Let the alchemy of all relationships work on you. That’s my High John the Conquerer lesson as of late. I’m not gonna outsmart the powers that be alone.
I don’t know how to simplify the last few months.
Photos recent and old tell a lot of stories I’m trying to sort through. These days the photos narrative overlaps and weaves together a complicated tapestry. I’m grateful nonetheless. I’m overwhelmed at the same time, while masking to accomplish survival in the day-to-day. The days seem to drag longer with each rich conversation, ambivalent gesture or glimmer of malice where once love stood. The only way I can sort through any of it, as always is imagery.
Appropriately during the heart of Scorpio season, areas where I thought were metaphorical or literal death, the concepts of ending, have been screwed with royally. I’ve had to encounter deep down I have hope of renewal. I want to let love live a little longer. I hope silence is the sound before forgiveness and reunion. If I can resolve to rebuild the relationship with my dead, well fuck, I can do the same with those I love living with. The weirdest part of it all is knowing whether I leave behind in words or images will live beyond me. There’s realistically a part of me that lives on in hearts and minds that I wasn’t aware of. I had to think about those that I carry despite their long gone physical presence.
In reality, they’re still there. They aren’t flesh full of warm blood anymore. I have no clue between the decay of my Grandmother Anne being found days to perhaps a week after her passing in her apartment on O’Keefe back in the Fall of 1988 meant in terms of preserving her body. I have no clue what that means in terms of nearly 40 years ago embalming practices, or where that leaves our corpses after the passage of time. For reason around assumed choice in death, I never saw what happened to her. I know that directly or indirectly she made that choice. I know too well, too honestly, too cruelly, that she had made attempts at that choice before.
I understand why, and I’ve always understood why my family never talked about it. I’ve learned from that Fall 37 years ago the proper don’t wail in their grief. You ignore, and you might turn your feelings occasionally into cruel jokes. The cruel jokes help you escape the culpability in that choice. There’s a lot of rancid accomplices in Anne’s story. I feel her greatest warning I’ve felt is to choose your team wisely. Those fate bonded by blood to you can often be your absolute downfall. Ask Gertrude, she knows.
“You’re standing on the way I had her buried” my Great Grandmother Clara said to me on a rainy day in 1989 when she thought it was finally appropriate for me to at least know where Anne was.
I cried when she laughed at how I freaked out. She told me to stop crying and carrying on all that nonsense. The way Black families continue to practice the chattel slavery of gaslighting emotional pain as a precursor to enacting physical pain will never not drive me a little bit off the ledge. I’ve been internalizing those tears for 36 years. It taught me to internalize just about every set of tears surrounding monumental loss.
No one wants to see you actually feel. You’re not supposed to have feelings. It’s also best to ignore others. You don’t want the responsibility of even being open to caring. It’s been the most self-sabotaging trait I have. It’s also the deepest lie, since I save most of my tears for private moments. I’m crying regardless, does it even matter if anyone sees it or not. That’s who I really am in some present moments.
I realize quarter of a century fractures this Fall is giving me a chance to mend are a result of that lie. I can trace Ty’s determination to fix it to each time someone else wants to reconcile. I need to be far more open in acknowledging that feeling is mutual. Copy and paste what’s there to somewhere else. I can’t consign so many of these other relationship to a status that is six feet under as well.
“I love making my feelings jokes”
We actually laughed in unison at that. There’s a lot I see about my feelings regardless when I go back to photos. Photos before my time in this body, the past I did physically exist in, the most current, and wondering what parts of my mental and emotional state will come out of the rolls I just turned in today. As dark as shit is now, I hope that the glimmers of light among the shadows still exist as optimism in a few of the frames.
I’m making these considerations about 2 weeks after I decided to go up to Skylawn. I hadn’t been up there in 14 or so years. The waves of grief normally leave me with the void of a sense where Anne, Clara… and goddamn Walter are buried. I think for myself, I hope I have a spouse or some other care system that knows my last wishes are not to be bound in the abusive triangle that my Grandmother is with her mom and her 2nd husband. The twinges of a capitalist gets annoyed that my mother sold the remaining Buy One Get One Free! plots Clara bought in 1968. 3 remained, and they’re now valued at $25,000 a piece. Times are tough, it would be a great point to have some extra cash. Yet I understand my mom wanting to never even be considered to have her remains in the same toxicity.
I wanted to piss on Walter’s Grave.
