Facebook Publication Date: 8/18/2022 22:08

Very soon, as I write this, in less than four hours (less than 90 minutes if one considers the fact that Arkansas is in Central time) I will be 59 years old.

This will be the first birthday I celebrate without my mother Bobbye still with us on this earth. I will go to her columbarium, where I have spent time since her death five months ago.

The conversations have been important and illuminating. I am well aware that I am not actually talking to her; grief has been a constant companion, but delusion has not.

Still, the conversations are rich. And they have not always been completely pleasant.

I have had conversations with multiple Bobbye Jeans; earlier and most often with the iteration of my mother I have called, here and on my personal page, Taco Bell Bobbye–the woman with whom I had the pleasure of abiding for four or five golden years.

We became true friends during that time.

I imagine conversations with this sharp, sassy, sometimes salty woman. With Internalized Healthy Bobbye I can do something I had not been able to manage–to be fully candid with her about my life since she was laid low with a stroke in 1991.

I can tell her, without withholding things that would distress her, like my journey with my ex-husband’s mental struggles as well as my own, which reached a nadir in 2007. I can tell her about my struggles, which are still extant with the people who are determined to defame, deface, and ultimately take down a five year legacy, which is, indirectly, her legacy too.

I can do something else I had never done in front of her since the stroke (and rarely before then).

I can, and do, weep. Not just inwardly. But actual tears. Sometimes tears that feel like the size of corn kernels; sometimes a single elegant tear that rolls down, sometimes just a mist that makes the sunset hazy.

For the cruelty of a stroke that felled her at the age of 51, fully eight years younger than I will be tomorrow. For the crucible of walking with R through the crucible of mental illness, both all too chronic, and all too acute, and which remains extant.

For my suicide attempt in 2007, which, for her sake, was downplayed, and of which has been rarely spoken.

For the fall which almost (almost!) forced me on a cane for what might have been a lifetime.

For the last 18 months, where the character, competence, veracity, and heart of her youngest daughter was and is impugned on the daily, and for the silence, and, yes, abandonment (yep, I will use the word; this is my story, and I have no obligation to sugarcoat) of those who would call themselves her friends.

Of the last, Bobbye Jean would have understood, had I told her.

She lost most of her friends too–for different reasons to be sure–it is difficult to maintain connection and retain friendship worthy of the word in the face of severe impairment. Over the 31 years she lived post stroke, most peeled away. In this pre-Facebook time, it was, in many ways, easier. Absent IM and text and email, it was easier to just ‘forget’ the phone number; pre Zoom and FaceTime it was easier to not make the effort to go to the house where she was confined and make conversation with a woman could not always, not fully, answer back.

But for whatever reasons, they faded away. And Bobbye, despite her impairment, her diminishment, noticed. And she held all the more dear the rare souls who stuck by her. I saw a lot of them at her memorial service. I hold them in awe. They are models of the woman I strive to be on the daily.

Yes, Bobbye would have definitely understood, had I told her the full story of the last 18 months. I told her vanishingly little; why tell her a story she could not affect? And the reasons were different. I have lost a lot of you, most of you all actually–de facto if not actual. But I share my mother’s gratitude for the number of you who have walked beside me throughout the greatest crucible of my almost 59 years–and yes, I include witnessing my mother’s 30 year decline and eventual death, and my husband’s 20 year struggle.

Mom declined and died, but neither her character nor her salvation were questioned or impugned. Put another way, mom suffered greatly, but not from attempted assassination.

My story is different. Since February 2021, I have faced, daily, those who would kill my life’s work in an actual way, and metaphorically slay me. I say metaphorical only because I am being as gracious as I can–but the person who started this knew and knows of my struggles, and knew where to do her worst. And her companions–some, astonishingly, still here on my personal page and at Lace on Race–either gleefully assisted or silently watched–and the ongoing smear campaign has been, at least in the short term, largely successful.

Diminished Bobbye knew little of this. Taco Bell Bobbye knows all.

And she has opinions.

‘Why are you letting assassins and those who carry the water for them at your table?’ she asks, as she meticulously dissects her Burrito Supreme and liberally sprinkles Tabasco from the back pocket of her purse. ‘Learn from me. Be grateful for those who stood by and stand by you, but tell yourself the truth about those who silently watched you twist.

