Loss

When my step-sister decided to leave her husband of fifteen years she never expected that he would call her down to the basement one morning at 7:30, handcuff her to the pool table and hold her hostage for five hours. Or that he would fire random shots at the door to keep the oldest two of their four boys from trying to intervene. Or that he would eventually shoot her in the palm, then in the hip and the ribcage before finally snatching her from life with a bullet through her left eye.

As I re-packed my DC luggage for the trip to Chicago for the funeral forty-eight hours later, I worried about the cold. I wondered if I would be a resource of strength outside at a burial site scathed by the infamous Illinois winds. If I had any doubts, having waited until the Wednesday night upon return to my house to even check for airfare, the outrageously low costs ($168 round trip to leave that Friday), and abundance of rental car opportunity ($17 a day for a Camry) was as loud as God gets.

Dad sounded better than he should have over the phone when he gave me directions to his mother’s house. But when I made it there I could see the evidence of grief. It sort of stole his ability to sleep at night so that now he sat over a plate of collards and fried chicken dozing upright. We woke him several times to finish eating. He remarked that even though this situation was painful he was so happy to see the family come together. And to be sure I had met everyone, including folks I hadn’t seen in years. The cousins I know were busy pouring Ketel One for the cousin I didn’t to celebrate her 21st birthday. There was even a cake.

So I thought I’d be prepared for the funeral, which had been pushed back from the horrible murder to accommodate the oldest son’s return to school for a minute to register for the Spring semester, which is what his mother would have insisted on. But when I got to the church with cousin and uncle in tow, we had no option but the multi-purpose room downstairs, which had been converted into an overflow room with a large television simulcasting the service in the temple. Five minutes after we sat down, it was standing room only.

Then I got to go through it. I had only known this woman peripherally growing up, Dad’s frequent mention of her enough to keep her real. But now I got to hear about the prominence of her smile every time she engaged in anything. I got to hear about her work with the youth ministry, her overwhelming presence at church. I got to listen to teachers of her kids come to the microphone with praises about how good a mother she must have been given the exceptional behavior of her boys. Her boss was invited to the pulpit to talk about how good she was at her job and how much it jolted him to hear that she wasn’t coming in one day, so seldom was she out. Then her brother stood up at the pulpit and said he wasn’t sure he wanted to come up there because he didn’t know what to say. So for an excruciating minute of quiet, he just stared out, his face the intersection of pain and contempt.

“Take your time,” someone offered from the pews.

“It’s not about time. I don’t know what to say. I love my sister.”

But I lost it altogether when Dad got to the microphone, his voice aquiver.

“I know parents don’t normally bury their kids so this is hard. I can say that I’ve messed up a whole lot in my life, made a lot of mistakes. But she was the one thing I can say I did right. She was the one good thing I made and I miss her. Like I always tell you, I love you many.”

To listen to him and know, to know about the shortcuts and law line crosses and missteps of his life and see him lament the loss of the person who made him most proud in it broke my heart.

The pastor had to step away from the pulpit several times over the course of his recounting of the events. He let us know in testimony so personal that he did not escape the devastation either, that he was one of the many outside the house during the crisis. He brought her one-year-old up to speak. He beckoned the church to be there for the other four kids, 20, 18, 15 and 14. He stood them up each and outlined their new roles in the household. To the third born, he offered a reminder that his identity there is no shame in his name (same as his father’s). This highlighted the horror, dragged it to the front of the frame in this scary movie we were watching.

There was only enough distance left for me to question the pastor’s intent when he made a choice that seemed self-referential. In mentioning his commitment to good counsel and advice to all in his congregation, he anticipated judgment from us and tried to swipe the incrimination in advance.

“I know you’re wondering, ‘If his counsel is so good then why are we all here? Why did this happen?’ All I can say, and you may interpret this however you feel, I can give you a cup of water but I can’t make you swallow.”

This bothered me.

He went on to invite non-members and mourners with no church home to please join his congregation because if we wanted to commit to the life of good will and Christian faith that Latonya subscribed to, we should all want to be members of her church. My friends told me later that this is normal. But in light of the way things had gone thus far with the pastor, I questioned intent.

The ride to the burial site was about forty minutes long, so it seemed. When we made it there, we ended up parked so far behind the caravan of cars, we only walked up in time to watch the coffin be interred into a wall with several other who'd passed. I had worried earlier about the adversity of the cold, despite what the inauguration effort prepared me for. I wondered if I would stand there outside, my hands shoved into jacket pockets, my release petrified on my face, unable to help. These concerns were for naught - there was no time. I gave Dad a hug and he told me, "Thank you for coming."

One thing the pastor said stayed with me. He said that sometimes it's only necessary to be there, that the very presence of a person is enough. I'm glad I was there.

P.S.

Okay I can't leave you there, because I have two friends that didn't leave me there. Urban Therapy, two very dear friends, my IT homey and my brilliant sister. They helped. They didn't clean up. They didn't clear out a space on the floor in the front room where I would be sleeping. They didn't go grocery shopping. They opened up their home and said, "Welcome. Here are some towels because we shower every day here."

They mapquested my trip from the airport to my Dad's mother's house, hung out on the phone with me when I ended up almost in Indiana. Sported chocolate-chip-infused biscuits. They listened as I complained about my sucky parking karma in their area. They supported me when I had the macabre observation that the sketchy dental situations of many Chicagoans gave an interesting spin to remarks about LaTonya's beautiful smile; they didn't damn me to hell. They suffered my invented words, listened to accounts of my wayward dates as well as my fence hop last year with the baby's (not mine) mama. They read me at times I desperately needed to be read, and with succinct three- or four-word sentences no less.

E and Troy also enlightened me with a show and tell clip from the movie "Hustle and Flow." During the second viewing (I had to see this scene again), they practically re-enacted "Whoop that Trick" careful to give the "Get em!" tag of the chant its full value each time. They tortured me with scenes from Nina Simone's live concert in Montreux where she danced a random dance, read the audience, confessed to her half-high state of being and then interrupted herself to tell a woman to sit down. I laughed. And then I laughed. And then I would have fallen out on the floor laughing but I was already there. It was a must see, and E was going to make sure that I had not shirked my cultural responsibility to know about this. Troy educated me on the happenings in our the lives of some of our lesser thought about classmates from high school.

They made this cold madness easier. And it wasn't just about the fact that their boiler worked. If ever I'm unclear about the definition of friendship, UrbanTherapy has haze-repellant. Thank God.