A Song For You

 *Note: I first drafted this on April 10th and I published it today (8/19). It just seemed so final, but I wanted to share.  

The old saying goes that cousins are our first friends. This is absolutely true for my family and I. My dad would tell the story that on one of our earlier trips from California I cried cried and cried the whole 4 hour plane ride. I only settled down the final moments of the trip after our seating neighbor gave me a baby doll to play with. Needless to say, my father, a new dad,  was pissed and likely embarrassed. To add insult to injury when I got off the plane my first cousins, Jerome and Jamal, were waiting for me and I ran to them as if I knew them my whole life. Perhaps they were familiar to me or maybe I knew that their job was to protect me, even from my parents.  :)

This year Jerome transitioned to an ancestor and it has really been a surreal time for me. Like, he really passed? We really buried him? That is so very wild. Jerome and I had a complicated relationship as all families do, but one thing was for sure and two things were for certain, we showed up for one another when needed. Our bloodline connected us despite our differences, period. At any given and random times Jerome was gonna call my phone and say, "hey cousin! How are you?"

At Jerome’s wake I noticed that his mother, my Auntie Bobbie, placed a watch in his casket. She recalled the day he received the watch. Jerome boasted to her “look at my watch.” Mostly black in color the face of the watch was trimmed in gold and was placed on the pillow near his head. I couldn’t make out the time on the watch, but the watch was working and time was being kept. 

I was so fascinated by my Aunt’s decision to include the watch in his casket. She stated that Jerome loved the watch and loved to show it off. If we were going to send him off right, the watch had to be included. I was fascinated for reasons that were different from my Aunt because I saw it as a testament of her love for him. 

The symbolism of the watch reminded me of Donny Hathaway’s “A Song For You.” Written by Leon Russell and performed by Donny Hathaway, "A Song For You," is a song of endearing love that speaks to the depths of a loving relationship. A repeated stanza of the song states, “I love you in a place, where there’s no space or time. I love you for my life, you’re a friend of mine. And when my life is over remember when we were together. We were alone and I was singing this song to you.” First of all, like that’s really all that needs to be said, but I will unpack this a bit more. 

Time is such an interesting concept as it is both infinite and finite. Time is Infinite because it continues even after finite time determines an end. When I saw the watch placed delicately and meticulously in the casket I envisioned it as Auntie Bobbie’s way of saying to Jerome her love for him is infinite. “I love you for my life..” That she would and does love him in a space and place where time is not a factor. Yet, she buried her son with time and sent that time into a place where time is no longer kept. It was a poetic dance between fixed time (death/time of death) and infinite time (the grave/ancestor).

The placing of the watch was such a bold declaration in the Donny Hathaway way stating that the grave can not hold this love. As spiritual person I know that the grave only holds the shell we come in. Love also being infinite is no match for the grave. Love goes beyond concepts of living/non-living, time/no time. I’m so happy that Auntie Bobbie’s desire to celebrate her son, my cousin, in a way that spoke to his personality was a reminder that time matters not when matched and faced with love. 

A Song For You