Where Did You Go?

I feel like death is surrounding me. Kind of a morbid way to start a conversation…or blog, or anything really. It’s 100% true though. In the past month alone I’ve found out about several deaths of people that played important roles in my life at several different times in my life.

I’m starting to feel numb. What do you do when someone dies? Do you cry? Do you talk about them to other people, do you look over pictures from the past? I’ve done all of those things but for some reason I just keep thinking…who is next?

I know we all have to die at some point but half of the people I have lost recently were younger than me. What about their dreams and goals? The families they would have created. What about me? What about what they meant to me and those that they loved and who loved them?

Is it selfish to think about myself? I wasn’t married to them. They weren’t my parents or close relatives arguably not super close friends, but they at some point in my life were…mine.

There was Greg. We had a complicated relationship in the beginning. At 15 I despised him and I’m sure he felt the same way about me. I was dating a close friend of his ex boyfriend so of course he had to hate me. Eventually somehow we became friends. We hung out eventually and created a world of inside jokes. When I heard the news of him being sick it was too late for me to take a trip to Chicago and within days he died from cancer.

Then there was Nigel. Nigel was….so fun. We worked together right before I moved to Los Angeles and bonded in a short period of time. Nigel kept all of us in stitches in our training class and was comfortable enough to confide in me. I knew so much about his family, and personal life you would have thought we had known each other for years. He reminded me of cartoons on a saturday morning laying in bed eating cereal. He was just a lighthearted fun person despite demons of his past. After I moved we checked on each other periodically and the last message I sent him…jokingly said are you still alive? As I hadn’t heard from him in a few months….it turned out he wasn’t. The irony right? He died the day before my pilot screening and one of my friends who knew of his passing didnt want to tell me because she didn’t want me to be upset during a time when I was celebrating and eventually just forgot to tell me. After months of not hearing from him and just having an overall strange feeling, I visited his social media and saw his sister put a picture with him and her in it as her profile, immediately I knew he was gone. For some reason I just knew…eventually I found out he died after having chest pains not long after getting into a physical fight…I don’t know much else and though I have shed a few tears I still feel like it hasn’t fully hit me.

Then there was Ruby. Ruby is the grandmother of my close childhood friends Porscha and Keisha. Ruby was something else. Like most black grandmothers Ruby played no games. She was the type of woman to cuss you out and feed you right after. Fortunately for me I was never on the receiving end of one her tongue lashing but I definitely bore witness to many. Granny as all of us affectionately called her was an extremely strong woman. She not only raised her grandchildren but also took in foster girls and any family member that needed help honestly. Granny was a woman who embodied so much independence and natural beauty and grace and as I mentioned earlier would cut you down to pieces without having to touch you should she need to remind you who was the boss. I learned of her passing yesterday and wrote a poem for her today. She was a bad chick and I will definitely miss her.

While death and pain is inevitable suffering is not. Though these last few months for me have been hard dealing with death, family drama, dare I say depression and just overall being hard on myself for things I did not and don’t have control over, today I choose to remember the beautiful memories I made with the people that are no longer with me and start putting more value on the ones who are and not only telling but showing them just how much they mean to me.

Not really sure the point of this blog, or if there really is one just wanted to write it all out and get back to doing something I’ve always enjoyed.

I plan on doing a lot more writing this year, if God says the same.