October Star

I still struggle now that you’re gone, but I am getting better.

My cousin was Black Joy personified. Her contagious smile entered a room before her feet could land softly on the floor. She was so many things to so many people; mother, sister, aunt, cousin, healer, and friend. To me, she had been a rock; steady on her feet and a guiding light for my path.

She did not know a stranger.

She was sixteen years older than me. I looked up to her. Every time she and her siblings visited our family down south from up north, I couldn’t contain my excitement. I knew we would have a time with my big cousin, and I dreamt about her arrival days before I saw her.

If my cousin was visiting, that meant I would get all the hugs and kisses I wanted from her. That meant I could sit and listen to the lull of her voice rise up and down, and her accent coat the walls of any room she graced.

If you have never had the chance to know genuine love from a person, I apologize to you in advance. I knew how it could develop and how it could lift you up when you were at your lowest. This form of love from my cousin differed from what I had from my parents or grandparents. It was a high-feeling love. A love without actual description; for there are no words for it. Not any that come to my mind, at least.

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My cousin was magic, and I yearned to Houdini my way through my pubescent years as magically as she had seemed to do. I clung to her safe space as tightly as I could from as young as the age of five, which is my earliest memory of her.

I have a picture I take out occasionally on which to reminisce. I give it a once-over, shed a few tears, and then I smile. As you can see, it is of her standing behind me and raising my arms out far and wide. We’re both smiling as hard as our jaws would allow.

The event had been my great-grandmother, her grandmother’s birthday party. I do not remember what we ate, what music played, or what time the party ended. But I remember my cousin’s smile. I remember the imminent peace that radiated throughout the room with her there. I remember her laughter and, of course, the hugs.

I remember the fun I had with her and not wanting the night to end.

I have a few photographs that I love of the two of us together, but the photo shown above is by far my favorite. It has been a savior for me when the depths of some dark days hover over me without an invitation.

It’s my go-to when I feel like I want to remember every detail of her face; every smile-line, crow’s foot, and beauty mark. It’s my in The Grieving Room get-by healing memory.

I always come back to it.

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No one tells you how to grieve.

Not for an older cousin who mothered you in ways you searched for mothering. No one tells you the pain that lasts; how it creeps in and creeps out when you least expect it.

There is no how-to manual on how to stop your heart from breaking when a patient sounds like her on a scheduling call or a friend says something she used to say. You cannot stop yourself from crying out of the blue because the wind hits a certain way and suddenly emotions pummel you without warning.

There is no cure-all for deaths that come unexpectedly and during your happiest moments.

Just when I thought, I’m proud of myself. I’m doing so well moving through these phases of life, God’s plan swooped in and stirred up something.

I thought, Years of therapy—down the drain, but my cousin’s death allowed me to open up more during my therapy sessions. It allowed me to be vulnerable; to cry without warning and to witness my former therapist at her most engaging and encouraging. “I know it has to be hard for you, Tre. Crying is good. It’s a release. There’s no shame in crying.”

And there wasn’t. And there isn’t. There are days I wake up with sunshine flowing through my bones; ready to take on anything thrown in my direction. Those are the days I think to myself, I wonder if she sees me getting by—mastering every obstacle and jumping over every hurdle.

And then, there are days I wake up so out of sync with the world and my surroundings and I want to lie back down and let sleep consume me. Those are the days, I think to myself, What would Chrissy do? How would she conquer this day?

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The finality of her life made me more in-tune with everything around me and my most inner-tormented self.

How warped must my brain have been to stay stunted and recycle the same events yet repress them as well? Losing my cousin in her physical form pushed me to challenge what I feel, how I feel, and to sit with those feelings and move through them until I no longer freeze in place from pain.

I will not say I am at my best now since her passing on February 18, 2022. I can’t say I am at my worst because I have been there, and it had not been a place to which I wanted to lay claim. I am, however, somewhere in between where healing appears to be more like second-nature than something I cannot attain.

Born in October, years before anyone thought about creating me, she was a star before anyone said she was. Her light hovered over us in life.

And it still does in death.

If I can be honest, I still talk to her. I still ask for her advice, and at the oddest times of day—when the light hits my balcony door just right, or an epiphany greets me without warning, I hear her. She still answers me.

I have had so much time to write poems, essays, and create characters to shine a light on my cousin and her life. But the following is how I’d written about her just a couple months after she died:

On February 18, 2022, I muttered my last ‘I love you’ to my closest cousin — one of the greatest loves of my life. She had been significantly older than me, so she mothered me — nurtured me — allowed me to be guided by her.

She could rain down love without being coaxed or manipulated. It simply fell out of her and onto/into you without caution. If you loved her or had been loved by her, you knew it. You felt it. There was no reason to question this love. It was genuine and given with every ounce of her being.

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I no longer view my cousin’s death as the end of her life.

It is more of a continuance of her spirit’s presence in ours. I have her spiritual form comforting me every step of the way.

Surviving her death is an incredibly talented son, a beautiful globetrotting daughter, an intellectually sound husband, and countless others.

She has connected us and in us is that love she deposited the moment we met. Even though I miss her deeply . . . even though I can’t get through some days without completely breaking down . . . I am getting better.

I am not afraid to walk the path of this life without her.

Not anymore.

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The above essay was written for a prominent online magazine this past January and was recently declined. I decided to share it here. Peace and blessings.