Instead, I ride this train in pain, hurt, agony, with a malicious intent to kill the next family member I see. I imagine the next day being a bumpy ride through my past as I try to predict my future. I envision the next 2 months of my life being a gracious hell. Fake smiles and caring. Fake exchanging of “I love you”s left and right. I’d rather have died in the flood…
I don’t even know where to start with my story. I don’t know what to say because I don’t know what you want to hear, what you are willing to hear. Guess this will have to be one of those streams of thought, not quite coherent messes I blurt out. Guess so.
I was born on a Tuesday, Tuesday, November 10th, 1987, in New Orleans, LA, to two extremely loving parents: Sheree and Carl Jones. They named me Carla. I lived my life with unconditional love and support from my parents and both sets of grandparents. I lived the dream of children everywhere. Of course, I never cared to consider how lucky I was. This was what life was supposed to be! Rainbows and butterflies out the ass. Being supplied with everything you thought you could need or want. Never feeling emotionally void or like something was missing.
I don’t want to paint a perfect picture of my life. No one’s life is perfect; everyone has flaws, experiences loss and deals with unnecessary bouts of depression and drama; and I’ve had my fair share of all of them. Learning what cancer was at a young age (I mean like 3), learning what HIV/AIDS was at a young age (I mean like 6); learning about depression and Bi-Polar at a young age (still 6); watching my grandmother have constant surgeries for her renal failure/kidney transplant and thyroid cancer; having to have to help her around because I hated seeing her walk with a cane or walker; knowing I lost a grandfather to diabetes and that one day it could get me too. Just too much, but no more than I could bear.
I swear I’m getting to a point, and there is more to my story that a blissful existence and minor trauma. My story is about my past, well not far past, but I thought you could use some backstory. My story is simply part of a growing genre, The Katrina Stories. Here is mine.
Unlike the usual Katrina story, mines starts on Sunday, July 31st, 2005. A typical Sunday dinner with my family. My mother, father, grandmothers, aunts and uncles around a table eating succotash. (I think that’s the name of it.) The past few Sunday dinners have been heavy because my grandmothers’ are having a hard time dealing with the fact that I’m about to leave for college. I’m the first girl in the family to do that, and I’m their only grandchild so they are extremely protective of me. They shed their newly typical Sunday tears; I roll my eyes; my parents try to calm down their mothers. We watch TV. We are the happy family that we always are. We have no idea that tomorrow begins a new life that none of us a really ready for. There are no signs, no warnings, no strange cut feelings; just peace and love in that moment.
That night we part ways to our respective homes. Have restful sleep, and I imagine, pleasant dreams, which stops suddenly as the phone rings. I answer. It’s my maternal aunt, my mother’s only sister. She asks to speak to my mother, says it’s about my grandmother. I wake my mother up and give her the phone. I listen to their conversation:
“…yea, Sheree. I just called to let you know that Mah’s in the hospital.”
“What? Why?”
“Well this morning while I was getting ready for work she came in the bathroom. She used the toilet and went to get up then she fell down. I thought maybe she was having another heart attack. She was unconscious. I called an ambulance. When they came they had to incubate her…”
“INCUBATE?? You mean with they do with a baby, Michelle? Or intubate?” At that point my heart sank, body froze, mind spun, knees buckled. Every bodily function I had began to shut down. My only thought was “my grandmother is dead”. She was a DNR, and her spirits were probably yelling to high holy hell that she would kill my aunt for letting them do that to her. I left the room. Didn't want my mom to see my crying.
That night I had to go to the hospital. I had to see for myself if my grandmother was dead, or at least brain dead, or if this was like her regular stays in the hospital. When I got her room and saw her I wanted to run out. All those tubes and machines connected to her. How false her breathing appeared, her chest heaving up and down and all to precise intervals. Her eyes glazed over and fluttering towards the heavens. My grandmother was dead, and her own children were too blind to see it.
Three days. Three days of yelling, crying, arguments, phone calls, just BULLSHIT before her children realized she was dead and took her off that damn machine. By that time, I had made peace with my loss. My father had too. While my mother and her siblings argued night and day bout the “life” my grandmother did or did not have left in her body, my father and I prayed. We talked. We shared stories. We cried. We mourned our loss while everyone else didn’t even realize what was gone.
My father and I have a strange relationship. While I am extremely close to my mother (I am closer to my mother) my father and I have a bond that can not easily be broken. We have this uncanny ability to see what cannot be seen, and to feel what no one else can. I’m not talking typical ESP; it’s more like we can feel the waves coming off of people’s spirits and can analyze their feelings from there. We would have to sit down and have these long ass conversations about how we were feeling and what we were feeling. It’s hard enough to have your own issues, but when you feel like you carry the burden of the world on your shoulders as well, that’s some touch shit. Our conversations were never awkward. From a young age, I just new we were feeling the same things and that we could help each other by talking about them, and that’s just what we did.
I won’t continue through the aftermath which was my grandmother’s funeral. Y’all know how funerals are. I personally don’t want to relive that. I don’t want to relive any of this, but someone needs to hear my story. Someone needs to know they aren’t alone.
Fast forward a week. Exactly a week after my grandmother’s funeral. I am about to board a plane to my future, to college, to Granville, OH. My mother and father come with me to send me off. We fight back tears. Say goodbye. Vow to talk to each other every night. Promise to see each other in November. I leave a little nervous, but hopeful. I still feel lots of strength in my support system even though I just lost my biggest cheerleader. It’s time for me to grow up and spread my wings, and that’s exactly what I did.
That’s what I did for as long as I could; as long as nature permitted me to.
