Amazing how years after a loss, the grief can still be so debilitating & quite unexpected.
Reflecting and grateful for the pain.
It means I have loved.
“Grief is love’s souvenir. It’s our proof that we once loved. Grief is the receipt we wave in the air that says to the world: Look! Love was once mine. I love well. Here is my proof that I paid the price.” ― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior: A Memoir
James. Randy. Brian. Cedric. Jason. Quinton. These are the names of men I love. Men who are my father. My uncle. My cousins who are like brothers. My brother. Men whose blood and love runs through my veins. Men who are my family. Men who are black.
My daddy left this earth 11 years ago. The others have found a way to thrive here.
It’s hard to survive on this earth and it takes just about a pure genius to thrive here.
One day I hope to marry a black man and one day I just may have a black son. I haven’t even met them yet and I worry about the trauma and loss that can come with their blackness when it’s hard to survive on this earth.
The type of trauma and loss the families and friends of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are walking through like a steel fog that refuses to lift.
It’s hard to survive on this earth. It’s hard to survive on this earth.
And it takes just about a pure genius to thrive here.
I want to believe the sheer weight of humanity means something today in 2016. I want to believe that we can be more intentional to preserve life. I want to believe.
The city of Dallas is rocked this morning by deep grief and inconsolable tragedy. Five police officers are dead and several more injured along with two civilians, ambushed by a shooter who “said he wanted to kill white people – especially white officers,” because he was upset about recent police shootings.
My mother spent nearly 30 years of her life serving as a civilian employee with the City of Atlanta’s Police Department. She assisted heads of police, loved and encouraged the officers and absorbed the losses of those killed in the line of duty as if they were our own family.
Black people, blue uniforms, we all have the common gift of hearts that beat and blood that moves through our bodies. Humanity ties us together.
But the loss of human life in these recent incidents feels insurmountable. Their heartbeats no longer beat and they were valuable. The people they beat inside of were valuable. People made in the image of God, with purpose. People woven into the story He’s written for this world.
Race is the conduit through which much pain and offense channels its way into our lives. This struggle is bigger than race. The very nature of our souls is the conversation topic on this table.
Souls that get blinded and lose heart. Souls that don’t detect and remember another person’s humanity. Souls that need rescue.
We all need rescue. God is the only one who can bring us out of this.
It’s hard to survive on this earth. It’s hard to survive on this earth.
And it takes just about a pure genius to thrive here.
In this difficult time in our nation, I invite you to mourn with those who mourn, with the families and friends left in the wake of these deaths. A heart-wrenching journey the loved ones of Christina Grimmie and the Pulse victims continue to walk through. An agonizing journey the loved ones of Lane Graves are experiencing because he was lost too.
Lament with sorrow for the overwhelming loss of life in these shootings. Life is a gift God gives us.
Lament with sorrow for the tension and pain existing between communities of color and law enforcement. Decades of distrust and injustices keep people on the offense on both sides.
Lament with sorrow for the hate and bitterness that led human beings to take the lives of other human beings.
Lament with sorrow that left to our own devices humanity has no hope in this world.
Turn your lament into thanksgiving that God is our hope. He works through the details in disasters to redeem, restore, and heal.
Keep praying.
It’s hard to survive on this earth. It’s hard to survive on this earth.
And it takes just about a pure genius to thrive here.
For my black brothers, I see you. Don’t lose heart even though you have every plausible reason to. I want things to be different for you. I want you to be safe. I want you to be safe.
For my black sisters, I feel you. We’re scared for the black men and boys in our lives and we’re tired of mourning the ones we lose. There’s a special fortitude in our DNA. Maybe God placed that in us for times such as these.
For my non-black friends who stay in this heaviness with us as if this grief were your own, thank you. Thank you for really viewing this through lenses that push you beyond your own experience and beckon you to enter the black narratives we’ve been writing about our story for hundreds of years. The narratives that yell in bitterness and sorrow, ” This IS what is happening to us! Do you see US?”
For my non-black friends who don’t understand what’s happening in your news feeds on social media and why many of your black friends are angry, choose to enter into this with us. Choose to be willing to understand. Read the news. And not just the news you know.
Think about your father, your uncle, your cousins, your brother. Make it personal to you and then you can see why it’s personal to us.
#AltonSterling #PhilandoCastile #DallasPoliceOfficers
I’m limited and at times I hate the fact of this matter.
I hate that even when I want to push beyond my human limitations I cannot. Being human will always limit me whether I want to admit it or not.
My limitations came into play recently in sync with an anniversary in my life. Saturday marked two years since my grandmother died. Usually anniversaries are happy dates and wonderful spots in time that we celebrate and remember for the joy and laughter they bring us.
But the anniversaries of deaths are not happy. They hold nothing wonderful and joy doesn’t come out of us, but tears and sadness do instead.
I remember at my grandmother’s memorial service at the moment the casket lid was about to be closed, my Auntie and mama both leaped from their seats and ran to my grandma, tears in their eyes, touching the casket, touching my grandma and speaking their love for her in their sobs.
