*Cover Photo by Brittani Burns on Unsplash*
TW: Suicidal thoughts
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On Saturdays, I listen to the 12-second voicemail my grandpa left on May 14th, 2022. For 12 seconds, he’s alive. For 12 seconds, his joy is apparent as he sings an affirmation over my day, over a Saturday that now feels like eons ago. For 12 seconds, I pretend that death hasn't already come for him like it's bound to come for us all. This is my ritual. This is my mourning. This is my remembering. This is my grief and love wrapped in one.
I wonder if I'll ever grow tired of writing about grief. I wonder if one day I'll feel like I've finally said enough about what I've lost, who I've lost. I wonder if one day the words will no longer come, and all I'll have is the absence. An absence that no syllables and vowels can ever fathom filling. I wonder if my urge to write about grief is directly bound to my longing to restore what's been taken away. I think it is. There's a part of me that believes words can make a world feel right again. There is a part of me that knows the power of a word, of the ability to speak life into things. I doubt I'll ever grow tired of writing about grief. About the people I've lost along the way, about the places that no longer, if ever, felt like home, about the pieces of me that have been ripped away and discarded.
I'm having these random fits of tears when I recall the reality that my grandpa is dead. Though my grandpa was well into his seventies, I hadn't imagined him going just yet. A part of me felt like I hadn't had enough time with him. Yet another part of me knew that he'd given me more than I could have ever asked for at a time when I didn't even realize it had been a need. My grandpa gave me the most gentle of love. It was the type of love that can only have been given to his first born granddaughter— the baby girl of the baby girl he hadn’t been around to raise. In some ways, I think my grandpa loved me in the way he did because somewhere, deep down in his spirit, he believed the love would reach a generation back, watering the land he'd failed to pour into years before. Maybe this was his offering. If so, I openly and gratefully received it.
When I visited Ghana for the first time in 2015, I was surprised to see the death announcements around the villages we drove by, protruding from the ground like their own much cherished version of the billboards you'd see in Times Square. Yes, mourning occurred, but people celebrated. Yes, people cried, but they danced. Death wasn't the end; it was just an entryway to what came next.
For the weeks, if not longer, leading up to my grandpa's passing, I hadn't been able to reach him. I'd call and text him to no avail, high key feeling some type of way that he was interrupting our regular flow. I figured he'd just been busy being in love, and as we all know, love quickly throws us out of our routine. I would have never guessed that he'd been sick, opting not to tell most people, including me, that cancer was laying claim to his body yet again. I never dreamed he'd leave in summer.1
I last saw my grandpa at our 2022 family reunion. I hadn't seen him in years due to the pandemic. So much had happened. So much death. So much rebirth. He’d lost his wife Pat to cancer. I’d moved to another country. He was learning life again as a second time widower. I was learning life again as someone who’d considered unaliving themselves over a year prior. We both knew what it was to feel new in the world, yet undeniably worn and tattered. I was so happy to lay my eyes on him and to wrap my hands around a body that was smaller than my memory recalled. To sit on the porch in silence with him as he smoked his Black and Mild, his eyes focused on something far in the distance. Almost as if he was trying to teleport himself to some past time or maybe, he was tying to cast a vision into the future. Trying to get a feel for things, trying to communicate with his soul to see how long he was on assignment for this beautifully wretched planet. I was so happy to go to Smith's Red and White for a very proper country breakfast, just a girl and her grandpa out on the town.To have felt like a little girl in glee as he purchased a fresh jar of pickled watermelon rinds for me. I was so happy to be in his presence.
My grandpa's family owns land in the country. When we gathered there for the reunion, as my grandpa and others socialized with those they hadn't seen in far too long, I felt the pull of the surrounding forest. There I stood like a moth attracted to light only I could see, taking in the spectacle Mother Nature had created so many moons ago. There, surrounded by towering trees and dusk beginning to settle over the sky, fireflies making themselves known, I felt at home. If there's a heaven, I imagine it'd feel like this. Sound like this. Look like this. Wherever my grandpa is, I hope it feels like his own personal slice of heaven. I hope this next life offers him everything good that this past one didn't. I hope he receives it. Openly, gratefully.
Referencing Stevie Wonder’s “Never Dreamed You Leave in Summer”. My grandpa snuck into a Stevie concert when he was teeng and he basically said he was lit. Hearing Stevie’s music now feels especially reflective.
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This post was so tender. Thank you for sharing your grandpa and his special flavor of love with all of us. I’m going out into the world a little more loving myself because of it 💜
Long live Stevie Wonder. That tune is one of his greatest ones- so much emotion.