On December 5, 2013, just before noon, my husband made a decision. He had fought this decision for nearly a year. He had used the only weapons he possessed in an attempt to arrest my decision to accept that I had begun a journey with a new burden; terminal cancer which was pronounced, after about a month of investigation, by a team at Siteman Cancer Center. He didn't decide to accept my death. He accepted the diagnosis. He accepted that there was no treatment. He accepted that there were plans to be made and plans to be discarded. He had to concede that there were no weapons in his arsenal with which he could wage a defense to what he deemed a war. He was without armor which would fend off, keep out, or protect all of us , our family, for what would come. He, for the first time in twenty years, could not provide protection.
When we got in the car he asked me what I wanted. "For real?" I asked back. He said (while bracing himself for he know me) "Yes." "I want dirt from many African nations put on the floor of my grave. I want to rest on African soil." He lowered his head. "You knew all along." I didn't answer and neither did I ask him to delineate if he was speaking about what the doctor told us or the dirt. They were the same thing.
I also didn't tell him what I knew when we moved into this house in August. I knew it would be my last. I am a vagabond and as proof I offer all of the residences of my life:
3128 Hickory: 1966 to 1977 (my grandparents' home)
4244 Stambaugh Court: 1977 to 1983 (on October 12, 1983 I was scalded in an assault perpetrated upon me by a woman high on drugs and I didn't return to my mother's home after I was released from the hospital a month later).
6842 Bartmer: 1983 to 1987 (my grandparents' new home in University City, MO)
From June 1987 to August 1987 I lived with my cousin Sally Bass in Chicago. I met the man who would become my first husband (John Van Williams) and returned home to move back in with my grandparents.
1169 Ursula, University City: September 1987 to August 1989
111A Park Charles Blvd. South, St. Peters MO 63376: August 1989 to 1991
304 Rebecca, St. Charles MO: My first home with my husband and children. In 1990 I became a mother for the third time. We lived in this home from 1991 to 1994.
In 1994 my husband divorced me and by August of 1994 he had taken my children. I fell into a pit of depression. It was more accurately an abyss. I had few friends. I lived with a friend on a street called Nashua in Dellwood MO. I met the man who would become my second husband (Brian Lane Staples) and he lived in Dellwood on a street called Hudson. We lived in this house (he rented it from his brother Richard) until we moved our family of four boys and our new addition to a home in St. Peters, MO 63376.
Wisteria Lane: From this point on my memory is very strange as I cannot remember exact dates. We lived here for a year.
The Horse Shoe: A drug neighborhood. I lived there for about two months in 2000. Alone.
Back to granma's house for about three months
An apartment owned by the university (UMSL)
A house owned by the university (UMSL)
5007 Tulip Tree Lane, Hazelwood MO: Our family is reunited. We lived in this house until 2009.
An apartment I shared with our youngest child. We lived there until August of 2010.
From 2010 to 2011 I lived in Prince Georges County MD. I was a doctoral student at Howard University and I taught at DC Community College as well as the University of the District of Columbia
From 2011 to May 31, 2013 I lived in the Village Square Apartments with my ex-husband Brian and our child, Sarah. Our sons would be temporary guests. We were forced to move out when a tornado demolished the building as Grant (my youngest son) and I held onto each other. We laid on the floor and watched the storm take the roof. We hid in the basement while gas leaked into our home. We ran out of the front door into the safety of Brian's SUV. He wasn't at home when the storm began but he drove through that storm to rescue us.
960 Paddock Drive and Extended Suites Hotels (one month temporary residence)
Stone (something or other) Apartments: three month rental while we looked for a home
And now we live together in a house which is perhaps the residence I will inhabit until I move to my new home. My body will go to the grave. My spirit will fly free.
I'm thinking that since I have rarely had a place called home that the decision to accept this diagnosis and a possible death from this disease was easier for me. You see, I believe that my body is only a vehicle for my soul. I do not believe that I'm merely a highly intelligent beast who possesses the added caveat of upper brain, voluntary, capabilities. God made my soul so that I can be of use to Him in His perfect plan. I have a duty to be ready for my opportunity, to be ready,so that I can fulfill my duties in the role of being His child. Sometimes I wasn't ready. Sometimes, along my way, I had the feeling I had just done a good thing.
As I went around and about on my journey I became a dedicated student of history. In this pursuit I realized that some of us came here to die. The death of a human is only bad thing, in the sight of God, if the human has done things to keep him separate from God. What good parent (and He is the greatest of all) does not welcome the thought, much less the reality, of a good child returning home? No. Death (unless it comes to resolve suffering and sometimes suffering is a small price to pay in order to continue seeing smiles, feeling hugs, and hearing sweet words of loved ones) to us is bad. When I speak of my death I'm always told that I'm being negative. This makes me so very sad. In my illness I've had to become acquainted with death. They, those without a diagnosis and can therefore be ignorant of death, are creating a prison of anxiety for me. I'm afraid that I will slip up, say something, upset them and end those few beautiful moments of companionship.
I don't want to die. I don't want to live in this painful body either. The doctors' words didn't cause confusion, rather, they ended what I thought was an endless and variant query of 'why'. My incessant research of treatments. His pronouncement of death enabled me, empowered me, to live. I have been in ambulatory, wide-eyed, limbo since this ordeal began. An ordeal of doctors, treatments, and hospitals. I don't k now how long I'll live. I could possibly die from a million other things (like that tornado). The terminal diagnosis didn't set in stone or a pre-fill the cause of death on my (eventual) certification of death. The diagnosis is simply a known, an identifiable mode of exit from this road. A possible end of my story which is also a probable conclusion. So, nothing has changed has it? I get up. I eat. I bathe. I work. I play. I love. I sing. I dance. I sleep. I dream. I am alive until I die. I have always been in motion. My grandparents, from my infancy and throughout my life, gave me a home; a place to lay my head. Now I see that they accepted me into their home and they gave me the ability to accept that this world was not my home. As a symbol, I hope to have this body laid to rest within the earth but on African soil. What dog, cat, lion, or elephant makes such a request? They don't. I do. I am not an intelligent beast and I possess a soul that can never die. As do all who seek to teach truths. Our words transform our souls into the realm of the immortal when our bodies re-incorporate into the earth from which we were born. This world was never my home. There was never any forever. There was never any ownership. There was only and there is only a journey home.
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