In these times I find myself wondering far more than I usually do. I wonder how long before we reach the point of no return—like the threat of nuclear war in the 1950s; race wars such as South African apartheid from the 1940s to the 1980s; or, more locally, the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 70s. If I really lean into it, I see that, just like this ill-fated Earth spinning on her celestial axis in constant ellipses, we humans are enslaved by similar physics.
When John died, I felt for the first time gravity stop. I felt, for the first time, not only the sense of the world ending and falling apart but the actuality of that happening. I felt that physics no longer applied to me or anything I believed in. I did not feel like a god, I did not feel like a human, and certainly I did not feel like nothing. I felt like some alien trapped in the in-between: of knowing and not knowing. I wondered if the road out from here even exists, or if we are all destined to grieve eternally—for the life we could not attain, for the people we had no chance to love, or because grief is the truest and far more potent emotion, one that trumped all the others, even love. I wondered if grief would haunt every experience I had from March 22, and if my continued living was an option. And if this is grief, let it have me raw.
Growing up, on some Sundays, my mother and I would make our way to my aunt’s home, which was fifteen minutes away. We did it then to escape the boredom of Sundays. My uncle always had the History Channel playing, and this particular Sunday I was working on a strange social studies assignment from a similarly strange teacher. As I watched thirty blank pages laid out before me, I had the story of World War II to soundtrack it. I considered the atrocities of genocide (a word that was not at my disposal then) and wondered why people fought, just as I wrestled with my own conflict—the assignment before me, which I felt was unnecessary. As I drew out the outlines of my country, mapping out key locations, there was someone just under a hundred years ago mapping out where Jewish people would be gassed, electrocuted, and tortured. Two years ago, an Israeli mapped out which cities and towns would be ideal targets to strike life out of Palestinian people and massacre them. Geography has always been a divisive project.
At fourteen, John gave me the talk: the consequence of being of African descent. He expressed, in clear terms, the struggles he faced and the shit pay and shit bosses he endured. He spoke of his encounter with Canadian traffic police as a Black Canadian citizen. He told me then that he had a lawyer on speed dial if things did not go well. He made it apparent to me that I had to work ten times harder to get half of what I deserved and that the world was unfair. In no uncertain terms, if I expected to enjoy any semblance of peace in this world, I had to be viciously hungry for success—because anything less would be unforgivable and unforgettable for my hue. He reassured me that I was on the right path, but that I should not stray. Trayvon Martin, while on a trip with his father, met his untimely end at the bloody hands of fascism and institutions that supported it for influence and money. I wonder if my lawyer on speed dial could raise me from the dead once the bullet had struck my heart, if my bag of Skittles could place pressure on the bullet-hole-shaped stereotypes piercing me, and if safety is even such a thing to have. Bullets, crickets, and closed doors sound the same at night.
For the first time in my life, I am uncomfortable with turning a year older. This twentieth period of my life was unkind, and the prospect of the twenty-first following in similar fashion haunts me; war-torn countries haunt me; fascism and racism and homophobia, and all the reasons we—obviously ill and twisted people—have designed to subvert the rights of others to live, haunt me, like a daily death. Not country, not drug, not disease but people haunt me. We have so much ability and reason to do better, but instead we cling to scripture, law, and beliefs that justify our failures. Like murderers, we have blood on our hands, because in the 21st century we have not collectively realised that we are not bound by the same physics that keeps the world spinning mindlessly—that we can stop, and we don’t need to continue in this direction. When 21 arrives, I'll let it swallow me whole.
Yes, I am enraged, and who wouldn’t be? Recently, my mother hosted a small, intimate gathering at our home for a distant-by-geography relative. I found myself among people who hadn’t seen each other in a year, or who had crossed paths so briefly that it hardly counted as interaction, all nestled together in our quaint cream-and-brown townhouse living room. We dined, laughed, and breathed the same air for a short while. I met my cousins’ children, whom I’ve elected to call my nieces and nephews, and among them were two or three I hadn’t met before. The youngest, a mixed-race boy, I held in my arms. I thought how strange it was that in a world obsessed with differences, none of that mattered to him or to me. All I knew was that he was mine, just as I was his. We are different, and will live different experiences, yet ultimately we are the same. Our grandparents, their parents, and all who came before—their histories and sacrifices, both known and unknown—are our shared inheritance. That thought brought me back to memories of John, an Afro-Canadian whose only connection to me was our mutual love for my mother, his wife. His congratulations, dry humour, and willingness to listen gave me space as an Afro-Trinbagonian boy trying to make sense of himself in the world. I am enraged because this is what my zeitgeist should be: love, as I have always known it and am prepared to share. But things have not turned out that way exactly.
On my birthday, John would always call. Now, the slow crawl to September 14 haunts me. I know he won't be on the other end of the phone, and that he won't be with me for my twenty-first year, or ever again. It amazes me how much a call can do, and what it can trigger. The first Caribbean book I read was Diana McCaulay’s Gone to Drift and it opened me to a world that was simply absent in my life; a world so purely Caribbean. Then at 20 I read David Wojnarowicz’s Close to the Knives and it reminded me of what it meant to be converted for good and for the better; to find so much of yourself in one place and to wonder how have I not known I existed someplace else and that I was normal, always; to arrive somewhere and know there is no returning to your innocence. I won’t have John’s calls anymore, but I know he expects me to keep picking up the phone and listening and learning and making sense of it all.
Eternally yours,
JP