Grief is a Melody
“To that those which mourn may be exalted to safety.” Job 5: 11
The Blues of Your Absence
The navy blue shirt your mom gave me is impeccably soft. It took me many months to even put it on. I left it in the den for a week, then I hid it in a drawer, until I'd forgotten about it, and saw it, saw you again. I want to feel like I've had some breakthrough, that I'm more resilient than ever, but honestly, losing you has made me feel more vulnerable, more fragile–like this could all be gone much sooner than I think.
I just want to hear you laugh, or tell me something super silly, or imitate Uncle Casey or Grandma. You were incredibly funny! You just knew the rhythm of a joke. Its foundation and framework. Its downbeat. The pace of its winding movement–or a direct hit. How to build it to its crescendo and land people home for the laugh.
You made people laugh easily. You could use a well-worn meme in a cousins group chat to get me laughing out loud. Even when you were being serious there was a hint of humor, an echo of your rich wit in sparse potent sentences.
I remember holding the boyhood version of you, rocking you to sleep in my arms, feeling like you were my sweet little baby brother.
You hated when I introduced you as my little cousin. I did it twice to people I knew, and the second time I saw you tsk, I saw that you were more hurt than mad. And I stopped calling you that. Because in truth you were our little brother. An only child, but little brother to your nine first cousins.
You were a force of light–illuminating, truthful, transcendent. You were powerful. You were even stronger than you thought. Wise and good. Imperfect and sure. Uncertain and pure.
You were bereft when Brian died. You didn’t know what would come next– what you were going to do. How to be when someone that close died. After work, you would meet him on the Crossroads, and you two would ride. He occupied most of your days with his presence, and brought incredible understanding and insight to you. It was difficult to even consider existing without that.
And you were finding a way to be, despite the heavy burden of recent death. And you continued to ride. And you were building something around what you all were--the Crossroad Kings, and what it meant for a King to leave so soon. How was everyone to be after he was gone?
We were limping along as best we could, because even the shock and pain of Brian leaving was not our first experience. We felt that awful surprise with Bradley's murder. And as the wound of his absence grew smaller with time, we poured out for him and remembered him in everything we did. And then Brian left. And now you, who sought togetherness above it all, left us.
I don't understand why this has happened. I really don't get it.
I honestly try to ignore the pain and sometimes it surprises me when I am confronted with the memory of you. A headstone in my text messages--your Mom's garden tribute to you, watching a video imitation of you doing Uncle Casey, prickly intonations and all. I can only look at it for so long before I remember that you are not here.
Notes of Your Memory
“No hour is ever eternity, but it has the right to weep.”
- Zora Neale Hurston
Grief is a sucking, drowning, disorienting affliction. It can swallow you whole. I lost weight while pregnant when you died.
I had already told everyone that we would be down again after the baby was born. As a high-risk pregnancy I couldn't fly and I knew I couldn't take that eight-hour ride with two children, waddling, bursting and in my third trimester. But we ended up doing it anyway, so that I could say goodbye to you. Not goodbye, but farewell.
I lost weight and your niece wasn’t growing like she was supposed to. I cried with my OBGYN when she asked me what was going on. We commiserated over her dad's death, and my losses, and it was a moment of connection and understanding. But things were still hard.
I couldn't look at your picture, or stand to see all the memories and photos people posted of you after we buried you. I deleted the FB app off of my phone, and it helped for a while. I didn't have to log in to abruptly see some photo or video of you, or some recounting of some memory where the story of you saying something or doing something funny filled me with sadness and bitterness.
I'm still angry. You should be here. You should be here to have your first child. You should be here for more cookouts, hangouts, and gatherings. You should be here to live your dreams–to see something that you planted blossom. You should be here even and especially after Brian and Moo died. You should be here to help us see Grandma through this part of her journey.
You should not be a memory.
A collection of notable moments:
holding court in Grandma’s den, recounting some hilarity with arms, legs and baritone; full-toothed smiling you, bow-tie clad, walking the incline of the courthouse with 8-months pregnant me, Mommy, Jason, and Yeuris, one of our three wedding guests; the cool reasonable sibling in a life-defining moment when Jason and I were not at our best.
A preteen you, hat turned backwards, smiling eyes squinted, still trying to be cool. I came home for thanksgiving, my first after moving to Alexandria with our auntie, surprised at your height and peach fuzz. You reminded us that you were growing and cooler than we thought.
Just before college graduation, you confided in me about your dreams, while calling me for advice. Me walking around an hour after work on New Hampshire Avenue, letting you talk, and gently letting you know that it was okay to not have it all figured out. And that a plan can change and that's okay too.
A sweet bear hug. A laugh. A story. A retelling using Uncle Casey's unmistakeable accented bass through clenched teeth, a hyperbolic suggestion to help the bear if we see him and the bear fighting in the woods. The feigned alto of Grandma driving home a fussed lesson– the playful dance to get to the end of something surely and beautifully mirthful.
You could chart a laugh from utterance to ending–a teasing nod and rewarding end.
