"ELEVEN YEARS - IN CONVERSATION

ELEVEN YEARS... QUE SERA, SERA

Life has a certain kind of nerve, Ossie.

It hasn’t paused for you, the provocateur—the agent for change. It hasn’t slowed down since you stopped writing about the "Spirit" and the "Uncertainty" of being human. It just keeps recording, adding pages to a book you aren’t here to read.

Eleven years.

That’s a long time to be taught how to live with your absence. I’ve become an expert at it now, though the silence feels different than it used to. We were never terribly close in the everyday sense; months would pass between our conversations. But when we did speak, it was for hours—a deep exchange that made the distance irrelevant.

I still think about you in the Warrior Games, representing Team Navy and the Coast Guard. Stage 4 Nasopharyngeal cancer was attacking the base of your brain, but you were still out there on that bike, pedalling through the thick of the battle. It was your therapy. And when the weakness threatened to pull you back, your brothers ensured you crossed that line. They carried you when you couldn’t carry yourself.

The ache is doubled because I know you’ve got your mama there with you now. Tantie Jacqueline was part of my foundation; she gave me hope when hopelessness had free reign over my psyche. I think about how close she and my mama were—the two of them, the oldest and the next in line, left to navigate the world when their own mother died young. Your mama was only 15 and mine just 10 when they lost her, forced to survive my grandfather’s ways together.

That bond never broke. Sure, life interrupted, disrupted, sidelined, and interfered, but it didn't deal a death blow. Like a willow tree, it stood the test of time and all that life had to throw at it. My mom was there every day, talking for hours before heading to her own shift in the hospital. She’s 82 now, but at 75, she was still right there in the wards while people dropped like flies.

When your mama took her final bow, your sister was the one right there by her side. They were incredible together—like butter on toast. I’m just grateful your mama was spared that isolated "new reality" and had that kind of love with her at the end.

There’s no chaser for this reality, Ossie. No honey to mellow the bitter taste of these years.

Your son is a man now, eighteen or nineteen, walking in a world of his own. It’s a bitter dose to swallow—that a man who was an agent for change, a man raised by a woman of such indomitable hope, has a legacy that exists in the quiet.

I just keep the light on here, witnessing the march and remembering you and your mama. You both understood that the spirit has to keep pedalling, even when the finish line is out of sight.

The record is still open, but for now, I’m just living with the habit of you not being here.

Que sera, sera.
Sera, sera.

On Angel Duty:

11 years, 2 months, 9 days, 20 hours, 32 minutes

4085 days, 20 hours, 32 minutes

353,017,953 seconds

5,883,632 minutes

98,060 hours

4085 days

583 weeks

1119.18% of a common year (365 days)

LIFE MARCHES NO AND KEEPS ON RECORD

Hey Ossie: 

I was thinking about you today, 39 days from the anniversary of your passing. The passage of time seems to fly unapologetically by keeping no record of the path of you, but we do. Every single one of us whose lives you've touched in one way or another. It’s been over a decade since you've transitioned to another plain leaving us all here feeling the stain your absence left. The harsh reality is Life marches on, for kings and queens, rich and poor, wicked and kind, wasting no time, not pausing for the cause or even pity, it keeps no record. Ah, but we, we keep record, though life demands that we move on, and we shuffle our feet reluctant but moving. It is not that we cannot live without you, it is that we didn't want to. It is that we are forced to whether we like it or not, our feelings matter little, its inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Like water sifting through sand under your feet we move on regardless, despite ourselves, we live, we thrive, we laugh, we cry, staying in gratitude hugging the memory of you to us, it is the best surrender we can abide. There are many who were closer to you than I was, and I carry you with me, so imagine for them. As we gather in family comradery, you're alive again. As we live, so do you, through the experiences we've shared and walked together, the memories-laughter, tears, frustration, and the bane of self-discovery and the challenges of being. I dare say though, the nuances of you, your character has left footprints that the mindful eyes can see and the buoyant spirit can feel. I often wonder, Hmmmm, but I dare not wonder, for I know better than to question, rather, I stay in faith, believing. Missing you always...D. 

On Angel Duty: 

10 years, 1 month, 7 days, 20 hours, 32 minutes, 33 seconds

3688 days, 20 hours, 32 minutes and 33 seconds 

318,717,153 seconds

5,311,952 minutes

88,532 hours 

3688 days

526 weeks

1010.65% of a common year (365 days)

2012 Warrior Games cyclists show the spirit of Team Navy/Coast Guard

Blessings 💞 Ossie. Sitting here just thinking about you. How you and Tantie doing? You'll are really missed. Life now, as it's been, is full of a multitude of Grey's and all the blended in-between kaleidoscopic shades. Navigating it all is a roller coaster of mind numbing exciting exhilaration, knee buckling terror, doubt, hope, faith and anticipation rolled into an explosion of spectacular nauseating inspiration of the unknown. It keeps me in a constant state of gratitude, humility and prayer with a sense of titillating wonder that often catapults me into reflection as a reminder to take nothing for granted. In one of my reflection moments as I scrolled  through the web I happened upon the Wounded Warrior Games articles with you as a featured mentioned. How's that for coincidence? Or is there such a thing as coincidence? 

Here's a question for yah. I've been am wondering, did you get to meet our grandmother Iona yet? 

