Sunday Whispers

My daddy was found face down, slumped over the couch. Dead. It looked like his body had been pushed from his usual sitting chair onto the couch based on the way he was positioned. I couldn’t believe it. He was gone. At home. No complaints of feeling sick beforehand. My father had many close calls that sent him to the hospital or a nursing home for stretches at a time, but he always bounced back. When he was better, he’d come home, and sometimes he came back stronger than when he left. He had been on dialysis for years, probably since 2005, and only had one kidney. But he always made it. Until he didn’t. He died in 2018. Just days before, I had a strange feeling that one of my parents was about to die. I thought it would be my mom because her health was declining. I even took her to the beach in her wheelchair and pushed her down the boardwalk for a few hours. Two days later, my father died. Suddenly. He was just fine. My dad sold drugs up until the day he died. I had never seen my f...

I originally started this blog to release the pain and resentment I felt toward my family for the lack of support I received while grieving. It was a safe space for me to finally say the things I was holding in. But just a day after I posted my first blog, my cousin Tony passed away.  Tony was more like an uncle to me, he was always a phone call away. Over the last few years, I had pretty much become his secretary, handling all his affairs because his health was declining. Just a week before he died, I randomly decided to host a BBQ for my estranged uncle and invited Tony. My uncle came super late, but Tony showed up on time with his daughters and grandkids, something that rarely happened. We had such a good time together, full of laughs and family joy. Looking back, I know that it was God who placed that gathering on my heart. That BBQ was the last time his kids saw him alive. Tony passed on May 14. Six days later, on May 20, my sister, my mother’s other daughter passed away, to...

 My mother died two days after Mother’s Day in 2023. She had been preparing me for her death for years, but I wasn’t prepared for all the bullshit that came after. My mom was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare cancer also known as bile duct cancer, less than a week before she passed. She also had a mass in her kidneys that the doctors suspected was cancer, but they focused on the bile duct cancer because it was causing the most catastrophic issues. She lost mobility in her legs about three weeks after I gave birth to her first and only grandchild in December of 2019. She spent the last part of her life confined to a hospital bed in the house for almost four years. My mom was tired. She fought a long, painful battle to stay alive. She used to tell me she just wanted to live long enough to see her granddaughter run down the hallway—right where her hospital bed faced. And she did. Mother’s Day was May 14th. She passed away on May 16th. My birthday is May 31st, and my college...