I'll Always Remember This September

I haven’t added anything to my novel. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t writing.

“The universe will bring you full circle to places you have been before just to show you how much you have grown. Enlightenment is an ascending spiral, not a circle. You must continuously come back to things you thought you understood, to experience different forms of ascension.”

On the September 3rd, my maternal grandfather passed away. Though we had no bad blood, we hadn’t spoken in depth for years. Just the occasional call for holidays, birthdays or random check ins. No matter how many times I told him we were living in the same city he would passive aggressively say

“I-I don’t even know where you’re staying these days.”

Our relationship wasn’t always like this. In fact, growing up my grandfather was my hero. The Rudolph Clark, aka Rudy. Born and half raised in Key West. He often told stories about playing baseball bare chested and barefoot with sticks and rocks. He spoke about his wanting to play professionally but always been told he was too small. He had the ear for music. He wrote lyrics and composed arrangements. Was even accepted to Juilliard. Can you imagine? Being a young black girl hearing her black grandfather talk about being admitted to one of the most prestigious music schools in the country. But it wasn’t his admittance that hit me, but instead his decline. He’d grown up poor and didn’t know what it was like to eat two eggs until he left home. He said school wasn’t going to put food in his stomach so he had to work. When he was a young man, the entire family moved to New York. My great aunts and uncles are split in two groups: ones from Key West and the ones from New York.

My grandfather was a taxi cab driver while he was writing some of his biggest hits. I don’t remember all the details of his big break but I remember his details of struggles. He talked about having holes in his shoes and being hungry yet his art was his everything. I was around ten when he said “Focus on what you love, the money will come and go.” I knew about his fights with Broadway and his winnings. I knew about his starting up and closing down his record label By the Bay Records. I knew about selling and rebuying his catalogue. All these things made him a god in my little eyes so when his humanity made an appearance I was sidelined.

So that’s what I sit with now. Holding his humanity and grandiose in conjunction. Accepting him as the whole man that he was and loving him as such. He was one of my first cheerleaders of my writing. When I was living in Puerto Rico, we’d sit on the steps of the apartment, at the bottom of a massive mountain as I read my latest writings. He would say I had the gift, which meant the world to me. Here was this grammy nominated, BMI decorated songwriter saying I had “It” I was floored. This continued into high school when he’d sit on the step right off his den as I read him the fan fictions I was so proud of. He always encouraged me to pursue my art. Reminding me, “The money will come and go.”

My grandfather’s service was on Sunday, September thirteenth. It was a small quaint service. I found out about it a day and a half before it happened. And I honestly considered not going just to avoid the politics. I didn’t want any of that to mix with my grieving. But eventually I decided to go in support of my mother. My maternal grandmother chose to stay home, she looked almost dazed as we got dressed. But we put the zoom on for her before we left. I asked my mom to drive since I was wearing heels and can’t whip the way I like in lifted shoes. We listened to the zoom on the way. People crying and sniffling. The shuffling of the clothes of whoever was handling the streaming. Beautiful words from people who knew him well and not so well.

I lost my paternal grandmother last December, her services were in January on her birthday weekend. Both of them passed a month before their next birthday. And I wrote this piece titled “This Is How You Bury Your Ancestors”.

Then I left it as a rough draft. So upon loosing my grandfather, I decided to not only revise the piece but submit it. I spoke at my grandmother’s funeral but not my grandfather’s.

I guess I wanted to communicate with him the best way God gave me to express myself. I wanted to write true words in honor of them both. Truth to set them free on their journey.