They knew this would be the last time they would see her this side of heaven. They needed to see her — one more time. Elders in the church understood as they spoke over them with love in those uncovered moments of grief and vulnerability, “It’s alright baby, it’s alright.”
I knew this was a significant moment and though Lena was my grandma, she was their mother. They knew her in ways I did not and their love, memories and grief for her would be unique and different from mine.
Anniversaries are hard when it comes to missing those you love.
Limitations coupled with those anniversaries are even harder. Last Wednesday I left Orlando for Atlanta for a three week work trip. I had great plans in mind and things in motion. Productivity and momentum were on my mind and success in my hands.
But Friday hit me like a ton of bricks by way of unexpected grief and sadness. My body was giving me a very real heads up that Saturday was an important day and I needed to remember why.
Grief comes in waves and it comes unpredictable. Time helps but doesn’t dissolve the loss. I found these words from the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization spot on:
The “sweet sadness” that arises when you remember your loved one “is simply the acknowledgment that significant loss has occurred. That the loss, and the person who is gone, matters and affects our lives.”
My grief feels disruptive right now. My sadness at times frustrates me. My plans for this work trip are being shaken up and I didn’t plan for this.
Two years after her death I continue to grieve my grandmother, in different ways. A friend told me once “we grieve deeply because we’ve loved deeply.” I agree with those words. They are true.
In our grief as humans we also experience the limitations of being human. We’re limited by forces beyond our control. We get slowed down by emotions and feelings that were put into us by God to help us cope with and navigate these valleys and meandering turns of life.
I want to embrace my limitations more. I want to see them for what they are and welcome them into my life.
I want to broken and be okay with that. I don’t want to hide my tears or put on my Superwoman bad a$# t-shirt. Today I choose to embrace my weakness, my sadness and my pain.
What a gift it is to feel pain because you have chosen to love someone who also chose to love you. That type of pain is unique and woven into hearts that want to love and are open to be loved.
What an unexpected honor it is to allow grief into your life as the friend you never wanted but absolutely needed. You need grief, with his sister mourning, to help you process your pain and express your feelings over the loss of that person in your world as you knew it to be.
I’m limited. I’m learning how to live in my limitations.
One day at a time.
When I look back on my childhood I remember two things my grandma loved especially the most during the day: drinking her coffee in her little kitchen and watching her soap operas on CBS.
As a 36 year-old woman I still have an unspoken allegiance for The Young and The Restless, The Bold and The Beautiful, As The World Turns and Guiding Light because of my grandma Lena.
She knew every in and out and every crazy storyline taking place in those fictional cities of soap opera land. And I knew that from 12:30 pm until 4 pm, my little brown tail needed to find something fun and quiet to do while she sat back and got down with her soaps.
Being that we were country folk from a little small town called Eatonton in middle Georgia, she made sure we finished up dinner (codeword for lunch) before the soaps came on so she was ready to watch “her stories.” Supper would come later in the evening (codeword for dinner).
Her commentary on the latest and scandalous events happening in the shows would always crack me up. “Oh, that Nikki with her nasty self and her fast tail, she oughta be ashamed of herself sleeping with that man when she know she married to Victor” and “That old rascal Jack, he’s just a crook” and so on and so forth.
Her commitment to these t.v. soaps and watching people who always never got a happy ending (because if soaps had a happy ending where would the drama be and who wants to watch that) made me feel connected to her in a special way. In my best way, my young 10 year-old self was ride or die with her as a neophyte soap opera fan, agreeing about Nikki’s adulterous ways, shaking my head at Jack’s witty and sly behavior and committed to these storylines because my grandma Lena was committed to these story lines.
I don’t know when she started watching soaps. But they made a connection to her life and whether she found escape through them or just some comfortable relaxation, Lena loved her soaps and I loved her for loving me and letting me watch them with her.
Later on in my teens I realized how crazy these soaps were as I tried to create allegiance to some ABC and NBC shows but nobody ended up staying happy! And I wanted people to be happy! I wanted people to have their happily ever afters but many of the characters just seemed to be waking up with their morning afters from plenty of bedroom romps, devious business schemes and other “what the what” storylines. I eventually had to hang up my soap opera watching jacket. It was just all too much for me.
But I often think of my grandma when I think of soaps.
I think about how much she loved watching hers. I think about the daily commitment she had during the week to see her stories. I think about how she’d talk to me about the characters and ask me what I thought. I think about the memories I have of her and I am grateful.
This Saturday marks two years since she breathed her last breath this side of heaven and went to be with the Lord in heaven. My grief and my mourning over her death these last two years have taken me through a journey that I would have never fashioned for myself but I also wouldn’t trade for anything because I am completely a different woman, writer and human being as a result. I’m a better Melody even though I became a broken Melody. I’m a stronger Melody even though I was a wounded Melody. That pain of grief clarified and changed my life in a positive way. It was hellish but it purified me like gold being placed through fire.
