Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor

I am feeling both ordinary and magic. Ordinary and magic at this crossroads where life transitions to the next. I am feeling like wandering and striding only worlds that allow me to dream as life continues and continues. The power of words, always a muse. The loss of people I hold dear, a reminder. How to carry water, while living, a gift.

I keep wondering why life has to end and why we have no say about our end. Yesterday was emotional. Today too. Jeanie is leaving us and I feel terrible and happy to have seen her off. Her eyes still has the twinkle. She showed it to us when she saw us. Though brief, I will keep this twinkle forever. I miss her voice. I never realized how much of a magic it was to hear it always that to not hear it was jarring. I really hate cancer.

I kept calling her name wishing she would turn and smile and ask all the questions she always asked about the kids. I told her they were fine. Told her I even had a surprise for her. Her eyes twinkled when she saw him. The one person she always wondered about and how he was doing everything I came around. Seeing him brought a huge smile to her face, one I will always cherish. Our Jeanie is never coming home. I wish death didn’t win this time. Ovarian cancer too. I wish it wasn’t this ordinary. Wish it wasn’t so magical too. For how many people get to say good bye to those they loved while they can. Part of the brilliance of death from cancer is its ability to see life clearly. To force us to know it with specificity too. Neglect living at your own peril. Study death and know life.

Jeanie has left an opening in my heart that anchors me to the present. She, like her sister’s Jackie’s death which we are still in mourning for, point a pathway towards living. These two sisters were inseparable in life. They remain so even as death approaches rapidly for the other one. I knew we would be lucky if we had months with Jeanie. That is seems like weeks is painful. But I see clearly the full intent of this moment. The lessons with death, is one of possibilities. I looked at Jeanie’s photos again and again from her youth to see all the possibilities of her life. She lived in ways, I feel ashamed to say for my own life. I have grown so accustomed to working and working that I forget the living and resting part. This summer keeps unveiling both for me as if I’m living through a phase where only thing left are these restless feelings.

So I sit here pondering all the feelings in my head, wondering what happened to time and hoping that I dream and live as I move to this next phase of life. Jeanie’s life has brought for me the urgency of carrying water. The poem from Lucille Clifton “water sign woman,” illustrates this well. I have been waiting for something to come, something to remind me of how to carry water without spilling, to remember why the desert is sprinkled with salt and why tomorrow is a long and ominous words. I have tried to live with no questions, work forgetting to question. All that lies deeply within me, those unexpressed or unrecognized, have led me to this phase where I am forced to evaluate those aspects of my life that leave we with little room for dreams.

Water teaches everything you need about life that Fela Kuti once sang that it has no enemy. In learning how to carry water, I see myself as ordinary, common, lasting. I know how to shift to mold myself and expand at will if I choose. I can bend if necessary and flow endlessly. A woman that carries water, lacks nothing for what can quench something so expansive. Even fire cools off at the sight of water. We cannot even carry water for long in our bare hands but still if we try, we know and know why water is magical. I want these words to be seen. Water is magical. I want to leave them here hoping that you too learn how to carry water while living. Even in this air, Jeanie continues. Despite ovarian cancer, she continues and continues with a twinkle in her eye. The lessons she leaves, like those of my ancestors, to continue and continue even at the crossroads of life, is what I will keep always, all the ways I carry water, knowing that:

Whoever can keep

Death Can find it

When life looks for all

Our restless water ways.