on grieving (again)

and we're here again

I try so hard not to let my anger out here, I promise. and I will continue to try as I type these words. as each one hurts, stings, burns more than the last. I said it last time.

Wanna say ya goodbyes, tell them while it’s spring
I heard everybody’s dying in the summer, so pray to God for a little more spring

chance the rapper- “paranoia”

and we’ve just begun spring. what a way to make these things start.

I lost my uncle this past weekend. my father’s brother. of 13. I always say it’s too many to count, that I don’t have enough hands, and now it starts to seem like I don’t have enough love, enough feelings to go around. the hurt I feel for missing people. the guilt I harbor for lack of phone calls and visits. too many things that have been out of my control, but too many things that anger me all the same.

choices that other people, that adults could have made. choices that I could never change. I can only move forward. that’s what spring is right? rebirth. growth. becoming new again. shedding of skin. so many metaphors that feel utterly useless, worthless when you are fueled— consumed by the anger of the women that came before you, and those that will surely come after. the anger that propels us forward, to be better. to be better mothers, sisters, brothers, friends, than ours have been to us. it is the anger that makes me. that has always made me.

but, it is the fear that consumes me.

I am, and will always be, made of every person I have loved and that has loved me.

I wrote that on my heart when my grandmother died.

and not for the last time, never the last time, I have carved it there again. I will never be free of loss. nor will you. we are victims to our love, to our connections.

we can pray for more time as long as we want, it feels that it so rarely comes. and then the anger revisits us. the anger at god, at ourselves, at our families. and I am angry. but I feel so much love, so much sadness that my family will join for this occasion. the return to the earth, the sky. and I will not be there. life strikes again.

but my family will celebrate, will tell stories, will laugh. and that is all I could ever ask of this moment. and when I think of the cemeteries, of the headstones that bear my family name, I will remember that they are all together, and we will see each other again.

I leave you all with this, a story. what is close to my heart, what I will never forget. what I will etch into my skin as a reminder of the anger that fuels me. and the love that has settled that flame.

when I was younger, maybe 7 or 10, my dad’s family had a reunion on a cousins farm. I was a shy kid, i’m a shy adult. an only child is not nearly as rowdy as her sibling-ed cousins. my mother wasn’t there. my father was catching up. “go play” “go hang out with your cousins”. this farm had fruit trees growing in the back, past the gazebo harboring almost 100 people, past the animals, past the great aunts and uncles that “couldn’t believe how much i’d grown”. my uncle, I can’t remember now how I ended up following him, when he rescued me from he uncomfortability of the event. but, with a large bucket and probably a cigarette in his mouth (now there are two that cigarette smoke reminds me of— comforts me), showed me the enormous fig trees. I couldn’t tell you now how much time passed, my childhood blurs together— an uncanny dreamlike state I can barely recognize but it grew into an obsession I carry to this day. a love for a fruit that needs death to survive. I found myself in a stranger’s back yard last year picking green figs and fighting off bugs, thinking of my uncle. I will never be alone in this world, my memories are full of love, of the people that love and loved me.

I garden because of you.

1.
 
hear them cry
the long dead
the long gone
speak to us
from beyond the grave
guide us
that we may learn
all the ways
to hold tender this land
hard clay direct
rock upon rock
charred earth
in time
strong green growth
will rise here
trees back to life
native flowers
pushing the fragrance of hope
the promise of resurrection
               bell hooks (Appalachian Elegy 1)

blessed for every physical picture I have of you, broken by every digital one i could’ve had. there are so many, in someone’s phone of all us together years ago. I hope to have them.

the promise of resurrection. an infinite love.

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