So I have never done the blogging thing before... but since my e-mails tend to sound like a blog why not actually create one.
So here is something I wrote eariler today. Not cheerful... but real. Hope you enjoy!



Is it possible to have a favorite memory when someone dies? Maybe it is not the most decorous memory but that is what I have… my favorite memory happens when Chi chi died. Maybe because we were trying grasp at life and we laughed and laughed in-spite of the pain. Maybe because we needed to remember that we were still young and the young must go on, and the young must rejoice and live.

“As the yam pounds” was the name of our soap opera. It began with Chi chi elder sister starting off the story… and she told a story of an itinerant goat… who someone murders and she wants to know who did it. It was interspersed with commercials done with Nigerian accents. We laughed so hard.

We did the soap opera the Sunday evening after Chi chi’s funeral. It was a thank you dinner for those of us who were around during the funeral… family and friends were there… the whole family was there except leslie’s old best friend… a shadow of their relationship… who wanted to be there but could not be…

It kind of belied the pain of death, our laughter. It lied and told us that the world was right again. It made us not think of the hell of the week before. When we cried and struck out when we heard the news… wait let me be honest I struck out when I heard the news… some how I thought the peace that God had given me about Chi chi illness was a peace that meant she would get better… and she did… in that eternal way she got better. Some might say she was upgraded. But those of us who were so sure that God would save her, at least our version of save, didn’t think it was an upgrade.

Yes, I struck out because God had not fulfilled His part of the bargain, because again I was burying someone too young who should not die so young and so randomly. I had no idea that the next week ken would die too. But at the point when ken died I was too numb to grieve. Grieve and cry for what?

When I heard the news of chi chi I got quiet and a song started running through my mind, not the type of worship song you would suppose would echo in your ears. The words said “oh let your glory fall, as in that ancient day…” they tried to hug me, the women in my class. Evelyn asked me if I needed someone to follow me home, or actually I don’t even remember what she said all I remember is telling her “I’m ok, I’ve done this before. I am used to it.”

That was a lie. You never get used to death and dying… it becomes easier to imagine and maybe that is what makes it easier. It is easier to remember and then it is not such an affront to the mind… but the pain never eases. You cry because you are numb, you scream inside because you can’t feel and you really don’t want to feel, only the outside world says you must… but would they want to feel?

So the soap opera was our way of feeling something else. Of laughing and pretending that everything was normal. And it was as if life went on even though someone we loved died. And that is normal. Not existing is normal. Pain, hurting is normal. I guess I never thought that the moment when nothing hurt and everything was well with the world were the abnormal moments… but they are… maybe I should cherish them more, because sunshine eventually disappears and night comes… and that memory is a star in the dark, dark night.