I really believe that everyone who crosses into your life does so for a reason, however transient. And January was in my life only briefly.
We were classmates when I was in 5th grade and she was in 6th grade. She was a part of a group of 6th grade girls whom I really liked and hung out with for a small while that year. While they had had each other for awhile now and were a set group, they allowed me to be in their company. I thought this was extra cool because I was younger and for some reason I wasn’t particularly in cahoots with anyone in my grade that year. (The following year I hung out with the grade lower than me instead of my peers again. It was an weird and interesting reversal. We had a lot of mixed grades classes at the time.) I was really sad when they graduated. I still have a few pictures of them and I looked at them frequently and fondly the year after they left.
They weren’t terribly loud or boisterous like most of the kids in my grade seemed. They were quieter, low-key, but they laughed a lot. I really liked low-key— they never seemed to have drama— and I liked the laughter. I don’t think I ever talked to any one of the them individually, but they were always nice to me. I remember them smiling a lot. I remember them being the more innocent of the people I’d met, both good people and good students. Even though I saw them each at the next school separately, I was never quite more than acquaintances in junior high or high school.
My sister called me about a week ago to tell me while I was at work that January had died from cancer. She had been in remission previously but she was going back in again for treatment. January was one of the first people I met whose older sister was friends with my older sister. I started running into that more and more as I got older. It was like a point of conversation almost. My sister and her sister had become best friends and this is how I came into being looped in to this information despite my distant relations.
Weirdly enough, my phone completely lost charge right after my sister had given me the information. It felt kind of like a snake bite— Sudden, shocking, taken aback, and then left to deal with the venom left over and circulating through my body. Reeling. Acquaintance or not, a human life is a human life. I tried to call back but my phone almost split me off from the world on purpose: I actually deal best with hard news in solitude. And like most times that I come upon events that are difficult for me to digest, my first reaction was to shut down. I decided not to think about it and finish my work. It would be there for me to unfold once I was done and that was only in 15 minutes.
So I continued on with my work. While doing so, I had a thought. It was of my best friend in high school, Joseph, who had once told me he had a very vivid dream that had always stuck with me and confused me quite a bit. Everyone was on a boat and someone had died. Everyone was sad, except for me. I was happy.. and laughing. And I found this dream so odd. Disturbing even. It kind of stuck with me. What did this mean about me? That I would laugh at a funeral. But it was true… now that I look back on it. Whenever I get sad or startling information, my first reaction is to act sad but I can’t actually feel it. I have a hard time even acting out sad feelings. My drama teacher said I’d have a slight smile the entire time I did our exercise of acting out different emotions. I can see now that it was because I feel those emotions are only ones that I can embrace in private, away from judgement. Joseph must’ve known that about me then. I was described often as constantly happy-go-lucky, gregarious, or bubbly at that time in my life.
But this was the first time I received information like this where I had also recently decided that I would allow myself to feel vulnerable at appropriate times in my life. Maybe not immediately in this case, but I did. I called my sister back just to let her know I didn’t hang up on her on purpose. We talked that really solemn exchange of facts and concern and restrained empathy that you do when you hear of a death and are still barely processing it while you speak, before I burst into tears while driving. I didn’t know her well, but she was one of the good ones.
When she was in the hospital, my sister helped carry out her sister’s idea to flood January with postcards from strangers and friends alike wishing her well. I even sent out a shared post of it on my local community Facebook forum where a few of my local neighbors signed up to send a note. My daughter and I wrote one too. (pictured below)
We just came back from Florida yesterday. I had looked for postcards on our trip. Apparently, they are hard to find now because Jasman was looking too for his own reasons and also came up short. One of them I had ear-marked for January. I wanted to send her one as a way to let her know her small brush with me had made a difference in my life. Why I had not thought to write that in my first postcard is a part of humanity that befuddles me. Maybe not wanting to break an unspoken code of respectful acquaintance-speak or maybe just not wanting to seem too eager with a person you barely know anymore. But that’s stupid really because no matter who it is I’d like to still be genuine. For anyone I come into contact with, I’d like them to know the most important details of our relationship whether brief, long ago, recent, or complicated. The most important details are this: the impact, the importance, the substance of it. You just never know its going to be the last time.
Maybe it’s part of this social code you put up because you don’t want to embarrass yourself and/or you don’t know what other people, most especially that person, is/are going to think of you. Its that fear of judgment, I guess, that restrains us and doesn’t allow us to speak freely or love freely until we know there is the guarantee of no judgment on the other end. That’s just stupid really because love warrants it be given freely and yet there’s that other side of the coin too… love hurts. Loving hurts. However small or quaint, but especially the really big love. The partner that sleeps next to you or the sister you’ve seen everyday for the most formative years of your life or the parents who you know love you but where the mere presence of emotions just gets in the way of its faithful or genuine expression. These ones hurt the most and so we are too scared to traverse those scary chasms between you and them. Maybe you never say the words or you just never said it nearly as much as you could have when they were right in front of you. And while I still have time and I still think about reaching out often, while I burst with love, I still fall short. Often. So often. Even with those thoughts in the front of my mind, I fall short often.
I think often about death… especially of those who fall into the category of “Big Love” for me. I think about writing my own eulogy or at least a message to my friends and family to help alleviate their suffering if I were to pass. Because I wouldn’t want others suffering for me if I could help it or at least I’d want to lessen it somehow. I think about holding my own celebration of life but to be done while I’m actually living. I think as a way to help me break down the barricade that blocks me from others by somehow making bridges to come across those scary chasms. In the year I really put a fine-tune microscope to my own vulnerability, my roadblocks to embracing concepts like “community” or “tribe” or “home” despite my own desperation and desire for them, I don’t find this odd. But maybe I can’t because those chasms are there for the mere fact that I am alive and can respond and therefore… the fear of judgment exists. But I’ll keep trying. I at least have to try.
So I’ll try with this… my first try will be you, January. And while maybe you can’t hear me there is the mere possibility that maybe you will in some sense of spirit or in some form of brainwaves and energy and spirituality. Maybe crossing the scary chasm will be a lot easier the more I do it as I figure out the best path and the best traversing route. And maybe the chasm can be crossed to others, dead or alive, so long as I believe. So I’ll do it. And maybe January will have given a gift to me when her ship passed me by so long ago, this moment, a mix of awakening and vulnerability and grief and self-reflection and change in what matters. Everyone gives this gift to us, the living, in their passing. The megaphone message that life is precious and has the potential to be more meaningful, if we make it so. So thank you, January, for the gifts you’ve given to the world, not just in your passing, but in your living. The following is for you, postcard or not.
Dear January,
I know us knowing each other is a distant memory away, but when I do think about you from back then a few key moments come to mind…things like when you laughed how your whole body used to shake. I remember a truth about you that was quiet and unassuming, that you could miss if you weren’t watching closely enough or listening carefully, a gentleness about your spirit that always made me feel welcome and unjudged, your eyes getting small when you’d smile but still relaxed and content. I liked that you embraced your music and creativity the older you got or so I heard. You were one of the good ones. You really were.
I heard once a young boy say after a near-death experience that it was like being a library book checked out from a huge library. You’re loaned to the world but every book has its own due date etched in its sleeve, that when you’re returned you slide right back into your spot that’s waiting for you since you left. He said that there’s nothing but love and it feels like returning home. I hope this for you: Love, the feeling of home, belonging. I’ll miss you… but maybe I don’t have to because I’ll soon see you in the library. I’ll feel all of the love too and know everything’s okay.
Take care over there until then,
Jasmine
momanddogs 