IT HAS BEEN ONE YEAR SINCE WE LAID PAPA TO REST

IT HAS BEEN ONE YEAR SINCE WE LAID PAPA TO REST

“Memories don't leave like people do, they always stay with you.” Since Papa transitioned a little more than a year ago, I have come to realize that when someone you love leaves the physical plane, you do not just say goodbye to him at the time he passes away but every time you remember. At times it is like being enveloped by a heavy blanket of grief. The tears flow for what seems like hours. The memories can come at any moment just “out of the blue.” I still occasionally wake up in the morning thinking this is a nightmare and Papa is not really gone then reality hits. Yes he is really gone. We all know that our parents will transition at some point but not so soon. Knowing that it will happen “someday” and the reality of saying goodbye to a body lying still and so cold to the touch are worlds apart. Knowing that you are touching that beloved face that you knew your whole life for the last time is overwhelming. I could not stand quietly by and watch as he disappeared from view as they closed the casket as they pushed him out of sight and closed him up. That was really not me bawling like that was it? I just seemed to stand outside my body and watch the woman who just a few minutes before had been sharing some hilarious memories of life with Papa, singing some of his favourite songs as I shared with the other mourners in the church, now standing in the cemetery behaving in a way that her ancestors surely frowned on. They were such a dignified bunch and they were all around us in the cemetery. Those dignified Jonas generations who I had heard so many stories about like Kelly Murphy Jonas my great grandfather whose dignified behaviour was legendary in the family and in the village. My father’s relatives are great storytellers. It must be hereditary or a skill honed for survival during the enslavement of our ancestors. Throughout that cemetery is the history of my paternal ancestors and now Papa is part of that history. Cold comfort. He should be here sharing those amusing amazing stories of his people.

Sometimes in the midst of my grief I am bitter, I have conversations with Papa and I ask him why he had to give up and leave me (us.) Okay sometimes it is all about me! Why did you have to leave me so abruptly? Would you have held on a bit longer if I had shared with you that I was planning to travel to Guyana the very next month to spend time with you? We had shared such good laughs and conversations in June (admittedly limited as a result of the stroke he suffered in 2012) just a few months before. Papa was in fairly good spirits because all his children were in Guyana as he had requested and he knew we were fighting to recover his house and property from the thieves who had defrauded him. I just know those criminals will pay for what they did to Papa. Karma!

“Memories don't leave like people do, they always stay with you.” I thought the grief would have lessened a year later but it hasn’t. My heart is sometimes so heavy and the pain feels unbearable. I was in a store just last week chatting with two ladies I had never met before when somehow the conversation turned to losing parents. Right there amidst strangers the floodgates opened and the tears were flowing. That is so not me with public expressions of emotion! When will this stop? I was very young when my mother transitioned and I can remember weeping when I was in class and other people being alarmed. I should be able to control that now that I am a grandmother. Thankfully I have not dissolved into inconsolable weeping in the presence of my grandchildren.

I am grateful/thankful that Papa lived as long as he did because without a mother he is all that we had. I am thankful that the occasions of my grief becoming so overwhelming and suffocating that sometimes I was convinced that I was going to breathe my last have lessened. I still have to deal with the reality that Papa is gone. For the first years of my life it seemed that Papa was the most important person in my life even though I had a mother and grandparents no one was more important than Papa. He was the one who helped me with homework even after coming home from working long shifts as a policeman. As a child I never gave that much thought but he must have been tired sometimes and not want to be bothered but he was always there to help. Papa took time to drive me to several ranches across the Rupununi Savannahs so that I could interview members of the Melville family when I had a school assignment to research that family. There were no computers and no internet around when I was 14. One of my best memories is Papa “rescuing” me from the floodwaters at Kitty Methodist School when I was in Prep A (Grade one.) Sitting on Papa’s shoulders as he strode out of the school yard while school mates with not so tall fathers looked on enviously is not something a girl forgets. As I write this I am chortling at the memory! Okay I am tempted to laugh uproariously at the memory but I am using the computer at a Public Library. Whenever that memory hits I also remember a poem by Javaka Steptoe: “In Daddy's Arms I Am Tall: African Americans Celebrating Fathers.” There are so many memories of Papa that stay with me even though he is gone. At this one year anniversary of laying my beloved Papa to rest I take comfort in the memories. “Memories don't leave like people do, they always stay with you.”