I Ain't Said Nothin' But A Word...

Earlier today my baby boy received his airborne wings. He officially graduated from Army Jump School. It has been a rigourous three weeks of training that I can only begin to imagine. This go-round he was able to call home more and give more details than with army bootcamp. Although every ounce of it was one big adrenaline rush for him, I know that it was taxing on him both physically and emotionally. Since he started this journey he has had to weather some pretty significant storms. When baby boy was eight years old he was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. I am still haunted by the memory of his tears when he was in pain. The first doctor we saw prescribed cortizone injections for his knees. I refused knowing that at the age of eight, taking cortizone shots, he wouldn't have any knees by the time he reached eighteen. We eventually found a great pediatric rheumatologist to control the pain and swelling of his joints that he frequently experienced. On one particular doct...

GOD'S GARDEN God looked around his garden And found an empty place, He then looked down upon the earth And saw your tired face. He put his arms around you And lifted you to rest. God’s garden must be beautiful He always takes the best. He knew that you were suffering He knew you were in pain. He knew that you would never Get well on earth again. He saw the road was getting rough And the hills were hard to climb. So he closed your weary eyelids And whispered, ‘Peace bethine’. It broke our hearts to lose you But you didn’t go alone, For part of us went with you The day God called you home. Rest in peace, cousin. You will be missed.

My father and I do not have the best relationship. More times than not I leave his presence questioning what I could have possibly done to have him hate me as much as he would seem to. It sometimes takes me months to reconcile that it’s not me that he’s detesting, but is instead, a choice I may have made or something he thinks I might have done that has him so hostile. During that period of reconciliation my father and I usually do not communicate, neither of us having one word to say to the other. My father has spent most of my adult life not talking to me. I have spent most of my adult life wondering why. It has now been a good few months since he and I have had a pleasant conversation of any kind. The last time we spoke the man called to cuss me out, calling me names that no man should ever call any woman, most especially his daughter. Daddy had not been happy about my cleaning out my grandmother’s home, discarding trash that should have been discarded years before. It would seem, a...

Exactly twenty-one years ago today I was staring out of my front window as falling snow blanketed a moon lit street. I find myself doing the exact same thing tonight, an unexpected snow storm coating the landscape with white, fluffy stuff. Twenty-one years ago I was also in labor with my baby boy, angry as spit because my baby daddy didn’t think there was any reason for us to rush to the hospital. After much haranguing and threatening to call 911 for an ambulance, the man finally crawled out of bed. It took another hour for him to shower and shave before we finally left the house, traversing some very hazardous roads to get to the hospital. To my chagrin, when we finally arrived, I was already dilated nine centimeters and told I was too far along for any pain medication. The names I called the ex-husband were drowned out by the sound of a late night game show playing on the hospital room television set and the noise of the doctor and the ex playing along, both annoyed to be awake at th...

There is only one man in my life who still has the ability to push my buttons and send me over the edge. Not one of my boys nor my very special friend can have me grinding my teeth and reaching for a stiff drink the way my father can. My relationship with my father has been a whirlwind of extremes. Right up to my sixth birthday I was daddy’s favorite girl. Then just like that something changed. By the time I was sixteen I’d declared him my worst enemy and he wasn’t too happy with me either. When I married the ex-hubby my father didn’t talk to me for three years, not even to say hello. Over the years daddy and I have established boundaries with each other that we know not to cross. It’s a very rare occasion that we bump heads and when we do we typically don’t bump heads but so hard, most especially since the old guy had his stroke. I know I haven’t been the greatest daughter but I’ve been more mindful about trying to be a good one. And just like that something changed, again. Nothing ma...

Two old people inspired a beautiful love story. Some eight years ago my grandmother was diagnosed with colon cancer. Subsequent surgeries made for a very lengthy recovery. She spent months in a nursing facility struggling to get back on her feet. Within weeks of her arrival she began to get visits from another patient. “The Mister” would wheel himself into her room every morning shortly after breakfast. He’d pull his wheelchair up beside her bed and there he would sit for the rest of the day. They were a strange pair, this elderly black woman and even older white man. And most interesting about the two of them was that they never spoke one word to each other. Not one single word. At first we didn’t know what to make of the stranger who had attached himself to the old woman. But he seemed harmless enough and so we did what granny appeared to do. We ignored him. Family would come and go, moving around the room as if “The Mister” wasn’t there. He didn’t seem to mind, nor did he seem inter...

The old woman is giving everyone a fit at the nursing facility. She has more bad days than she has good. We were thinking short-term rehabilitation and now we have to consider a long-term institution. I am missing her not being home so much that it hurts. I am also trying to prepare myself for the inevitable, whenever God wills that to happen. She could be a prickly pain in my left cheek but I'd give anything to have my grandma's hands give me one good pinch, one more time.

