While the title sounds like a poorly casted 80s movie, it’s really my life. My grandmother passed, on Monday.

I never took notice of how different it is for Caribbean people, culturally.

We kept a Wake at my uncles’ house, that no one had to announce. After I heard, I started to prepare for the eventuality of being around all of the family I had in NY.

The shock hasn’t completely worn off yet, but the first layer of it peeled away as I crossed the threshold.

My grandmother died. That was an unarguable fact, one that I’m not sure that I can…really accept yet. The violence that put her on the path to her passing has made me feel nothing but hapless despair.

I won’t be able to go to Guyana for the Funeral, so I will have to wait for that closure, which is something I don’t think I’d ever be able to find. Whenever I hear her name, my heart constricts…my stomach flips and I’m ready to go right back to the comforting denial that sustained me all Monday.

 

I’m not sure what I need, where I go from here or how I deal with this. I thought myself better prepared and over estimated my ability to deal over all.

I’m in shambles.