I dreamed we sat in chapel at the children’s Episcopal elementary school. Every morning at St. Thomas’s Day School began with the whole community gathering in that space. I felt the fullness of Ficre’s body beneath his beloved cable-knit gray sweater (“I am an African highlander who loves a sweater,” he would say); he was there next to me. We were singing the hymns with full voices: “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”; “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat.” Hundreds of origami cranes fluttered over the sanctuary. We made a joyful noise and believed in the power of communal song.
We left the church and walked hand-in-hand to the corner store. I could feel my hand in his, then as now. At the store, there was only a chicken wing and one pork chop in the meat case—out of milk, out of bread, out of eggs, the shelves eerily bare. The light changed. And then he was gone from the dream.
I cried so hard I woke myself. My bed, the bedroom, the house, was suffused with sorrow. Sorrow like vapor, sorrow like smoke, sorrow like quicksand, sorrow like an ocean, sorrow louder and fuller than the church songs, sorrow everywhere with nowhere to go.