Letter to my Grandmother ( II )

Mama,

Where do I start? God has done it, God is doing it, God will continue to do it.

You know what it is, mama, the deliverance. My deliverance from all the pain buried in my body over these years, the weight of guilt, the strain of grief, the ache from loss, the regret of all the material things lost. It is me, mama, I am it.

I have become legible in this land. When I got the news, we were so out of body I almost did not move from disbelief for too long. I searched my heart for who I wanted to share the news with immediately and there was this other person who you would approve of but I won't bring them up further now, and then there was you, laughing and crying so audibly in my room with me. I ran to your presence or should I say your absence so fast, and all I met was my words spilling into text to say - I miss you nnem, so dearly, I miss you so much my heart physically aches.

In the last year a lot of things have changed mama, for me and especially in me, change for good has occurred. I have stopped resisting, or at least I believe we have come very close to not resisting anymore. Like Job of ancient times, nnem, the thing which I greatly feared came upon me and that which I was afraid of happened to me. But also like Job, nnem, God restored my fortunes when I prayed for my friends, and God has given me twice as much as I had before, to say the least. My soul has been restored, we are awake now mama and for the rest of the days of this life we will not fall asleep again. We have come in contact with a part of the divine that is non refundable mama, there is no going back to the valleys and shadows of death, there is no need for fear of evil in my life anymore. This is especially why I miss you, I can tell you these things without restraint, you always understood.

I am no longer the granddaughter you used to carry on your lap mama, that child is now buried with you - gone. We are a new creation, and you know I do not mean that religiously. Death can be such a painful thing, yet so necessary in a lot of ways that would seem controversial to spell out. It leaves a cognizance behind which we experience as grief; strings of memory, flashes of people, places and things that if we let linger for too long pull us back into burial grounds that yield nothing except rot and despair. Nnem, I tasted despair and let me just state it clearly - such affliction shall not rise a second time, such affliction will not rise again. Despair is an affliction mama and it is not welcome in our body.

There is just one bother or maybe two or three but only one which I will acknowledge for now - I have become so engrossed with doing the work that I do not know anymore if I am a separate thing from the work, but who can accuse me? What else do I have to give or take except the work we have been sent here to do, it is all I now know. Mama, you know this as a truth that when one has lost grasp of everything that is known to them, all that is left to hold unto is the unknown. I held unto the unknown and the unknown held back unto me, now we are one. I am one with the divine, nnem. And anyone or anything which wants to become a part of the soft spots of my existence must accept that this is now my reality. I don’t make the rules mama.

Before now, something inside the left side of my mouth was still hurting. The bent tooth I wrote to you about in my previous letter no longer bothers me, it took us less than three days to get over it. We removed the metal detectors in my mouth that had been there for a long time, and somehow we thought that would mean some sort of freedom from the constant poking and jabbing we would feel at the end of every week, yet there we were, still having to deal with pain, wondering if it would ever end? we would manage to forget the tightening of karma in our chest for a day or a week then something in the mouth would start to ache and remind us. We would manage to forget the betrayal for another week, then something below the hips or in the head or the eyes would begin to ache, reminding us of you. We have now been set free and we are free indeed, so there is no use for worry.

Grandma, all that I am and all the things we are becoming, I owe to your prayers - I owe to you. Everyday we wake up and I say - this is the day that the lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it. I know you would approve of this practice.

I miss you grandma, but we have to find other ways to stay in touch that do not involve pain or aches or you occupying certain parts of my body. I remember what I am. What about you, nnem, do you remember?

By Sloane Angelou

From: Côte d’Ivoire