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As I sit at my desk at work listening to the voice of Michael Jackson I am moved to tears that we, music lovers, have lost this amazing talent.
Every single one of his songs was sung with an emotion so rooted you couldn’t help but feel it.
As part of the public we must remember that before he was our music icon…he was a son, a brother, a friend.
May his family find peace in the love that is felt worldwide…
xoxo
It’s a roller coaster
Start as friends knowing you will turn into lovers
Lovers in a world of their own break off when one wants to expand the options
Left to either lose that lover, first that friend you stick around balancing your feelings
Your actions speak of love but your words border on indifference
You can feel the suffocating weight of yourself falling deeper and deeper into this person that doesn’t want you as whole, keeps you at a distance
You back off, space, not because you really want it, you really need it
How foolish will you seem if you fell for someone when you were clearly told that what you want they don’t
Yet life works its way in between…a friend is needed and despite what you know is best for you…you offer what has always been there for the taking…your heart
Much like before it isn’t wanted … safe guarding your heart…you find yourself rejected because you were performing a balancing act and fell chest first
A co worker of mine brought in some watermelon and instantly I was brought back to the living room of the apartment in Hartsdale, the TV tray, me on one side of my Mother, Tanna (our dog) on the other, both waiting patiently for our pieces.
Tanna would take whatever was given…but me… I wanted what I like to call the akin to the skin…that layer BEFORE you get to the end, rind layer…that tough mix of red and white. I would sit there for hours (because Mom could drag out the carving of watermelon) watching…wondering how she could eat the mushy soft parts, watch her spitting out the seeds, asking “If you swallow a seed will a watermelon grow inside you.”, even though I was old enough to know better.
On the TV there would be an episode of Murder She Wrote or Matlock or Unsolved Mysteries, Rescue 911…TV at it best in Mommy’s eyes.
Age 17 and I would still sit there watching her cut the pieces for me, because when I did it myself I always made a mess. And because this was “our time”.
Sometimes, during a commercial we would talk, she would ask “Have you written anything new today?”, “What book are you reading?”
Curled up next to her, munching on tough pieces of red mixed with white I would talk to her…her eyes wide with amazement at the stories I would spin out.
That part of the conversation would end with “You’re such a talented writer Jendayi, you will make an amazing author”
Most people smell watermelon and they think summer, BBQ’s, picnics…I think of my mother’s love, her unconditional support of a craft I had yet learned to cultivate and what made simple but good “Mommy and me” time.
It’s one of the best smells in the world.
I am whole but not in so many parts.
Nestled in my corner.
Small, dot of size I feel you inside me.
Flutter of movements I can feel you grow.
Conceived in a moment of words and actions I will you to not take flight.
You are my being.
You are my soul.
You are my flesh.
My emotion of pain…
*Excerpt from Circles*
I have taken so many pills in the last two days that I can start my own pharmacy within my body.
The blow that I have shot up my nose has burned out whatever remaining tissue I have left.
I’m sitting in her bathroom, toilet paper shoved up my nose. My head feeling like a tornado whirling over a Kansas cornfield.
I told her that I would stop. The high is no longer lasting enough.
My passionate…second lover.
Sadly she wishes my passion was for her. Sadly I can’t tell her that the reason I even looked in her direction was because of the drugs she now wants out of my system. She wants purity. I fear reality.
It was a warm day, not so unusual, but it was the type of warmth that had people believing it was summer and not spring.
I had the day off from work, but it wasn’t going to be spent enjoying the warm weather.
Mom was out of the hospital and I told my dad and sister that I with the aid of my boyfriend and his car would take her to her first dialysis session.
She looked so frail walking the few short steps to the car, but this was my mom. The strongest woman I knew. She wasn’t frail she was just tired. Moms that do a lot for their family are often tired.
The dialysis center was housed a few blocks from the mall. Cool, the mall, I remember thinking while she is having her session I can go shop, while Eric sleeps in the car.
I remember walking in with her, handing her over to one of the attendants, watching as he placed her in a chair. My Mom said that I didn’t have to wait, that I wouldn’t want to watch while they hooked her up.
I didn’t kiss her goodbye. A good daughter would have kissed their mother goodbye. Instead I waved and walked outside, lit a cigarette and headed for the car and the mall.
Thinking back I have no idea how long the session was…maybe an hour or two. I don’t even remember if I went to the mall or if we just sat in the car. I do remember when it was time to pick mom up she was the only one left at the dialysis center. All the other patients were gone. She was still sitting in her chair. A faint smile rose to her lips when she saw me.
“I’m ok” she said.
“Are you sure you are ok to go Mrs. Cox?” asked the attendant.
I immediately asked what happened. My mom’s reply cut off the attendant’s and she said ” I just got a little dizzy a few minutes ago when I tried to stand.”
I looked at the attendant who looked at my mom.
My mom smiled her brilliant smile, wobbled to her feet, with the help of the attendant and myself and said, “I just want to go home.”
Eric and I picked up some food along the way. Mom was quiet. When we got home Eric stayed in the car and I helped my mom inside and I sat down and watched her eat. She was still wobbly and she ate so little.
But she said, “I’ll be ok…I am ok.”
Mother’s know best. Never did it dawn on me that she could be wrong and that she was putting up a brave front.
I left my mom that night thinking of course she is fine, she’s mommy. My sister and I haven’t gotten married or had children…she is far too young to…
That was on May 17th, 2000 on May 19th she died of a heart attack while undergoing her second dialysis session.
With each passing year I miss her even more. With each heartbreak, and dilemma I yearn to have her here with me. There are times when I take comfort in the fact that my last words from my mom were words of comfort. I look back on them now and I realize that perhaps she wasn’t speaking them as if to say she will be ok, but to say that she was ok with dying. That she knew what was going to happen and that she had no fear.
Because that is who she was… a fearless, well of strength woman that took on every challenge that came her way with determination.
I am unlike her in so many ways…but I pray that I am like her in the ways that truly count. Like her in the ways that will help me overcome my challenges with the same fearless determination.
I love you and I miss you…always and forever.