I don’t understand even if he died in between Anne and Clara, why was he buried in between them. That cemented the wedge of violence that man hid behind a princely smile. I’m always wary to discuss the type of abuse that I didn’t first hand experience. With that hint, I know certain people will understand swiftly how violating, how soul crushing, how confusing that type of violence is. It makes you question your value, your autonomy, and if not acknowledged it will fuck with your will to live. I’m lucky in some ways the times that it has happened to me, it was by strangers, and I had the strength or wits to fight or flee. There’s nothing you can do when it is something your mother marries for economic gain in a capitalist society, therefore lives down the hallway. It carries for generation after generation. I’m vocal about it in the hopes that’ll stop.
I didn’t piss on Walter’s Grave because Dia De Los Muertos was a street faire at the cemetery. Death is already commodified enough; look at your typical funeral costs. Given that we live in a Hunger Games-style gameshow of life, I wasn’t exactly surprised. I actually cackled. Now your ritual of laying flowers on the graves of your beloved dead comes with $5 Tacos (as if the other varieties of colonial catholic subjects don’t have their own food for celebrating the dead) and a souvenir sugar skull.
It was packed, it was joyous, it might as well been Solano Stroll. To a degree, the ghoulish joke, the lack of reverence, seriousness or connection seemed appropriate in this societal moment. I was forced not to take myself as seriously with the ritual I intended. I had to laugh that I seriously don’t know how Anne actually made her ends meet as I don’t remember her having a job. Ashli joked that she snapped on having a ‘lil friend’ that helped her out. I sincerely am this woman’s grandchild. My fear of committing means I’ve had a plethora of ‘lil friends.’
I said to a few I felt I needed to get Anne’s approval before I could seriously consider the move to Philadelphia. I was surprised that I wound up asking for her approval of one particular ‘lil friend’ within those plans. It isn’t enough to maintain an ancestors altar in my apartment. I had to pay my dues at the gate, swig a little rum that reminded me of her Rum Cakes. I bought her a pomegranate, perhaps as symbolism of the crimson of blood that flows through my veins, linking my life to hers that stopped flowing on a day I’m not sure of in 1988.
All I wanted was another chance to be held by her, for her to be happy that I was close.
I’m glad I went alone.
I grieve that in a literal sense she hasn’t seen who I’ve become. It was more possible for her, given I entered her life 2 weeks before her 39th birthday. I have to assume, or have a concept of faith that because I can’t literally see her witnessing, she still sees what her blood has done and continues to do.
A Filipino lady doing a similar catholic colonial subject disguising indigenous practices ritual gave me one of those temporary plastic vases. She had a spare. She could see with the supplies I was carrying I intended to do the same. She was far more hardcore; she had horsehair brush and some Ajax to really polish up her headstones.
I only had made it to the gravesite after Bell had printed out the plot records and muttered under his breath that the row markers had been overgrown with grass in this section of the Cemetery. Previous days of grief as I alluded to made me absolutely useless, and I still was. I abhor feeling useless, but its a practice I need to get familiar with. I don’t know everything, I can’t retain every piece of knowledge. I’m quite full. Still, I felt guilty for not knowing where they were. I felt sadness that I hadn’t done the ritual to the point that it was normal that I know where they were.
I swam still in the hurt and pain that they took with them to the grave. Somehow the aftermath still lives in me. I do my best to ignore how much was lost in that harm. I felt brave to let someone else do the navigation for once. It was more important to not give up. It was really heartwarming someone actually cared enough to help me. The money for this had been long exchanged. There was no logical reason for anyone to care about me and my feelings.
Bell was thrilled, relieved to the point of catharsis once he found the graves. I moved Gracie closer so I didn’t have to trot as far to bring the flowers, fruit, booze and toll. I was amazed that a spot in the interim appeared right at line 15, behind the Oak tree I forgot. Bell gave me a hug and told me they were happy we found them. He told me that it was deep meaning that I didn’t give up. He held me in a way that wasn’t possible for Anne to do anymore. It reminded me in catharsis all I want is to be held, to know I exist.
I was surprised that I didn’t have a sense to really spend time with Clara. I kept wanting to drink more so I could encourage myself to piss on Walter’s grave, but I didn’t bring much water. There was the full bottle of white rum, but I still had to descend Skyline some 500 feet down the winding of 92 to get drunk at a mountaintop cemetery.
I pulled the blanket from Gracie’s back seat. I laid it over where Clara told me long ago the direction she had Anne buried. I laid down, best I got is to be in the embrace above my Grandmothers casket. It was public but the tears were still private. I struggle to acknowledge the faith that she’s seen me being human. There’s many times I wish she was there to hold my hand. She had seen plenty, perhaps enough, but my god it would be so much easier to hear her words out of her mouth about what she thought instead of intuiting she tries to connect with me via the blood she passed down to me. I hate that both of my grandmothers had such tragic lives, tragic stories I know way too many details of.
