Tuesday, September 01, 2009

One year ago today, Gomo's Transformation Day, 9/1/08


In remembrance of the one year anniversary of our family matriarch's transformation day, gomo, my auntie, our family elder, who raised me. Thank you for teaching us so much because of your strength of character. Sometimes good, sometimes terrible. But always directed and strong and opinionated and absolute... a definitive starting point. I hope she is now the liberation she sought her whole life, tho, through the church. As I sit here remembering her and wondering how to celebrate her today, I recall and find my diary entry from a year ago today...

An achingly beautiful morning woke me up from my sleep in the late 8 o’clock hour. It was such a beautiful morning that it hurt. I took a conscious breath.

The drums were beating outside of my window in festivities for West Indian Day Carnaval. It made me excited to get up. I took another moment and breathed in the morning before I got up. Noticed my breath.

The sun beamed into my apartment and beckoned me to go outside. I got on my bike and tooled around, from Nostrand, to Empire to Eastern Parkway. The last was empty, but with such a feeling of anticipation, charged energy. All the vendors and police setting up, organizing. I biked uphill, it felt incredible, movement, up to the Parkway, then made my way into Prospect Park around the loop then back home, just feeling wind and sun. I felt free.

That light. That sky. A morning so beautiful it hurt. A strange thought entered my mind: if there was ever a day to commit suicide, this would be it. What could one hope in life for that was more than this? Then I began to really think about death, until I got to a place of fear, and made myself think of something else. I thought about 9/11 and how that morning also was so beautiful. Another morning where you take note at how incredible the morning was, the clear sky, something about the light. I thought maybe the angle of the sun in September is tilted differently, is changing from its summer position. The light is so specific. That clear sky is so specific. There is such a crispness in the molecules of air, and light. I celebrated the morning. Made breakfast and actually sat down, in silence, in the sunlight streaming in my living room, breathed and ate. It was delicious. I crawled back into bed watching the trees move, feeling the green, outside my window. I felt beautiful. I rolled around in bed just feeling.

Few hours later, I received a call that Gomo had passed away at 8:47AM..today 9/1/08

Gomo gomo gomo. I don’t believe it.

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