Lithe, free, loose-limbs shifting–you were a study in movement. The staccato of your arms that kept time as your legs spurned forth,
pushing you
pushing you
pushing you
making you,
making us all believe that you could break the sound barrier running that fast. Athleticism was a huge part of your life. As a child, teen, college athlete, you tested your strength, your body, your ability to push yourself beyond what you thought you could do. Sometimes it broke your body, but your determination (and shoulder surgery) mended you. You were always whole again after each bump or bruise. Except now.
Now you are a flying free, gentle, laughing, loving guide to us. But that doesn’t make me any less angry. Time has soothed the bite of my furor, but a bitterness is still contained within. And I cannot shake it. I am not even looking for how I should. And maybe that part is wrong. I have to be here, after all, for everyone who needs me. And I am doing that.
I am finding joy with each moment my kids bring me. I love each time I get to see us all gathered. I revel in getting to have that, feeling blessed for it, especially for the time we have with Grandma. Still missing you, still loving you, wanting to feel some intelligent perspective or wisdom. But still mad. And still trying to get through this. Knowing you would want me to be the best version of myself.
I recall Marcus Aurelius' letter to a mother grieving her son.
I sit with it–ruminate. Damn, that ain’t helpful. <Go back and read it again.>
Counting and Counting On
It is not an easy thing, deliberating/calculating/doing the math:
10 grandchildren becoming seven–all premature;
three of seven of our parents/aunts/uncles burying their children;
our grandmother burying three grandchildren before her/their time.
Engaging in the calculus of life and tallying the cost of death is heavy. Where is the sense in this? There is no logical conclusion. No delicate, beautiful equation explaining a mystery.
This should point to a principle, or divine a grace, or uncover some greater truth.
Honestly no one wants to be Job. But still we are hanging in there cause what else can we do?
Fashioning Job from the grief of multiple tragedies can sometimes be a given. Deep and abiding faith comes not from winning but from many many losses. The road through those losses is long. The search for meaning and comfort is even longer. High-hope looks for the through-line of significance. It investigates and desires a response to its insistent plea of why.
“For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion: in the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me; He shall set me up upon a rock.” Psalms 27:5
In the time of my trouble He shall hide me. Maybe He has hidden this heaviness and it trickles out like mad. Maybe He is making my life full so that I see and give attention to and expand on all the good things.
So that when we text each other about cardinals, when we know that it's y’all, we can look at ourselves and say, “They don't need you to do that, they are telling you that they are okay. Don't eat yourself up with mad.”
Walking through the valley of the shadow of death. It is not evil that I fear, or at least not the menacing figure--representation of no-good … but the unbearable weight of grief.
I do want Him to place us on a rock even as we struggle through a valley. Hoping that what comes through, what lands is the gift of peace.
Harmonies of Tragedy
Death is not examined in a vacuum but is formed in context--the death of Brian and Bradley before you. Death is the menace, the shadowy specter that no one wants a visitation from. We have received it, and we were changed by it. In some cases it forged a new way of being, and in others opened the sores of the unexamined aspects of our existence and character.
How do you look for peace when you are shaken by grief?
What was the medicine our forebears used?
Passing chillun over graves protects them - but what protects us from our grief—from our going along until?
How can we recenter and find ourselves?
__
On that windy day when we laid you to rest, crying cleansed our collective consciousness. There was a deep pouring from the soul. We continue our attempts to be each other’s medicine.
____
Correction, I am trying to get better. Not just wallowing in rage. I am seeking medicine for healing. I am learning. I am expanding my self-awareness.
I have joined an intellectual social club and a self-development group. I’m establishing and reinforcing boundaries through therapy. I’m building technical skill in areas that I've deeply desired for a long time.
I am no longer under the illusion that things will happen in their time. Nay, I must see the future I want and work backwards from it, and live that every single day. So that there is nothing left on the table. Each morning I rise with purpose already in hand. Each evening I leave nothing to chance.
I set my north star for the next day. And I acknowledge and celebrate myself, I encourage myself for what I have done. I am glad to have the opportunity to do it.
The Rhythm of Recognition
The intersection of Susie and Greentown roads forged us. These are the crossroads that made us. That defined us. That helped us navigate our hardest moments.
We find ourselves kneeling at the cross, praying at the crossroads, leaning on one another.
I find myself recognizing the truth in what we call Homegoing. Our belief says that we recognize that we are ephemeral beings. That we are here but for a time, and some of us longer than others. You went back home. But you were with us for a while. We celebrated your life as we sent you back home. We acknowledged that in all of your years here, you made a lot of people's worlds brighter.
Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death--ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.
- James Baldwin
____
My dedication to you on FB shortly after your death:
I’m still in disbelief that this has happened again, and so soon. My heart is broken, Slick.
I remember the day you were brought home from the hospital, Uncle Isaac and Aunt Trish’s little pride and joy. I remember holding you, fussing over you, and feeling like you were my little baby. As you grew and ran barefoot outside through ants’ nests and grass, looking for all kinds of adventure, I remembered thinking then that we would have our hands full.