Granny has recovered nicely from the pneumonia. The residual side effects however don’t seem to want to let go. She suffered from mild dementia beforehand. Her condition has now worsened, mild becoming moderately severe. She will be leaving the hospital tomorrow if all goes well, but she will not be coming home. They say she will require temporary rehabilitation. She is balking that we have signed to have her transferred to a nursing home for any length of time at all. Her improvement will depend on her cooperation. Right now she is as obstinate as she could possibly be. She has refused medication, refused food, and just refused to be the kind, sweet, granny I want her to be. She has worked my last nerve and I have no doubts that the nurses and doctors she has cursed a time or two will not miss her ornery butt. Getting old is a bitch. Granny said so just after she told me how she got out of her hospital bed, went upstairs to the kitchen and cooked a pot of chitlins. Then some nurse in ...

Navigating a conversation with my old people is proving to be quite entertaining and somewhat of a challenge. I am now adequately settled in with my granny. We’ve already bumped heads. First was over my having a key. It would seem that folks with keys to her home might sneak in and rob her. I told her since I was now living there, that was highly unlikely. She said you can never be too safe. I still don't have a key. Then she insisted on cooking me a welcome home dinner. She’s not supposed to cook and I told her so, making it perfectly clear that I would take care of our meals. This morning I get this frantic call on my way to work that she had put a pan of meat into the oven to bake and she couldn’t get it out. She was afraid it would burn and I needed to rush right back to help her. She didn’t see why I would have a problem turning around to travel ten miles back home when I was already late. I’ve come to realize that there are many lessons to be learned with this experience. Pa...

I am surrounded by stuff and clutter. More “stuff” than I know what to do with. I’m moving. I made the decision to leave my immaculately decorated home for the comfy clutter of my grandmother’s back room. If you remember, it took me forever to get my new home where I wanted it to be so this was no easy decision. So I am surrounded by stuff that I’m trying to pack into storage and I can’t help but ask myself what I’ve managed to sign on for. My grandmother is pushing ninety. And she’s beginning to wear her age. She’s having some serious issues. Her seeing dead people is topping the list. When I moved to North Carolina I came specifically to be close to my granny in case she needed help. Back then she’d balked at the thought. Today, she can’t wait for me to move in, having a long list of things for me to help with. Ghosts seem to be the biggest problem thus far. For months now I had hoped to convince her to move into an assisted living facility. She’s been adamant that she will not leav...

This past Saturday we threw my father a surprise 70th birthday party. Months of preparation, tiny white lies, and a lot of creative energy paid off in a big, big way. Getting him there was a challenge since he wasn’t keen on the idea of dining out and definitely not at some restaurant that he couldn’t wear jeans and a tee shirt to. I was actually surprised that he didn’t get an inkling of it before hand but lo and behold the “secret” didn’t get exposed until mere seconds before he walked into the restaurant when he recognized an uncle’s car parked in the lot. He still wasn’t sure what was going on other than uncle had said he was going out of town and wasn’t supposed to have been there where he was. Making his way into the Club Room at the Parizade Restaurant in Durham, he was wary, sensing that something was definitely up but still not quite sure what that something was. As he made his way through the door, we started singing Happy Birthday and the man came to a fast stop. His express...

Yesterday was Father's Day and I spent the entire day with mine. It was the longest span of time my father and I have spent together, in one room, totally focused on each other since I was a little girl. When I first started blogging back in 2006 I wrote the following tribute to my daddy, just because. Rather than come up with something new to acknowledge Father's Day it felt appropriate to revisit where I'd gone before. So this is a rerun. My first. And only for my daddy. And just because. My father named me. My mother wanted to name me Penny. Daddy wasn’t having it so my birth certificate declares my name to be Deborah Denice Fletcher. As a little girl no one was allowed to call me Debby. My father went absolutely ballistic if they did. I still cringe every time I remember him announcing quite loudly and in a tone that left people quaking in their shoes that “ her name is Deborah, NOT Debby. Deb-or-ah !”. It was particularly embarrassing in grade school at those pare...

I come from a family of way too many "change-of-life" babies. Change-of-life babies are conceived and born to middle-aged mothers who are supposed to be menopausal. A relative recently gave birth to a beautiful baby girl and she is still shaking her head at the absurdity of it. You see, her last child is now in his late teens. She wasn’t planning for any more babies and definitely not one coming some eighteen years after her baby boy had been born. The prospect of two AM feedings and diapers had me cringing, the very thought moving me to reconsider my birth control options. If I came up pregnant at this stage of the game, me and baby both would be screaming and pulling out our hair. Wouldn't nothing be funny about any of it. The relative had me doubled over with laughter however as she continued to stress that she’d been in menopause because surely menapause was supposed to make a difference. She kissed her infant daughter’s cheek and proclaimed. “God truly has a keen se...

