I used to think Sara was too mean to die. I was wrong. She died in her sleep two weeks ago with Auntie Violet holding her hand. I stayed at the bakery and made a pineapple upside-down cake. Auntie Vi gathered her belongings from the hospital including the picture of her, Sara and Ms. Naomi.
In Sara’s belongings was a dinged-up tin box decorated in roses and a bunch of letters from when she lived in Memphis, from a man named Jonas. There are letters from Sara to him, too. They are hopeful and sweet. There was also a journal in the tin box, but I haven’t read it yet. Sara started writing in it after I was born. It might have something about me, something I’m not ready to take on.
Sara’s death was supposed to bring peace, but I have more questions than answers. She never told me my father and my grandfather were the same person. She never told me what she endured. I didn’t understand her way with me, why she had no patience for my shortcomings, why she hit me, why she couldn’t look me in the eye.
Her way of surviving, drinking and men and such, always seemed a punishment for me. Who I am, or at least part of it, is because of something horrible that happened to her, and now things make sense, or at least part of her makes sense.
I didn’t go to the homegoing. Jackson delivered the eulogy. Auntie Vi said it was a nice service, that Sara would’ve liked it. I got dressed up that day and sat on my bed, in my nicest suit, indigo with a red satin lining, a Christmas gift from Alice a few years ago. I think Sara’s favorite color was blue, but I can’t really be sure of it. I’d like to think I knew her favorite color, but I don’t.
I do know Sara loved roses.
Today, I’m at Restvale Cemetery, and I brought a dozen of them to her grave, all freshly cut, most in full bloom with a lush red embedded in every petal.
Yeah, Sara would like these.
There isn’t much to say to her except I wish I could’ve known you, really known you, Sara. I wish you would’ve saw fit to love me despite how I came into this world. I’m glad you knew love for a short time in Memphis, even if that love didn’t come from me. I want both of us to find peace in this world or, for you, in the next one.
A westward wind blows a few petals off the roses onto Sara’s plot. I’m not naive enough to believe it’s some cosmic sign she’s watching. I know I’m only speaking to dirt and a patch of struggling grass. But maybe my words in the air can find you, wherever you are. Maybe I want to say I’m sorry and I think you’d say you’re sorry, too.
But I won’t ever know that so best get on with it.