Watch Us Rise(53)

A part of me wants to freeze my life right here. I don’t want to have another birthday, don’t want to go to prom or graduate or leave for college or get a dream job or have a dream wedding because Dad won’t be here for any of it.

I will miss him every day for the rest of my life.

We lie together for hours. I didn’t mean to fall asleep with him. When Mom wakes me, she is whispering, “Your phone. It’s Chelsea.”

I pull myself away from Dad and take my phone out of Mom’s hand. I walk into the living room, knowing this is the last time I will be in Dad’s arms. I am tempted to turn around, look at him once more, but I can’t. “Hey, Chels.”

“Oh my God, Jasmine. Did you see my text messages? My grandmother drove me crazy at Christmas dinner. She absolutely pushed me over the edge. I swear, sometimes I wish I was a senior like Mia so I could get out of this house.”

I walk to Jason’s room. He is still sleeping. I sit in the beanbag chair in the corner of his room. He turns over but doesn’t wake up.

“I am so tired of her criticizing me,” Chelsea says.

Chelsea tells me the whole story of what happened at dinner. I don’t say much, just a bunch of Wows! And Reallys?

“Anyway, I’m so sorry,” Chelsea says. “I just started venting and didn’t even ask you what’s up with you.”

I tell her I am okay and don’t say anything else. I don’t want to say it out loud. Not yet. When I hang up the phone, I will have to deal with the chaos that is my own life, but right now, Chelsea is the siren and barking, the honking horns, the words swirling all around me.

“Ugh, my mom is calling me. Sorry, I gotta go,” she says.

We hang up.

I watch Jason sleep, and I wonder about all the things people say about boys needing their fathers and how a woman can’t raise a man to be a man and wonder what this all means now that Jason will be fatherless. I think about Mom and how she is losing so much right now, her best friend, her husband, the father of her children. How will she survive this? How will any of us?

I pick up my phone, text Isaac: It’s happening. My dad is dying.





Dear Jasmine—-

I guess the first and most important thing to say is that I love you. I want you to know I’m here for you in whatever way you need. We can hang out at Word Up, or we can talk on the phone late at night the way we used to do when we first met, or we can just hang out together and say nothing. I know I talk too much, but right now I can’t think of anything to say. Okay, that’s not all true, but what I want to say is that your dad was a rock star—and I don’t mean that in a cheesy way, but I mean that everybody loved him. He was always making everybody feel comfortable and making everybody feel like they mattered. I know he was like that, because you’re the same way. Here are the typical things I want to say: your dad is not really gone, he will always be with us, it will get better, we will recover and heal, and my personal favorite—he’s in a better place. I even went to the store to find a card, but those were even worse—No one can take away your loving memories, and May every sunrise hold more promise, every moonrise hold more peace. Well, I actually like the last one, and I like thinking that we’re in this together, and that every day will get easier and you’ll get stronger. I like that thought. But at the same time, I think—screw all of that. This all sucks, and I hate everything about death. But I love everything about you and your family. All I really want to say is that I’m here. I’m not going anywhere—ever.

Love,

Chelsea





The funeral wore all of us out. It wasn’t just seeing Jasmine, her brother, and her mom, but it was seeing their whole community gathered together. It was actually having to get up in front of a whole congregation of people who loved Mr. Gray and speak. I really, really didn’t want to do it. Performing a poem is one thing, but speaking at a funeral? No thanks. Mrs. Gray asked me to, though. And so I really wanted to do it. For her, for Mr. Gray. For Jasmine.

I talked about how Mr. Gray always used the term “community organizing.” He’d say to us, The real work is in the neighborhoods and in the homes. You have to talk to people and get to know them—it’s all about building relationships and getting to know people in a serious way. He would call us art-ivists and community organizing feminists. He always called himself a feminist too, and said that until men started taking it seriously, joining up with us and adding their voices to the mix, then it couldn’t really be a collective conversation. I talked about how he’d send us on New York City Cultural Scavenger Hunts and how I never got to share my findings with him from the last one, the Brown Art Challenge, but that I would keep those lessons with me always. I wanted him to know that our conversations about race, and what it means for me to be a white girl doing this work, will stay with me forever. He taught me to never back down, and to always raise my voice, and that it was my job to not only be an ally, but to be on the front lines too—pushing myself and others to learn more, listen more (that’s one I’m still really working on), to speak up when it matters, and to help show others what it means to fight for equity—real equity. I wish I’d gotten the chance to say thank you. And of course, in the end, I decided to share a poem.





Family

For Mr. Gray