‘You owe them your very best–and a table setting and soup and orangeade at the ready–when they are willing to do the work of repentance and repair. You don’t owe them the false supplicative conceit of seating them when all they will do is poison the food and put razor blades in your fruit salad.’ (Would Bobbye Jean have said these exact words circa 1989? Nope. But she knew them, and her actual words would have been more scorching than you readers might be able or willing to bear.)

‘And Jan (the diminutive of my middle name), you are doing your real friends and companions, those who *have* been faithful, no favors. Each moment you spend on the malevolent and or the indifferent is a moment stolen from a person who had, and has, your back, not someone *who stabbed you in the back*. How is that…what’s that word you use, Stinker? How is that Hesed??’

Bobbye–young Eartha Kitt Bobbye, Bobbye who read both King James and Eldridge Cleaver at the same kitchen table, Bobbye struggling and agitating within the confines of a sometimes hostile school system, Taco Bell Bobbye, diminished Bobbye–is right.

As I sit on the metal bench and read and re-read the marble etching on the headstone, I drink my full sugar Pepsi (mom’s favorite) and continue to listen.

‘You ain’t never had no 600-something friends. That number you showed me for that stuff you do? 10,000? That’s a whole ass lie.

‘You have something to say, but not everyone is willing or ready to hear it. Sheeit, *you* weren’t fully ready to speak it till you were damn near 55 years old.

‘Dr. Lockridge is right–you ain’t no prophet (prophets clean out their damn back seats) but you do have a voice that can be prophetic. Dr. Lockridge was right when he baptized you. *You* thought you were only in it for the white bible and the bag of candy. But he knew better. And so did I. And if he saw it, and even if only a few see it now, that does not mean you stop. Keep the door open. But tell the truth about your table. The table will expand. But don’t waste the whole pot of pinto beans on those who would knock the bowl to the floor. You simmered for almost 55 years. Don’t seat those with razor blades. But if they come with cornbread and collards, sit them right down.’

Tell the truth about my table. I hear you, Mama. I will heed. The numbers *will* be smaller. But more honest. More authentic. More trustworthy. I remember the names crossed off her address book over the years. How it must have broken her heart. Honoring and obeying Taco Bell Bobbye will break my heart too. Fierce and unflinching truthtelling will do that.

As the sun sets and I make my way back to the truck, I hold her words dear. I miss Bobbye Jean so damned much.

Bobbye Jean would have rolled down the windows of her Toyota Cressida and lit a cigarette before we left Sweetwater Road and made it back up the 805. But not before she gave me a present–she always managed to surprise me with a little something before we left the mall. Sometimes a lipstick, sometimes good costume jewelry (still love me some Monet) , sometimes a body spray. Something to remember her by, she said–like I wasn’t going right back to her house the next weekend.

Save for the last weekend she ever drove again. Bobbye Jean–Mama–asked if i wanted to go to Plaza Bonita that last Sunday in July in 1991. But it was hot, and I was tired, and I had both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times spread out on my bed. I said no, knowing we would go again next Sunday, and the next Sunday, and the next.

So she went alone.

The day before the new term started. She was gone for hours; as usual, she closed down the mall. She came home, parked the Cressida in the garage, and walked through the living room to her bathroom.

She never made it.

Daddy heard the thud in the living room. The woman he had loved, and fought with, and loved some more had fallen.

It would be a year before she could speak intelligibly again. Bobbye Jean, whose prides were her auburn afro, her top-of-the-line Toyota, and her intellect–it was the aphasia that made her weep the loss of her words (all of her words)–even before the left side paralysis, the learning to walk again, the face that was never fully the same–it was the words.

Whenever I write, I write with Bobbye. Whenever I speak, I speak with Bobbye.

I have a responsibility to you all, one I hope I fulfill well.

I have a holy obligation to Bobbye Jean Watkins, which I will neve shirk.

I hope you hear me. I hope you see me. I hope my efforts move the needle for those I stand for and with, and I will do so, hopefully for many years past 59.

I will do it in utter service to North Star–lessening and mitigating the harm endured by Black and brown people, perpetuated by white people and white supremacy.

That included Bobbye and her Beloved, Hubert.

That includes their youngest daughter.

My first birthday without a mortal mother. Which means the onus is on me to lovingly and intentionally mother myself, and become, more and more, the person whom Taco Bell Bobbye, who suffered no fools, would be proud.

Happy birthday to me.

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