Ramblings About ME!

Yesterday, I really felt the sadness of the death of Aunt Marcia, and it lingered on until this morning when my daughter Shell called me and gave me the thrashing of my life! Then she prayed with me and got really smart on the mouth, telling me that I could lay around and feel hopeless, alone, unloved, or whatever it was that I was feeling OR I could get up and take my happy self out and LIVE! With that, she hung up the phone and went into her building to work.

Well, my unhappy self, got scared, got up, and mopped around a little longer and then decided to write, paint, or do something constructive. I am writing.

I will come back to this page and add some thoughts later. For the moment, I am up.

I am back. As noted, we funeralized Aunt Marcia on Saturday. Monday morning, my daughter called to inform me that my first cousin, Della Sesay, had died Monday morning. I was at wow.

Life is what you make it -- I guess, but then, what is death? For me, it is an unwanted and unwelcomed separation from those I love. It is a permanent action that cannot be reversed. It is the goodby that you know is coming, but you wish it would never come because you know that it is forever.

Aunt Marcia was special to me for all of the reasons I wrote in another post, but Della Sesay, and her three children were special to me for a whole set of other reasons. Della and her children use to live in Montgomery County, Maryland. One day she was in crisis and asked for my help. Thank God I was able to be there for her. She and her family lived with my children and me for a while and then moved to New Jersey.

Della's daughter is one of the cousins that I admire. Her name is Mo'Neke Singleton-Ragsdale. She is an activist in New Jersey, and her focus is on education and making sure that quality education is available to everyone. Mo'Neke Singleton-Ragsdale has gone through her personal tragedies this year. The loss of her husband, the death of her Uncle Frank, and now her mother.

My thoughts are if I am feeling depressed and unenergized, what must my young cousin be enduring today?

Is life really what you make it, or are there some contributing factors over which you have absolutely no control?

I believe that there are those factors of which you have no control that forces you to get through life sometimes on your hands and knees, but occasionally you get to stand up and shine! Mo'Neke Singleton-Ragsdale shines, and I offer her my shoulders to stand and shine when she needs them.

I have stood on a lot of shoulders over my lifetime, and I take this opportunity to say thank you to all of them. My Mother told me as a child that a hero or heroine is the person that gets knocked down over and over again, and keeps getting up and trying again. The farmer who keeps farming although the crop failed last year. The bus driver who gets up every morning and drive the kids to school each day with feet so swollen and sore he can barely stand up on them. And, yes, that mother who stays with her man even though he can't find work to make the rent and buy food for the household.

Sometimes it is the struggle of all of those ups and downs that make life worth living. The man that walked on the moon should definitely be given his due, but then so should that man that works four jobs job to keep a roof over his family's head and that woman that stays up late washing the family's clothes and making lunches after working all day in her minimum wage jobs.

Life is what you make out of what you have been handed -- lemons, lemonade, lemon pound cake, lemon drops, lemon sauce, and the list goes on. Yesterday and today, I sucked on my lemon, and my jaws just got tighter and tighter, until I was reminded by my daughter Shell that today would be a good day to make a lemon pound cake. It took a minute, but the pound cake is so much better than the lemon.

I'm good. THANK YOU!

Peace and blessings to everyone today and always.

NOTE: If you think this piece kind of rambles, you should take a snapshot of my brain and my emotional upheaval the past few days. LOL