J

This morning as I was getting breakfast in the cafeteria at work I received …some bad news (these words can’t describe). One of my work friends (you know, one of those people you share your time with but if you were to leave the company, more than likely the friendship wouldn’t sustain) had just found out that her grandson had died. He was only three. three fucking years old. Six months younger than my daughter. He had been at my daughter’s second birthday party. At the party we kept trying to engage him but he seemed to be in his own little “J” world until I have him a little toy that twisted all over the place and had beads for noise, something simple.

At the time I received this news my friend did not know how it had happened and no one would tell her over the phone; however, she had her suspicions. Her daughter, J’s mother, is involved with a man who she allowed to hit J. They just had a baby together 6 months ago. My friend had called the authorities to report the abuse. Both children had already been taken away from the mother once and they are/were still investigating the man and J’s mother, if you can call her that. I mean she birthed him, but what beyond that? It was her responsibility to keep this child safe.

Of course I do realize that there is a possibility that my friend’s suspicions will not prove justified. That thought is the only thing keeping me from punching something.

I think I was in that denial stage at first because it took a few minutes for the news to sink in. Then I started crying. Another friend of mine was telling me that if J was being abused then he is in a better place, with God. This thought is what brought me back around when I started to slip so many times today.

But the idealist in me comes out. I’m not the person who thinks “things are bad but that’s the way the world is.” In my head, in this thought’s place is “It shouldn’t be that way. I will never accept the wrong and I will do whatever I can to change it.” This perspective battles with the comforting ideas my friend is trying to give me. J (and his baby sister) should never have been in this situation in the first place. He’s safe now.

I asked my grandmother once why we cry so when someone dies if we believe they go to a better place. The thought was provoked because I was telling her how I wish my grandfather, who had passed away eight years prior, could have met my daughter. Of course he will get to meet her, and he is probably looking at her right now. I will never forget the answer my grandmother gave. She said when someone dies we aren’t crying for them. We’re crying for the whole that is left in us when they are gone.

Right now I am feeling like the things I have been fretting over are somewhat petty. Any day that I still have my daughter is a good day.


“There was no way out except to keep going and hope there was a shining white light somewhere, with the voices of dead loved ones calling from inside it.”

- from Wounds by Jemiah Jefferson