2012 Warrior Games cyclists show the spirit of Team Navy/Coast Guard: Team Navy/Coast Guard warrior athletes Navy Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Angelo Anderson (right), team members, and Navy Safe Harbor staff surround retired Navy Aviation Machinist's Mate 2nd Class Oswald Gould (left) providing comfort after a grueling race during the men's two-wheel open race kicking off the 2012 Warrior Games on the first day of competition at U.S. Air Force Academy, Tuesday May 1, 2012. The 35 warrior athletes are participating as Team Navy/Coast Guard, sponsored by Navy Safe Harbor, the Navy and Coast Guard's wounded warrior support program, a key component of the Department of the Navy's 21st Century Sailor and Marine initiative.

HELPING HAND

Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Angelo Anderson lends a helping hand to retired Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Oswald Gould during the cycling event at the 2012 Warrior Games in Colorado Springs, Colo., May 1, 2012. Anderson is a hospital corpsman and Gould was an aviation machinist's mate. More than 200 wounded, ill or injured service members from the U.S. and British armed forces are competing in the games, which run until May 5.

ON ANGEL DUTY 👼🏾

THE UNCERTAINITY OF HUMANNESS

 

Hey Ozzie:

Thoughts of you flowed through my mind today. It had me philosophically examining the complexity of humanity. Our human frailties, that more times than not we fall short while navigating our world through unfiltered lens fogged up by generational traumas. By childhood misunderstood slights closeted in our bodies and minds that arises as defenses, our soft spots because as children we had not yet learned to see the world beyond black and white. How we missed the shades of grey and didn’t even know there was a kaleidoscope awaiting discovery to let us know everything would be alright, because  our minds lack discretion, not yet fully developed into plausible reasoning. How we emerged into adulthood cleaving to our juvenile hurts, our souls a bit tattered. How our bruised egos front and center falsely convinced us that somehow we are flawed beyond repair and woefully inadequate. How we hadn’t learnt how to forgive our parents their humanness who were at times not cognisant that their own inherited hurts bleed into their parenting; because we hadn’t yet learnt healthy ways to sooth ourselves, to realize our excellence, to work through our hurts, not comprehending exactly how to put things in its proper context, to align perspectives and express ourselves in ways that is not hurtful to others.

I have learnt many things thus far and its super crazy and kind of frightening to comprehend finally, that the accountability starts with self, regardless of whom planted the seeds of hurt. Isn’t that a swift kick in the teeth, when all we really want to do it rail in self-righteous indignation. Instead, we must take responsibility for unpacking all that shit because we are worthy and entitled to offload all that mess so we can bloom unapologetically. To understand that fear, anger, sadness, disappointment cannot take the lead and we cannot cloak ourselves in it if we hope to rise, because the unsureness of how to heal the Self with care, kindness and empathy can and will open wounds in others in our orbit.  

That’s it. That is what I was thinking about or rambling depending on your take. A lot, I know right! Kind of like one of our groove conversations when we did talk. Sorry I took so long to check in. I really don’t have any excuses, though I could give you a thousand. The simply truth is, I just wasn’t feeling it and I am nothing if not authentic. So I’ll show up when its real, when am feeling it. I’ll leave the fake stuff for the birds.

On Angel Duty:

6 years, 10 days.

72 months, 10 days.

314 weeks and 4 days

2202 days

52,848 hours

3,170,880 minutes

190,252,800 seconds

603.29% of a common year (365 days)

THE UNPREDICTABILITY OF LIFE

Hey Ossie: 

I woke up with thoughts of you on my mind. Thinking about the unpredictability of life and how we as children growing up, never truly gave thought to how we will die. We believed ourselves invincible. Our own death was never a factor even while we were experiencing the loss of loved ones. Though we felt it. Though we grieved. It never truly registered. I guess that is the resiliency of children. God's way of protecting us when we are children against the hash reality of our human frailty. 

You were so courageous in your LIVING inspite of dire diagnosis and raging battle. I don't pretend to know what it was like for you. I don't pretend to understand what the emotionally or psychologically price were as a result of the lived experience. I only know your courage that allowed you to wake up everyday and move through the world determinantly, because frankly it couldn't be anything else.

Today for the first time I am feeling the true depth of the loss of tantie Jacqueline. I am not sure why today is so special as I've always felt her loss. Today Friday October 23rd 2020, though it seem all encompassing, not sure of it's significance. I only know that I ache in the depths of my being in a way that refute denial. Your mom was special to me. She gave me hope at a time in my life when hopelessness had free reign over my psyche. I live in gratitude for her influence in my life at that time. 

I guess I'm ruminating a lot today. We live in such precarious times. We are living through this pandemic of Covid-19. People are dying by the thousands, millions all over the world. It feels like they're dropping like flies. The contagion level is so high but many people are not listening, they're being wilfully defiant and putting many at risk for contagion, sickness and death. The horror of the disease is not contained to what you see in the movies anymore. Covid-19 seems to take people indiscriminately, one can't help but think about their mortality and human fragility.

Alright, I end my soliloquy here.

Take care. Love 💞 always.

On Angel 👼 Duty since: Feb 21, 2015

5 years, 8 months, 3 days

179,020,800 seconds

2,983,680 minutes

49,728 hours

2072 days

296 weeks

567.67% of a common year (365 days)