I’m in the veil between their death ages. I’ve surpassed Gertrude’s 42 with her same heart condition. I actually might be able to come off or reduce dosages of the medications that make that possible since the heart failure is acute, not chronic at this stage. Actually the meds might be so strong they’re tipping me into other conditions, because of course, that’s how American “healthcare” goes. I can hope for the best as I approach Anne’s 45 years.
I think of myself and the assorted characters neither have explicitly met. It’s been curious that Ty has returned to my life at this time, with many overlapping concerns of the respective heart. I had left that relationship to die, honestly, not much different than what I had done to Ted, if I wince and be realistic, I did it to Billy too. Shane literally lies to me and says he forgot the words I said that kept us on not speaking terms for 5 years.
I won’t be able to convince any of them that I’m always afraid of loss. I’m too used to being told to shut up. My feelings don’t matter, therefore I probably haven’t shared all of them with them. It was frankly easier to give up. I thought I was smarter or wiser by taking the defensive distance. I just said I’m still functionally doing everything that’s better with two alone. I hope it’s not too late to change. I hope I haven’t already written my own death sentence.
I don’t know if I could ever take any of them up the mountain to watch me weep at the top of the world at the edge of the continent. There’s a strong part of me that knows each and everyone one of them would come along anyways. Each and every one understands. They’d actually be honored. It’s a hard consideration of why I still don’t ask. Grief is universal. It is something we all encounter, as I know they’ve all had their own. They’re actually a bit more open about it than I am. I look at each and every one of them with deep admiration that at the edge of their nerves, they all love me enough to let me know when they’ve been through, or experiencing enough.
I told Ty in particular, and I think I’ve told Teddy too, that they give me way too much grace for weaponizing my grief to keep them at distance. Billy and Shane have taken me in their arms none too different than Anne did to let me know that at least for a moment it was okay, I didn’t need to fear whatever it was that upset me. It was valid. My response whatever it may have been wasn’t followed by a cruelly admonishing joke. I sincerely weep for the moments I haven’t understood that.
You see, my opportunities to practice walking through pain to contentment, ease and perhaps chances at joy weren’t consistent from 1988 onwards. I haven’t consistently known how to show up at the starting gate to even run a 100 yard dash through my emotions after it disappeared from my grasp back then. I didn’t even commit to the track team to put my endurance to the test to learn how to at least exhaust my body from feeling like mom did back in high school.
Ty meandered his own words in that I’m always open no matter how many years we spend not engaging with each other. I hope he doesn’t mind as I think of why. It’s reflective that I didn’t join any of the sports teams where I could weaponize race to distract from my lack of enthusiasm. I chose to just sit next to him in his drafting class during my empty sixth period, watching him vision homes he dreamed of building. It was safe to be in his imagination, even if I didn’t get what that was saying about my emotions at the time.
I hope he understands that I can see, after all this time, his heart is open and full of a certain joy when we get moments where we get to be foolish together. We share some of the same rituals still. We still went to go get Cooks when he said he saw who he needed to see at the reunion, when I questioned him as he was clearly Irish-ing the goodbye to everyone else despite his ancestry. In his dismissiveness of others, I felt chosen. I decided not to descend 92 after wailing. After asking Anne for permission to love who I love, may that love be undying, I poured out half the bottle of rum while sharing a swig before it made me tipsy.
I proved to myself my love for my grandmother is undying. In some weird way it was a reminder I can make time to go get the hug I need. It might not look the same every time. Intimacy is wild, whether that is exchanging fluids of life deep within you with those you sincerely trust or spending time with what traces remain of them, and embracing them just the same. I winked actually as I fired Grace up, and decided thread the needle that is Skyline Boulevard. 84 was to be the way down that day, I had to keep the ritual up that Ty reminded me was so essential.
4 Oysters, 4 Prawns, a piece of Battered Cod. A side of Steak Fries smothered in Malt Vinegar and Ketchup.
I didn’t bother to ask but I knew George was telling on us when he suggested Ty drive with me when I do the cross country move, despite how absurd that really is for a lot of reasons. I was humbled that a love undying was clearly visible. I was taken aback that it was acknowledged with a genuine smile, that the joke wasn’t cruel. These words are to acknowledge that every image reminds me that my love is undying as long as I have faith in it.