I remember him being way too young to be predicting his demise, a young man barely out of his teens and too far from his prime to be foreseeing such a short future. But Horatio Lorenzo Edwards couldn’t see himself making it to his thirty-fifth birthday. He couldn’t see it and I couldn’t fathom how he could be so accepting of a life not lived to a ripe old age of senior citizen discounts and benefits. Then thirty-six came and went, followed by forty and Horatio was having such a good old time that he quickly changed his mind, deciding that old age might not be such a bad thing after all. But Horatio won’t see old age. Disease has managed to stake a claim on his soul, stealing in like a thief in the middle of the night to take what doesn’t belong to it. Diagnosed with lung cancer, Horatio has declined treatment, convinced that treatment is far worse than the disease itself. Horatio has witnessed treatment ravage far too many his family members without curing them completely or extending ...

Family Reunion by John Holyfield Family fuels my writing. I have no problem acknowledging their contributions to my creative energy. They share their lives with me and in return, I twist fact to fiction and change the names to protect the guilty. This weekend we celebrated our family reunion in Bluffton, South Carolina. Family came from far and wide to reconnect with loved ones and introduce kin found and born since the last time we’d all gathered together. The weekend was a sweet reminder of all that should be truly important in our lives and what we should focus on most. Our family historian recited the history during the banquet ceremony and it was with great pride that we all sat and experienced our family’s journey over the last 146 years. My great-great grandparents were slaves. My great grandparents were born free, just four short years after the signing of the emancipation proclamation. They grew up to be sharecroppers in a small Southern town, rooting their family firmly in ...

Crime happens to other people. It isn’t supposed to touch those we know and love, and definitely not ourselves. When it does, you suddenly realize that none of us is immune and any of us can be a victim. Just hours ago my seventy-year old father was shot in a home invasion. He doesn’t live in a neighborhood that these things happen in. Some of the folks on his block still don’t even bother to lock their doors. But thieves entered the premises of his very affluent abode in the wee hours of the morning intent on stealing him blind. As the young criminal was attempting to lug away his loot, he didn’t expect to encounter the very large, very angry, black man that he did. And my father was angry. He was a man who’d worked hard his entire life to acquire the material possessions that he has. And through all of it, while waiting for a response to the 9-1-1 call my mother had made, all he could see was some career criminal was hauling away his stuff. Then anger made him turn stupid over some s...

Imagine being given an opportunity for a life-changing experience and then being unable to participate because you do not have the funds. I have a young friend who is in that position at this very moment. T’Keya Fox is an exceptional young woman, doing some exceptional things. She’s a seventeen-year old high school junior who is striving for excellence in every aspect of her young life. I haven’t met many young women with her drive and initiative and from the first introduction I was truly impressed with her. T’Keya has some lofty goals for herself and continually demonstrates her intent to achieve each and every one. T’Keya was recently selected to represent her Burlington, NC high school and community as a National Scholar at the National Young Leaders Conference in Washington, DC this spring. T’Keya’s academic excellence and extraordinary leadership potential was recognized by the high school teachers who nominated her for this honor. Being afforded such an opportunity comes with an...

My baby boy has been kanoodling on the island of Bermuda for three weeks now. He went to visit with his older brothers. They're doing some male bonding that he's missed sorely since his older siblings left the family nest. My two older boys are like night and day. One's a rebel to his soul, always testing the limits of every boundary placed before him. The other walks the straight and narrow as if every fiber of his being depended on it. The youngest is a nice balance of them both. The legal drinking age in Bermuda is 18. Baby boy has been having a grand time in the bars thanks to older brother #1. This has not made me a happy camper. Older brother #2 did, however, make him go to church to confess his sins every Sunday that he's been there. And, I have no doubts there was a lecture or two for the both of them about the errors of their ways. In either case though my child has been having a grand time splish splashing in clear blue water and playing on the pink sand. So m...

Life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight. — Rossiter Worthington Raymond The loss of a loved one is an experience so profound that it is sometimes difficult to find words to express just how debilitating it can feel. When you lose someone near and dear to your heart, you are left with a sense of sadness like no other. I remember well the expanse of emotion that left me feeling as though I was riding on a rollercoaster of complete and total heartache. When my son died two years ago from cancer complications I did not believe that I would ever recover from the loss. But I did. There are still moments when I long to hear him call my name, to spin a joke that only he and I shared, and there are even days when I am filled with rage that his young life was stolen from him so early. But I keep going, finally able to dwell in those memories that made our relationship as magnanimous as it was. Finally able to more r...

My very best friend in the whole wide world married the love of her life this weekend and I’m just now getting back from the chapel. I’ve been to one or two incredible weddings before, but this wedding was truly the most spectacular affair that I have ever had the blessing of being a part of. The ceremony and reception were held on the grounds of Brookgreen Gardens which is located between Myrtle Beach and Pawley’s Island, South Carolina. Brookgreen Gardens is described as the floral jewel of South Carolina’s coastal community, and it’s a magnificent non-profit organization committed to preserving the native flora and fauna. Originally, Brookgreen Gardens was four separate plantations. It’s now a nature preserve of some 10,000 acres of land. It was America’s first public sculpture garden and the collection now contains well over 900 works spanning the entire period of American sculpture -- from the early 1800s to the present. This place is absolutely incredible, so much so that I could...