It is with a heavy heart that I write my final column of the year. I’ve been thinking long and hard about what I should write for the past few weeks. Should I do a best and worst of post? Should I make a prediction? Should I talk about resolutions or all the good things that happened this year? I even tossed around ideas with friends and family.
And then life happened.
My first “nephew” died. Natural causes. Unexpected. At 26 years of age. A wonderful man — kind, generous, loving and the apple of his family’s eye, he was always a cool dude, even as a kid. No trouble at all. Gone, suddenly.
When I heard the news, the first thing I thought about was his smile. The next was that I would never see it again here on Earth. To me, the only thing worse than a person dying is death without warning. And this definitely came without warning. It’s like getting the wind knocked out of you. What made it so strange were the circumstances.
Eric is the nephew of my childhood best friend Donna, who is also the best friend of my older sister. We met in school and were inseparable. We’re so tight that we call each other’s parents “mom” and “dad” and have been close throughout college and all of life’s ups and downs. After high school graduation, we all moved to different parts of the country and just this past year ended up in the same part of the country — literally within an hour of each other.
When we heard about the snowstorm that would blanket the East Coast, Donna suggested that we get snowed in together like old times. We had been trying to decide where we would spend Christmas this year — last year it was at my house in Charlotte, and this year it would be at my sister’s house in Maryland. Donna and her family decided to go to Atlanta to visit Eric for Christmas. So this would also give us an opportunity to hang out before Donna left for the ATL. I had joked about going with her to get away from this snow.
Everyone had a to-do list. We bought snacks that we loved as kids. We’ve always been sports junkies, so we planned our football schedule (Cowboys of course), got some movies and were good to go. Like clockwork the snow fell, the wind blew and snowed in we were. We had a ball playing with my niece and nephew and were counting down to the start of the Cowboys/Saints game.
Then the phone rang. Eric had been found dead.
He had been out with his friends the night before, making his to-do list in anticipation of his mother, grandmother and brother arriving. They were supposed to meet up to go shopping. They said he was so excited that the family was coming, he had even posted it on his Facebook page the night before.
The next day, his friends were all set to shop and take care of their lists. When Eric didn’t return their phone calls or text messages, they went over to check on him and found him dead.
“Natural causes” is a precarious term because there is really nothing natural about a 26-year-old man dying in his sleep. There’s nothing natural about watching your best friend suffer and hearing her mother and sister wailing on the phone. There’s nothing natural about the literal pain in your heart caused by grief and loss. There’s nothing natural about not being able to stop crying even when you want to. There’s nothing natural about burying your son, grandson, brother or nephew.
What is natural is God’s grace and the fact that friends surrounded Eric the night before he passed and those same friends found him the next day; the fact that the “Three Amigos” would have a great night, just like we used to when we were kids, before learning of this devastating news; and the fact that Donna’s best friends who knew and loved Eric as much as she did were with her when she found out that “her baby” was gone. Thankfully, we were together and all found out at the same time so that we could be there for each other. Funny how life works out like that — even during the most difficult of times.
Instead of heading to Atlanta, we’ll come together as a family and make sure that the apple of our eye goes to his real home in the way that he would want. Instead of eating leftovers, or writing about the best and worst of whatever, I’ll help bury my first “nephew” and remember to love hard and be thankful for every minute here on Earth.
Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Communication and Media Studies at Goucher College and writes the blog Tune N (http://nsengaburton.wordpress.com), which examines popular culture through the lens of race, class, gender and sexuality.
This article appears in Dec 29, 2009 – Jan 4, 2010.