I’m left reflecting on all of the advice, feedback, and warnings a big sister gives to little brothers throughout the years, finding their own way and making their own decisions. I’m just so proud of the man you became. Tonya and I are so blessed that our boys had an uncle like you. An outside tag, game-playing, video-chatting, joking and loving uncle who talked to our boys, and laughed with them while keeping them straight. You truly loved them and they loved you back.
There are so many things I will miss about you.
Your smile, your silliness, your laughter and ability to make others laugh, your Grandma (“Leemar!”) and Gang impressions (“Boy I’m your uncle, not your equal”), and everything you found funny that you couldn’t wait to share or joke about. Your encouragement, wisdom, and truth-telling. Your big, big heart. You were a reflection of pure love and joy. Most of all, I’ll miss the genuine love you shared with all of us—easy and carefree.
When Slick loved you, you knew it. All of the expressions of love that we see now—family, friends, and acquaintances—are a testament to that fact.
I will miss you so much. Nothing feels right about this. I only take comfort in that you’ll be reunited with Brian and Bradley, laughing and riding, and watching over us all.
May you continue to be everywhere and live on in all of us.
Love you baby bro RIP
#XRoadKingz #LLSlick #LLBCally #LLMoo
—-
Boom-Bap Beginnings
It is our grief
heavy, relentless,
trudging
us, however resistant,
to the decaying and rotten
bottom of things:
our grief bringing
us home.
Alice Walker, “Grief Brings Us Home” from The World Will Follow Joy: Turning Madness Into Flowers
Cacophonous sounds of revving motors, the smell of rubber burning, the marks left on Susie and Greentown Roads, and Highway 45 gave notice that the XRoadKingz (Crossroad Kings) were riding bikes, four-wheelers, and sports vehicles in Greentown.
You motley bunch of cousins, first through fifth, Generations X through Z, sought ways to constructively spend time with one another, while channeling and challenging your senses of adventure. You gathered at the Crossroads, in front of our Crossroad King’s gray block house, where he sat upon his wicker rocking throne, his front porch, watching you ride by.
Uncle Jack left us this year at 100 years old. You must know that now. I remember when he told me that he knew how strong Hurricane Hugo was going to be. He sat on the front porch eating boiled peanuts. The cup sat on the porch floor, and as he picked it up and saw ants gathering beneath it, he knew it would be big. They crawled beneath the cup instead of trying to crawl in it. Even these ants cowered in fear of the rotating, cycloning, wind and gust-bringing, rapid force of nature.
--
Grief gets carried in the body. The racking of limbs closing in on one another. The stooping when you hear the news. The falling on your knees, the lying down, the restless walking, the sullen sitting, the heavy falling back down to soft surface, the mind being transported to days before.
Chest heaving, rapid breaths, crying, wailing, yelling, then silence. Successive sounds and movements, high then low pitch, then nothing at all. Grief is a melody.
There are notes of uncertainty, incessant beats of sadness, the adagio tempo of overwhelm and surrender. Death abruptly ends our songs–the ultimate decrescendo, leaving echoes of memory and wanting.
—
I got my nails done recently. For the first time in a while. And I thought about you. I was talking with J–the lady doing my nails, and we shared, as you often do, confidences. There is a closeness crafted by outsourcing the grooming of our bodies. A forced intimacy borne of proximity and styling, painting, and removing dead skin cells.
J’s father died three months ago. I told her I was sorry, and as she rounded and painted my nails in gel, she shrugged and said, “it could be worse.”
We talked about her dad dying, the months before and the day of, him calling for her, saying goodbye, 24-hour Walmarts, the Vietnamese countryside, and it occurred to me that her words were not a dismissal but a reality check.
It could be worse is a deep sense of gratitude for everything that came before. I didn’t get to say goodbye. We were never expecting this, but I think about how it could be worse.
—
I had the opportunity for lots of laughs, for lessons, for the bright and brilliant joy that expanding love gives, for the contentment of feeling happy to just be in a room with people for whom you share blood and ancestry, for a bowling night and a sleepover at Grandma’s house as young adults and teenagers, for memories of you as a bow-legged ant-bitten toddler, running and happy. A sweet, smiling, painting and coloring kid, a jokey preteen, a pranking-in-the-grocery-store, skinny teen, a success-focused student-athlete, a hard-working, dreaming young man, who worked 40 hours for someone else and many hours for himself, a young man who was planting, plotting, and seeding his future. And I was a witness to it. We all were. We beheld, and we were critical, and we were loving, and we were proud, and we were.
I now know that the high note of anger in grief is uncertainty. That dissatisfaction with not knowing that the story will work out. Knowing that we plan and work towards it but it might be interrupted when we least expect it. And all we have then is everything we’ve done up to that point.
It doesn’t feel like enough, because it wasn’t. The consecutive notes that form each of our songs will never be enough for our loved ones. Bearing witness to your beautiful, brief, allegro was a gift. I am most certainly better for it.
This is such a beautiful honest outpouring of grief and love. Through your eyes and words we get to see the Slick you loved throughout his life.