Four Months

On the sound of grief's silence

Jun 25, 2024

Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky
Always
Until the ocean covers every mountain high
Always
Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea
Always
Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream

Did you know that true love asks for nothing?
Her acceptance is the way we pay
Did you know that life has given love a guarantee
To last through forever and another day?1

Stevie Wonder’s As blankets my ears in sonic love.

Because the power of love defies mere verbal definition, the song is an abundance of metaphor. Because love is obscene in its generosity, Stevie Wonder peppers his lyrics with absurd impossibilities. I like to think of As as a remix of the Apostle Paul’s reverie at the end of Romans 82 (word spacing is mine):

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall trouble or hardship or
persecution or famine or
nakedness or danger or
anger or sword?
As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;    
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that
neither death nor life,
neither angels nor demons,
neither the present nor the future,
nor any powers,
neither height nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

As much as I love the sweeping, gorgeous assurances of never-failing love within the reveries of Stevie, there’s something else that holds me: the interlude where words pause and Stevie drops out.

As includes a section where the instrumentalists propel the song forward, when the bass and drums heartbeat the song’s life, keyboards improvise, and the background singers hold us with their “mmm, mmm, mmm, mmms”. The echo of the chorus stays alive only in our minds and in the silence, we meditate on it and wonder whether it will return.

I have been living in that interlude.

I stopped writing—unintentionally—four months ago, after penning a post about the death of a relative who should still be here. After this profound loss, the death of a dear friend, and struggling (still am!) with physiological changes including the hair loss diagnosis I also shared with you, mortality became an intimate reality.

My body and my mind feuded about the value of producing. My mind reminded me of the unofficial contract I created with you, the reader; the promise of generous writing rhythms; and the specter of “relevance,” which threatened to recede and take with it my own value. Obligation flooded my mind: I should write—maybe writing would help the grief as well as keep me on schedule?

My body said it didn’t give a shit (she cusses) and we needed to get to healing or give in to dying.

Death whispered in my ear, stroked my hair, held my chin; promised to keep close.

Love endures, but death is too dependable. Her metaphors also abound in the bald spots and gray hairs on my head, the cracking of my Black in the laxity of my skin or failing eyesight, the waxing and waning of my reproductive ability.

And then, more than just metaphor, exists the reliability of death’s reality. My friend’s death date had filled in the dash after his birth date. We all have that birth date and that dash patiently waiting for consummation. My cousin is dead. My dear friend is dead. More loved ones will die. I will die.

There is more that pressed (presses, really) against my throat, reducing me to groans. Genocide. I wash my face with cool or warm water, sleep in a cozy bed, kiss my children good morning and good night, and click on any device that informs me that in Gaza, mothers just like me hold the lifeless bodies of their children with no defense against the barrage of weaponry mercilessly ripping through their kitchens, their hospitals, their schools. They carry no guns and pose no threat but that they exist.

Only geography separates me from those mothers, only luck, only the thin veil of anonymity shrouding me from the organically grown hatred in this country. Days, months pass and I wonder how we are functioning as if this is all normal. How can I write when this is not normal? How is anyone still speaking? Moments of silence for the dead morph into months and accumulate and press in and the world is a din of useless noise and mmm is the guttural ache in my throat.

I am asked to sing at Easter service and for the first time since I was 16, I crack several times. My voice won’t submit.

The Blood that gives me strength
from day to day
it will never lose its power3

The words ironic warble unsteadily from my vocal cords that wear out over and over.

(Maybe that is as it should be. Jesus’ power is in giving himself, not in domination. Selah.)

Stevie Wonder wrote his lyrics and Paul wrote his epistle because even with an abundance of love, there is doubt, persecution, and death. They acknowledge both. They still have an interlude, a pause, a place for groaning. I find solace here.

Stevie writes:

We all know sometimes life's hates and troubles
Can make you wish you were born in another time and space
But you can bet your life times that and twice its double
That God knew exactly where he wanted you to be placed

So make sure when you say you're in it but not of it
You're not helping to make this earth a place sometimes called Hell
Change your words into truth and then change that truth into love
And maybe our children's grandchildren
And their great-grandchildren will tell4

Paul writes:

For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.5

Honestly, not much has changed with me. I feel sheepish about this. There’s no tidy summation of how I overcame. I am still groaning. Still cracking.

I have cried. I am undoing the practice of holding back tears because of a deep-seated fear that others, even those who love me, cannot carry my pain.

I have talked with God in ways unprecedented for me, attempting to undo the theology of fear that keeps me distant.

I have read and cheered for the work of strangers and friends here on Substack. Your words are songs to my heart.

I have read so many good books, and I want to tell you about them.

This weekend, the kids and I traveled to celebrate my aunt’s 90^th birthday. My aunt, who was the family historian, always with a camera and a story, has grown more reserved and less verbal within the last two years. I am not sure that she even wanted this party in her honor. She didn’t really speak all day, even as she was kissed and fussed over and fed.

Something about the chorus of the birthday song—and really, the reality that she is still here—hit her with the Holy Ghost, and we bore witness to the end of her silence (if you are a paid subscriber, you can access the video—it is special and sacred to me. Also, God bless you for supporting me even in my silence. I am so grateful).

The love blanketed her. She was compelled to respond to it.

My aunt’s praise broke something wide open in me, pushing me through the rest of the interlude. And so I am here now, shyly reacquainting myself with you. Songs have this ethereal, otherworldly power, among the chords, the voices, the lyrics, to tune the spirit, express the inexpressible, to moan, to take its own time.

When and Where I Enter

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