother and daughter spent the next nine years getting to know each other and becoming friends. They celebrated on Mother’s Day but called it their “anniversary of friendship.” DeBruhl died in 2014. At the time of Huckaby’s birth, DeBruhl was living a fast life filled with partying and drinking. She already had one child, a son, and decided to give her daughter up for adop- tion to a friend, Ronnie Huckaby, a white, gay man who managed a Montrose bar
He had already battled cancer and lost an arm. The cancer returned a year after the adoption, so he and his little girl moved to Vidor, a town known for its deep ties to the Ku Klux Klan, to raise her with his family. He died of brain cancer when Huckaby was 7, so she was raised by his parents and two sisters with their children.
Huckaby never knew she was black. She was told she had curly hair and tanned skin because her mother was Hawaiian.
Her grandmother, Lillian Huckaby, would drive her to Beaumont to a black hair salon so Huckaby could get her hair done. Each time, her grandmother would wait in the car. Huckaby recalls she looked more like the people in the salon than her own family. “I knew I was different. Everything about me was different, but it was all I knew,” she says
Huckaby also says she was raised in a loving family who provided the foundation she needed. “Everything I know has to do with how my grandparents raised me. They told me I was beautiful and smart.”
Brandy Lopez, 34, a cousin who grew up with Huckaby and now lives in League City, said Huckaby was showered with affection. “Everyone really protected Lacey because we all knew she was different. She got even more love after her dad passed.”
Huckaby attended school in nearby Orangefield, where she was a prom queen and was well liked. But she never had a black friend until college when her roommates, all of whom were black, introduced her to a “new world.”
“They taught me everything about being black,” she says. “They made me watch black films, listen to Luther Vandross and watch every episode of ‘Martin.’ ”
After meeting her birth mother, it all came together. Huckaby felt as if a void had been filled. It also helped that she and DeBruhl looked so much alike.
Their relationship, however, wasn’t always easy. DeBruhl continued to drink for some time, and Lacey struggled with feelings of abandonment.
“My mom had this wisdom, and she helped me to be diplomatic. She always knew she wanted to be better. She was smart and talented, but she was so aware of her flaws.”
When DeBruhl became sick with lung cancer in 2014, she lost her hair from the treatment.. In support, Huckaby. shaved her head and found head wraps for them both to wear. “It was so hard to feel beautiful with a bald head at first. We found a web site, ProjectTribe. com, and loved the concept of wearing a “crown” and feeling like beautiful queens,” she says.
That October, Debruhl died at age 53.
The same year, Huckaby’s grandfather died, her childhood best friend was killed in car accident, and a cousin died in his sleep at age 30. The previous year, her aunt and the mother of her close friend also died.
Huckaby believed death was her burden and had six hearts tattooed on her right arm to represent the lives lost.
She was living in Doha, Qatar, designing a hospital training curriculum for Cerner Corp. and commuted to Houston during her mother’s illness. After her death, she traveled as much as she could, logging six countries in her passport. She also wrote a book, “I Forgive Her,” which will be published by Xlibris this fall.
Huckaby shared details of life in the Middle East, feelings about her mother and dealing with loss on her blog on lhuckaby.com and her Facebook and Instagram accounts. Her posts resonated with followers.
“With me being so transparent on social media, I’ve gotten so many people who have said they struggled in their relationship with their mom,” she says. “I realize now we don’t go through the storms for us, it’s for other people. Everything I’ve experienced is to help other people.”
Her life took another turn last April when an old friend, Darrance Tezino, 32, contacted her through Instagram. The two had worked together in high school at The Buckle store in Beaumont. Tezino flew to Doha a few weeks later. They fell in love, and Huckaby moved back to Houston in January.
The couple plan to marry on July 28, Huckaby’s birthday.
Love, she says, has helped her to heal.
“I started being so open to love,” she says. “Instead of crawling into a hole and being depressed, I just wanted to love. It was the only thing I could feel.”
She also knows her mother would be happy for her.