She doesn't do funerals...

I don’t do funerals.

It sort of sounds like the way people say they don’t do clubs. Or tofu. Or turkey bacon. You should never do turkey bacon. Mostly because it’s not a thing. But I digress…

I don’t do funerals. Which means I don’t do death. I have never known how to grieve. The first funeral I attended, that I can remember, I was 16 or 17 and it wasn’t even for someone I knew. Next time I heard about a death was my maternal grandmother. I was soon to earn my first college degree. And the first funeral I attended for a loved one was for a young man, though unrelated, tore a hole into my womb. I felt the place he was connected to me inside from which he did not gestate. I was a degree holding adult by then.

Every funeral after that? I had a set of car keys. I maybe lasted 10 to 20 minutes. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

I said I don’t do funerals.

The whole thing is effed up if you ask me. After being born, I feel like you’ve paid all there is to be paid. But no, there’s more! You know it cost $300 to get the hole to put the casket in. Not dig the hole. Or pay the man to dig the hole. Or by the equipment to excavate the land. Bruh…$300 to have the rights to a hole…to pay for all those other things.

And if the hole cost that much, you can just imagine the full price tag. I see why Phaedra was trying to get in the funeral business. If I did funerals the way I do these races or shoe sales, I might maybe have a lucrative career. Seriously, this could be a thing if I could stomach it.

The whole pomp considering these circumstances is for the birds, yo. You walk the grieving family into the crowded (if people liked them) venue. You sit and listen to people talk about all the wonderful things that person did (if they did them) – that literally none of you will ever experience again. You realize all the things you maybe did/didn’t say or do. Everyone wants to touch you. Hug you. Console you. Be there for you when you fall out. Because everyone is waiting for you to lose your sh*t because hello – someone is dead. And you could be the lucky person to be there for them. #Season2Episode17 #WillAndGrace #KarenPlayedThem

Did I mention that when all this is happening there is a not-alive body in the same room? Because we need to have their remains in the room while we’re all breathing…because there’s enough air to have a something in there that no longer needs it. What else shall I render unto you Lord??

And the muther-effing-flowers. They are everywhere. And they are the dreary things. These un-alive things. These soon to be dead things. Just like the person in the front of the room. Who comes up with this stuff?? I promise I will haunt you for the remainder of you sad, pitiful, and tawdry life if you ever do any of this in my name. I. WILL. HAUNT. YOU. Even in your afterlife. You won’t even rest in ghostly peace. Because, yes…I am that petty.

Look, do me like Prince. When the purple one retreated back to the stars from whence he came, we didn’t even know. We were like, You know Prince passed away? Yea, girl, they buried him yesterday. How they get the body from one side of the country to the other that fast. I don’t know, but the headstone already up. Pictures from the Memorial on Spike Lee’s IG page, soooo? #WeFinishedAndWeDone How, sway? And it takes them like 3 to 5 business days to credit things back to my bank account? #ThisIsNotSiliconValley

Remember that? By the time we were able to process his passing, his earthly shell was literally already over all of us.

Give me this kind of love, if you say you love me. Actions. I feel like, there might be a funeral because some members of my family are hard-headed (ie: My mother). But at the funeral, yall should all be texting each other like, Yo, what time the party jumpin off? Do I have time to go change? They frying fish, right? And when it’s over, you should go up to my mother and say Mrs Marilyn, um, we gotta go change, but we’ll be over to the spot ready to turn up. Can you fry some pork-chops and make some cornbread and cabbage? Even if you don’t eat it, order it. Because, it’s a party and that’s what I would ask of her.

I don’t deserve a funeral. And not just because I don’t want one. But this is me people. ME. How many times have I done things that you were like, normal humans would be dead, but she’s one of the X-men, so I get it but not really? How. Many. Times?

Many, the times.

Aqui's is this great place that makes these drinks called swirls. They suggest that you have two only, because strong. Here’s the thing…they are absolutely correct in their assessment of the drinks that they make and serve daily. But here I am, a scientist and ish. I have had three swirls, on multiple occasions. The last time I had three, I had to dump the contents of my purse to figure out what the eff happened after the three swirls. This is not the life of a person who values or is attached to their said life. But here’s the thing…it’s not like people had to help me in and out of the car, or I was throwing up all over the place. I woke up in my home, in my bed, in my pajamas. All of my things were exactly where they should be. What were the contents of my purse you ask? ONE grain of rice, cookie crumbs, and a lip gloss from MAC. This is not normal. Also, that was not the last time I had three swirls.

