Entry Log: 23
Date: Thursday, May 31, 2012
Place: Cemetery, Harlem Baptist Church
The grey skies match my mood and somehow it feels appropriate sitting here in front of Ma's grave. No tears. In fact I'm not feeling much at all. The past few days I've continued to clean up my apartment to give myself the feeling that I had least something under control. Even bought a new couch, some curtains and a carpet for the living room. Sarah's come over every night. I appreciate the food that she brings, but I know she's just coming to check if there's any more alcohol lying around. There isn't. I don't want a repeat of last week.
She asked me last night if I'd ever been to visit Ma. I shook my head. Cemeteries had always depressed me. And if I were to be truly honest, I was ashamed of Ma seeing me like this.
"You should go by her grave, Sammy," Sarah told me anyway, ignoring all my fake excuses. "It might do you some good."
So here I am, sitting on a weatherworn bench beneath a stunted and gnarled apple tree in the small plot of land hind Harlem's Baptist Church. A tall wooden fence surrounds the lot, not quite keeping out all the street sounds but providing a bit of privacy. The plain gravestone, rounded a the top, made of a light grey marble with faint white streaks running through it, was placed beside another gravestone. I refused to even look at that one, keeping my eyes on the letters carved into Ma's final resting place.
In Loving Memory
Darlene Wilson
An angel on earth; a ray of home amidst the darkness.
The whole neighbourhood had come together to pay for the gravestone and there hadn't been enough room in the church for everyone who had come for the funeral service. I wasn't there. I don't really remember what I was doing that day, but it involved stuff for the gang that Ma would never have approved of. And then drinking away my grief and shame because I knew exactly what she would've said.
"Doing the right thing isn't easy, Samuel. But your Pa and I taught you to recognise right form wrong and the good Lord gave yo the heart and strength to do it."
I knew I'd made a lot of wrong choices. Hell, I was still making them. But somehow, as I'm sitting here and imaging her in our kitchen in her faded apron I know that she wouldn't be disappointed in me. That's the kind of woman she was. She never gave up - would continue to fire you and love you again and again no matter what. She had faith in people, in humanity, almost as strong as her faith in God.
Somehow I've lost hat hope, but I know what she would say to that too. "It's easy to focus on the bad stuff, because that's what's always visible. The trick is to see past that, to dig a little deeper until you find the good stuff. It's there, in everyone, just not always obvious at first."
For Ma's sake, I'll try and do it. See the good in people. Stop letting all the bad shit keep getting to me. And maybe, eventually, I'll be able to see the good in myself fas well.