Dear Mom,
Not even 48 hours with the ancestors and you are already showing out.
The four of us are standing there, my cousin Rosalyn and loved ones Courtney and Winn, confused about why the door to the funeral home where you are located is locked. The owner suggested he would be here to let us view you, insisted even. My first inclination was no – I didn’t need to do this part because I was here with you in this plane not long ago.
You always you to say follow your first mind though and I probably should have.
Now I had already called the second in command to ask for a later appointment because traffic on 35 might preclude a 6 p.m. arrival. The second in command said no problem, bring family.
But 6:45 and doors are locked.
Winn calls the owner and gets him on the phone.
“I had a situation to take care of and I honestly forgot our appointmenr,” he says. “Can you all come back tomorrow?”
He had jokes the day before so I thought this was one.
“Tomorrow? Well what time?”
“2:00 p.m.”
I repeat this all aloud, pass the phone back to Winn. He and the ladies look at me like I suggested we kick off our shows and jog to Oklahoma.
But you taught me how to pick friends—the one I pass the cell back to worked this homegoing industry for years and has fixes.
Five minutes later and before Courtney and Rosalyn could melt from heat and/or incinerate the building with their eyes, another employee shows up, oblivious, unaware of our appointment. He lets us in.
Winn is now proxying as funeral home director, debriefing the dude that my mother is back there, points to me for clarity. Winn asks us in a sober tone to please wait in the front lobby area.
He comes back, bereavement protocols in place, and instructs us to please walk down the hallway and enter the room on the left. We comply, Rosalyn and Courtney giving vibes an organ would.
We make it down the hallway and I make the left. I look, see the chestnut skin from afar. I get closer to confirm.
“Um, this is not my mother,” I say.
And this is the moment I realize you have shown up in spades, diamonds, clubs and most of all hearts. Because if there is anyone I could trust to be absolutely inappropriate and laugh at this, it is you. Based on body inventory, the dude had a 50% chance of getting this right and had help, since this poor lady was not old enough to have birthed me.
You would have shared all of your teeth and throat laughing at this. And glares of recrimination from others would only increase your volume and amplitude.
Winn looks like he might slay a bear.
“Would you all please give us a moment,” he says.
“We can wait across the hall,” I suggest, ushering Courtney and Rosalyn to the pews. “Do you want us to go back to the front lobby so you can run it back, or no?”
And this takes us down. Courtney and Rosalyn are both experienced performers and understand production needs. They participate with me in this laugh you’re after, the one I am clear you engineered. Because of course we think about re-entering for the do-over. There are no straight faces about the endeavor.
“No, no, just stay there,” Winn tells us. And we try to turn our heads away while they make the switch, which keeps the guffaw going.
The apologies are copious. But even as I stand and look at your actual body, sadness is impossible.
You have upstaged it. Because you do not relent on joy. The delicious, hedonistic, obnoxious kind. The kind of joy that loves on itself and provides royalties. It requires no pardons or formalities. It can only be consumed all the way by people who are all the way there.
Thank you for these laughs Mom.
While I diverge as far as the level of adulthood we managed in our lives (yep, I win), we have a lot in common. Your heritage exists in me. I, too, love a cargo short. I am hypertonic with muscles that rescue my joints. Little warms me more than turning words into arms to hug loved ones. And I, too, love a hearty, seismic, stupid laugh.
Thank you for never being afraid to be present, for rounding my education on blackness with information I would not get in school.
Thank you for looking for the good in people even when the search looked sketchy.
Thank you for centering whatever stars I chose to chase.
Thank you for not “liking” it just because I did it and you loved me but instead pushing me to be better than myself.
Every like was earnest
Every heart was earned except the one swimming with Mommy beatitudes. All this while ambition was never a Gailish theme.
Thank you for every gymnastics booster club parents meeting scenario you endured.
For preparing every household in the family for the amount of food I might eat by showing them what is possible back in the day.
For extending the number of these households by giving me a village you earned with sunlight and good will.
I love you.
I am excited about what you will learn from the ancestors and visit us with. Because as they promise, and as we know, every goodbye ain’t gone.
Ǎsę