I flew to Hawaii to run a Ragnar Relay Race (200 mile relay race) with 11 people I met in a Facebook group and on conference calls. I didn’t realize that this is a less than safe thing to do until I knocked on the door of the hotel room of all the strangers that are now my friends. My Angelica Rollerskates had to scare me into not running on my local creek trail because a felon escaped custody in my city. That news alone didn’t deter me from getting my daily run. I sampled (gulped) Hangar One vodka for the first time the night before the Pleasanton Double (10k – break – 5k). Every single state I have moved to, I did so, driving, alone. I have lived in Los Angeles, Conway (Arkansas), Murfreesboro (Tennessee), Hamilton (New York), and Norfolk (Virginia). Like Sandra Bland could not have been me. #ImBlessedYall #RealTalk

Is this the life of someone you should be crying about in a church? Seriously…put me in that $300 hole in Cedar Spring Cemetery as near to my Daddie as you can get me and turn the eff up. I expect nothing less than a spectacular event. Shut the township of Hooks, Texas down…then roll out to Dallas and do it all over again. Like at The Daiquiri Shoppe. You’re welcome.

You have to. Because, I’m no grief profiteer.

What’s a grief profiteer? Glad you wondered. Quite simply, it’s a person that seems to be there for you when you’re grieving and no other time. Because they are seen as being super supportive and helpful. They want to report to the world (social media) that they checked in with you, and that you’re doing however it is you’re doing and pass messages on behalf of you. It’s also the person that expounds upon their awful circumstances for the attention and whatever comes with it, because grief is now profitable, in a really horrific way. The problem? When you’re grieving, you can’t differentiate between the actual people who are human and the soul-less profiteers.

I won’t do either. Mostly because I don’t know how to do grief. I haven’t had anything to grieve, save my broken (for other reasons) heart, until these days. If I didn’t ask you to come to the court and help me run these drills, I’m definitely not about to call you when I lose the ‘ship. Cause Draymond has no chill and that Quickie shirt makes a bad hairline worse. #iWantOne #TheShirt #NotAbadHairline #GodSaveMyEdges

I don’t know how to do any of this because I never had to do this. When I began to perform some of my first born third duties, I realized I was way in over my head. I was speaking with my Auntie on that dirt road that got paved, and she said this family has been blessed with so many healthy years. But then we started dropping like flies…. #LordBlessUs

I realized she was right. I know, for certain, that having a mother and father who have loved every bit of my reckless life is blessing alone. Some people don’t know their parents, or siblings. To have every single Uncle and Aunt provide the same extension of love is abundance. My cousins are the brothers and sisters I never knew I needed. To have gone so long without wearing a black dress and ruffle socks to the church on days other than Sunday worship, bible study, or vacation bible school is overflow.

I did nothing to deserve such grace. Yet I got it anyway.

Looking at things that way, it seems kind of selfish of me to drown in sorrow, right? I have had soooooo much. Daddie would send me postcards in college from his school bus trips. Just to tell me that he loved me. Sent me text messages just the same – in Spanish. My friends were soooo jeals. How can I not thank God even in these things? Considering all these things?

Easy. Because I never had to. So I will need to learn from some of you. Like, how to talk about my feelings #ThatWasntNewsThough #YouKnowMyLife. Or accept the kindnesses many of you have attempted to bestow upon me. Or be vulnerable in ways that I can receive more blessing, abundance, and overflow. Because vulnerability? Yea, that’s kinda not a thing. At all. Ever. But sometimes on ice skates.

Last Wednesday, I had to reveal to someone this news. In my poorly thought out attempt to “return to my life” like none of this happened, it came up. Why? Because humans talk about their lives, especially if they’ve been away from home, not answering email, (receiving) or returning text messages for almost three weeks #UCLAandUCAmightWannaReThinkThosePapersTheyGaveMe #iAintGotItAll. Someone, not a best friend or a confident, but a normal-caring-present-human attempted to be there for me. After I spent most of the day and evening being there for him. And what did I do? Lose all of my sh*t #BecauseThreeSwirls #DoNotDoThis

When I figure out how to adult, I’m gonna be something special. When I figure out how to grieve, I will…probably…not tell you because I still would not have figured out how to talk about my feelings.

You laughed. But you agreed with me. Because, the truth makes you smile. #ThisIsMe #YouExpectThis