My family has a shared love for Lena Mae Brown and also a shared suffering in our grief and mourning in losing her. I remember being in Eatonton right after she died and going over to my great aunt Essie Mae’s home because I needed some air as my family was going through things at my grandma’s and I was starting to feel very anxious and overwhelmed.
My great aunt Lucille, pictured top left, my great aunt Essie Mae, pictured bottom left and my grandmother Lena Mae, pictured right.
My heart was beating and I just wanted to run away. I asked Essie Mae if I could come over and she gladly welcomed me. She’s a beautiful soul, has likely never met a stranger in her life and has loved me as long as I can remember. She’s two years younger than my grandma and they were two peas in a pod, both calling each other “Mae” when they’d talk to one another.
I spent lots of time at her home when I was little, having sleepovers with her granddaughters, my cousins April and Hope, and playing as little girls do. Going to her home I found my way to her bedroom and just laid down. Nostalgia, memories and sadness flooded my heart all at the same time. I found some rest but I couldn’t get away from the reality that someone I loved had died, this was true and my life would never be the same.
I wanted to just drive down the old Georgia country red clay roads in the city I’d spent so many summers of my life in and just find some kind of freedom and escape from the grief and mourning that was fervently pursuing me. I wanted the sun to wash over my face and I wanted the blueness of the clouds to wrap me up in love and take me to a place where my heart didn’t feel so broken anymore.
Grandmothers are some kind of special. Mothers are the first friends many of us have in life. Grandmothers are those magical she-roes that our mothers come from and in my eyes my grandma Lena was an automatic legend to me. She was just some kind of beautiful wonderful to me. She was a second mama and she was also my friend. Her death hurt me deeply.
My cousin Brian and my mom came some time later and picked me up from my great aunt’s place. I remember sitting in the back of Brian’s car as my mom and him talked about funeral arrangements and life insurance and funeral costs. I laid down and started crying softly.
They both quieted their talking as my mom reached back and touched me with her hand. My tears were my language that I just didn’t want it all to be the way it was.
But it was that way.
Death was real.
My pain was a clear indicator of that.
“You look just like Jacques.”
I heard these words often, in the smiles and embraces of my mother when she would look at me in my youth and observe the ears, the nose and the likeness of my father in me looking back at her.
Those words were full of sweetness, beauty, pride and love. They made me feel safe and they made me feel connected to a man I knew as my daddy.
His name is James Copenny. He went by Jimmy. Sometimes Jacques. Most times Copenny. He had a twinkle in his eyes, a grit about him, a deep love for seafood and a resilience in him that refused to stop trying in the midst of life’s hardships.
He’s my dad. I have his ears. I definitely have his smile. I have his love for music and all things soulful. I have his heartbeat for Georgia and the beauty of a city that he loved to call “Ms. Atlanta.”
He gave me both my names, first and last. Melodie was how it was originally spelled on my birth certificate. I believe I’ve always been a song to him, inspiration for him, his only daughter.
There’s a pain and an ache that faithfully re-enters my heart each year. It comes a few days after the joy and exuberance of my birthday. It gently knocks on the door of my heart and sometimes I let it in, sometimes I don’t.
But it always comes, respectfully but insistently.
It’s the grief of celebrating another Father’s Day with the absence of your father. The older you get, you do gain something in the knowing and embrace of your feelings. But knowing why you feel what you feel – sadness, mournfulness, grief, change – doesn’t make the ache any easier. It just makes you feel a bit more grounded that those feelings are normal and it’s okay to be where you are in them.
I can write about a lot of things. Writing about my father is very personal and vulnerable. It doesn’t come easy. It’s labor and it’s arduous. It’s taken me five days to put these words into being. Our relationship at the time of his death was one that was in a new chapter of growth and new beginnings. I didn’t have him as much as I needed him in my early years. Because of circumstances in his life, he couldn’t be present and available and that hurt us both. But in my mid-20s we had the chance to try anew. It was good and it was hard but we were both in it, engaged and intentional. He was my dad and I was his daughter and we were becoming good friends.
Then death came as it often does – unexpected, unwanted and unrelenting. He passed away in his sleep at the young age of 56. His heart just stopped beating. I was 26 and when he died it felt like my heart stopped beating too. With his death went all the things I didn’t get a chance to do with him, say to him, the comfort of the expected in experiences and memories with people you assume will always be around, always be with you.
I miss the conversations that never happened. The ones we didn’t get a chance to get into. I would have loved to talk with him about music. He was a musician at heart. He played several instruments, including his voice. I believe my deep love for funk bands, soul and R&B comes directly from him.
There’s a song by the incredible band Maze ft. Frankie Beverly called “Southern Girl.” This song was released a year after I was born. It opens the way real good music used to: great instrumental intro and a bass line that lays down deep into your heart beat.
This song makes me think of my father. It makes me think of how a good song with the right cadence can make any day feel so much better. It reminds me that music really is a universal language.
Music will always be special to me because of my father.
I feel the happy of the melodies and I feel the sad too.
Both make me grateful for the gift of living and the experiences that come through it.
