When the Real Answer is Uncomfortable

Every year someone thinks they want to know why I don't celebrate my birthday. The following is why you shouldn’t ask questions if you don’t really want the answer:

The last conversation I had with my Grandmother was on March 7th, 2015. My father’s mother, Joyce. We spoke for just a few minutes, she told me that she thought it was wrong for my family to hold a funeral on my birthday and that she thought they should’ve chosen another date. My maternal Grandfather had died on February 23rd, 2015. He was a very important, very popular man, very good man and everyone wanted to be there, so they scheduled the funeral for 3 weeks later, to give everyone time to travel, catch flights, and otherwise plan. Joyce said it wasn’t right but after the funeral, she would stay in the states a while and we would celebrate my birthday the way a birthday ought to be celebrated.

She died that day.

I took off a week from school, notifying my teachers that I had to attend a funeral and observe a Jamaican nine-night tradition. There were over 2,000 people in attendance at my Grandfather’s funeral on March 13th, 2015, including Joyce’s siblings. My aunt had asked me to write two poems for the ceremony, but upon discovering that the funeral program was too long just moments before the opening, she told me to only say one poem — the shorter poem, which was not as good as the other. I obliged and have regretted it since. The funeral ceremony itself was 4 hours long, I was at the church past midnight. Mourners and family members smiled at me and said “oh, happy birthday!” When we returned to the hotel that we were staying at, I laid on the bathroom floor alone and cried for the first time over my Grandmother's completely unexpected and untimely death. Then I attempted to finish my school work that was due at 11:59.

The next day, March 14th, was my Grandfather’s burial and repast. It was also my birthday. It rained. We left the graveyard and went directly to the banquet hall, where we stayed most of the day and evening. I traveled back to school a day or two later to inform my professors that I would be absent for another week to attend my Grandmother’s funeral in the Virgin Islands.

On the day of her viewing, I walked to the casket, but I didn’t approach. I looked at her from 6 feet away, then I turned and left. She wasn’t truly in there, so I spared myself. I did not cry. Everyone knew that we were not allowed to cry, but no one said anything. We smiled and we laughed and the next day, at the burial, we brooded. We stood stoic, hands folded, with furrowed brows as we watch the casket lower. It rained.

Days later, I went back to my school dorm and proceeded, almost normally. For a while, I wore black every day, in mourning, and I drank alcohol every night just to fall asleep. No one noticed. That summer we took an extended family vacation; I don’t recall being there, but they tell me that I was. By the time summer ended and I returned to school for my junior year, the weight of everything began to compound on me. I had lost my best friend and I was mentally incapable of dealing with that in addition to all of the other bad stuff that was happening. My body moved, my mouth talked, I laughed, I did homework, and I even hung out when I wasn't working to pay for groceries or binge-watching Netflix alone. But my brain was M.I.A. My affliction became so bad that, by my senior year, I thought I was losing my mind. Perhaps I did.

Either way, I haven’t had a birthday since. And I hate funerals. And it always rains.

- For Joyce, the good witch and the bad witch -

- For Sam Simpson, the decent and deserving -

- For an almost 19-year-old girl who lost her best friend and is trying to get over it -