who will you carry?
thoughts about grief and legacy
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On Saturday, December 2, I lost my uncle: my mother’s oldest brother, the first of fourteen children, and the first of the fourteen that God has called home. I think I’ll remember the day vividly for the rest of my life. I’ll recall my mother’s voice when she heard the news, the paramedics wheeling an empty gurney back into the ambulance. I’ll remember calling my sister, and my voice unable to say the words. I’ll remember standing outside my uncle’s home waiting for everyone to arrive, and falling apart with every person that came.
Grief is pervasive, an all-consuming emotion that taints every ordinary feeling of joy. As we cried that day, a neighbor next door watches us from her kitchen window as she peacefully scrubs every dish in her sink. My uncle’s best friend has a Burna Boy ringtone that relentlessly pierces through our sobs, surely from people asking if the news is true. One of my uncles watches his son play four quarters of football and learns of his brother’s death after they win a game that catapults them to the state championship. Such sorrow existing in the mundane occurrences of life, and we find ourselves discombobulated, trying to figure out the last thing we said, the last moment we remember of our loved one, and how to proceed when it feels like we’ve entered an inescapable dream.
I’ll admit that I don’t have many experiences with grief. I have lost loved ones, but this is the first time that I’ve been old enough not hear secondhand, but to be “in the room where it happened,” a first responder who makes calls and has their arms ready to console. In this time of grief, I’ve been thinking a lot about the musical Hamilton. Strange, yet fitting. I guess my mind works to understand life in creative ways. Once you’re in the room where it happens, you realize how much people in your life wanted to shield you from walking in, to block you from being privy to the despair of death.
Hamilton is a play about legacy, about what you leave behind and who tells your story once you leave the earth. For my uncle, he has thirteen siblings, thirty plus nieces and nephews, and close friends who will tell his story. Truthfully, he didn’t need a long funeral. Each person’s testimony preached my uncle’s eulogy, including his close friends and even the president of the company where he worked spoke praises with tearful eyes. At his funeral, his best friend and pallbearer said something that I can’t forget. He said, “I am more than willing to carry this man in death because of all the times he has carried me in life.”
When’s the last time you considered your legacy? Who and what you leave behind? Are you proud of the person you are? What are your next steps to build the legacy you want to have?
Grief prompts you to ponder legacy, to wonder what people will say about you once you leave this earth, and who will carry you into eternity. I want to be someone who people will carry because of how I carried them in life. I want to be remembered fondly. I want my obituary to read of the legacy my family has given me, how well I pursued that legacy in my life and how it persists beyond the grave.
Many people spoke of my family of having a legacy of faith. I’m not sure how to explain my family to you; it’s truly something you’d have to experience. I can tell you that my grandmother built this legacy through prayerful hands. She raised fourteen children by herself, and referred to her children as being put in her basket, woven together by love.
I can tell you that in my nearly 25 years of life, I have never witnessed a terrible argument between any of my aunts and uncles. I’ve never had a terrible argument with my own siblings. Even if emotions did spill over, the mess would be mopped up by the next day. Things aren’t perfect, but there was never a need to argue, to not speak for years on end. Whatever issues arise, I am certain that I won’t endure by myself. As one of my uncles by marriage said at Thanksgiving, “Once you get into the Matthews family, never let go.”
I realize a loving family as large in quantity and large in heart as mine isn’t the reality many people have, but I encourage you to love your chosen family just as fervently, as gracefully and kindly as you desired your family by blood would’ve treated you. There are many bonds that extend beyond familial attachment, just like my uncle’s best friend at the funeral.
Since December 2, I’ve observed my own responses to grief: intense busyness, wading in the ocean of my own thoughts, and the desire to be connected. Coming home to an empty house felt like someone sucking the air out of the room with a straw. I struggled to breathe, to listen to silence without pondering how long I have with those who remain. I allowed myself to lean on people, and I know who I can depend on in my hour of need, whose shoulders are waiting for me to lay my head. I found who will carry me, and who I will carry.
My own mortality haunts me. Grief has taken off his shoes, utterly comfortable in my home, and he left the door cracked for fear to creep in to taunt me. Fear asks whether time would be proud of how I spent it, or if time regrets wasting the days. I want to say time is proud, but I’ve discounted the legacy of faith my grandmother left to me. I pushed my legacy aside for numerous things that don’t seem to matter anymore: dwelling in my regrets, sinking into dissatisfaction, pushing people away, and discounting my talents.
Maybe I should be writing like I’m running out of time. Maybe I should be loving like I’m running out of time. I’m scared to run out of time again.
There aren’t “good” things that hold hands with grief (it’s hard to believe such a thing); however, grief is revealing, a chastisement about focusing on what’s trivial and an unrelenting shift in the right direction for the life you would be satisfied with living. A revelation of what and who matters. I haven’t tried to rush the process, as if that’s possible, but I’ve sat in grief, sifting through the weeds, seeing what I want to plant for future use and uprooting what I don’t want to grow. My arms are elbow deep in the soil, clawing at meaning for my uncle’s life and for mine. What will I emulate? What will I remember? What will I carry?
Who will carry you, and who will you carry?
Rest in peace to my uncle, one of the first to ask about my poetry book when it was published. A die-hard football fan. A music enthusiast. The oldest of fourteen. A big brother. A kind and hilarious soul. For 62 years on this earth, you changed many lives. I will always carry your memory and keep this legacy of faith alive.
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Laraya 🧡