Summary
3 months between grief and hope. More gratitude.
3 months ago I decided to write something using the starting point “today’s truth.” I wrote and revised and saved but I never hit that publish button because it just felt like too much. I decided then that I would wait until a day had filled my heart with so much love and faith and gratitude that this truth from 3 months ago could be overshadowed by something too big to let grief rob me of vision or of my sense of future. I got that this weekend when I traveled to a delightful wedding in a country setting full of the beauty of Blackness and humanity’s capacity for love.
This weekend I was surrounded by people committed to and enriched by a union pure in its sense of hesed – the lovingkindness you find in loyalty, service, and compassion granted by your creator. We sat there on a scene Lucille Clifton must have been thinking of when she wrote “bridge between starshine and clay.” The golden sunset showing off and eventually giving way to a night sky so incredibly dark and deep it felt like the whole universe was unfolding above the heads of us all. I looked up at the stars still glittering far into their own futures, showing the power of diaspora and ancestry. And looked in the eyes of family and friends bright with laughter at some times, filled with shiny joyful tears at others. I smiled at my husband knowing the glow of these stars and eyes was still burning for us too. I looked at my children knowing I am so much in awe of the expansive nature of their futures. I watched my children watching the blessing of the couple and the wedding feast. And there I let the power of a good word take over. I closed my eyes and remembered a boy who became my ancestor much too soon.
I said a little prayer of thanks for this new day when the hurt of 3 months ago had found more perspective. 3 months ago I wrote what you will find below knowing that as one of my absolute favorite writers captured “we can never know the ecstasy of true hope without attending to the tragic realities of the poor and forgotten.” And so here I am today on a Sunday in a sort of ecstatic true hope gifted to me by a beautiful occasion filled with joy and fellowship. And as I fill my cup with this, I also remember a darling boy who deserved to go to more weddings than he did. I remember that my life had better be about making sure more people who want the ability to have joy and celebration like this aren’t cut down by the greedy and powerful structure in which our society protects the lives of weapons and money over those of children and hope. Today I hope because my nephew would want me to, I think. Because I have been called to, I know.
Today’s Truth 3 months ago…
is that I’m a mess of grief and guilt in a room of dust and lack of growth under a pile of laundry and dirty dishes. It’s that I want to write something about a boy whose wit and similarity to Tupac were so much of what people praised him for and never enough. It’s that I want to reach my whole body led by my large intestine back in time to when he first called me “aunt” and say something that might change the fact that his life was taken two weeks ago. And I can’t. Today’s truth is that I feel responsible for how my children will feel about this for the rest of their lives after having shared years of laughing and running and hiding with their cousin. Today’s truth is that I feel like I never did enough for him and never could have. Today’s truth is that I do not want to read another paper about community engagement or justice or restoring anything. And I am sickened by the idea that somehow my opinion of any of this work and any place I have in academia is even remotely important when the graduations my kids attend keep coming with empty chairs to honor.
Today’s truth is that I hate myself for how much I hate those empty chairs. For how much t-shirts have come to frighten me and silicone wristbands have been easier to put on my children’s wrists than the gold rope or herringbone bracelets I dreamt of when they were born. Today’s truth is that I wanted to give my children tennis bracelets and tennis lessons and tennis tournament trips but now I watch their eyes going back and forth over obituaries of friends and family whose names appear in RIP lines far too much more often than they do at service lines. Today I would give anything to know what to say to my nephew’s father. A man I have had too many opportunities to love better.
Today I would give anything to know how to hold my husband’s heart and tell him something anything about our nephew that doesn’t sound like better place no more dying no more suffering platitudes. Today I would give anything to feel a little less like that boy deserved better than any so-called activism I ever did got from me. Today I would give anything to know what to say to his sister and his twin brother – all his siblings actually. Today I would give anything to be Magneto no Bishop no Kitty Pryde. To stop this from happening. To tell myself to do better and fight for better for this nephew and all the others. Today’s truth is rough. A life taken again. Telling my kids I’m sorry to have to tell them this. Again. Awaiting verdicts and hearings that will never bring him back. Again. Justice evasive. Again. Affairs will never be in order here. Not today.