I Want to Hear You, But You Have to Hear Me Too.

"You know you only have like 15 people on your invite list for your baby shower?"
My sister asks me as she's planning and organizing my upcoming shower.
"Yes.  I don't know that many people.  Correction.  I don't like that many people."
I respond.
We both laugh.

I have my people.  My sister is my ally.  My brother is my strength and my comic relief.  My mother is my student.  My few friends are my fellow soldiers.  And my husband, well, he is all of the above, and, sometimes most importantly, he is my emotional release.  I can be strong, vocal, independent, willful, and valiant.  And then when I see my husband, I can just cry.  And he will just hug me.

Here's the thing.  I like people.  I love people.  In general.  I just don't have very many truly quality level "gosh I really like that person" that I want to come to my house and celebrate the coming of my next daughter.  When I invite someone to my house, I am hoping we will have a good conversation.  That if we disagree about something, we will listen to each other.  That we share the same basic values of human rights and progress for our people.  That when we say "our people" we mean, quite literally, everyone.

I do not mind being disagreed with, argued with, corrected.  I look forward to it.  I seek it out.  My problem is that anyone that has not come to be part of my close circle of friends, is not in there because they refuse to present their case, and or they refuse to listen to mine.  We can't be friends if there are topics that are off limits.  We can't be friends if we can't engage in a rational, respectful discussion on any topic.

I don't attack people.  I don't insult people.  I don't get personal and try to make people I am talking to feel ashamed of who they are or their decisions.   And if people do that to me, I end the conversation, and likely the relationship.

Disagree with me.  Be a Republican.  Be a full time working mom with a kid in daycare.  Be religious.  Be pro life.  (All things I am not.)

But don't be hateful.  Don't ridicule.  Don't close your mind to ideas that differ from yours.

This is the problem with this most recent election.  Millions of people heard one position of Trump's and stuck their fingers in their ears and sang "lalalalalalalalala I can't hear you" not only to everything else Trump (or Johnson or Stein) said (that those people actually disagree with) but also to the rest of the world saying "this is wrong.  You cannot do this.  These will be the consequences of your actions."  We don't listen to each other.  We don't hear other people's genuine pain.  We can't recognize the struggles of others if they are not our own struggles.

I want to hear you, white working class people, telling me that wages have stagnated, that you feel unmoored, that the world is changing and you don't know how to respond.  That you are afraid of immigrants and refugees.  That you don't like to see women in positions of power because they make you feel weak and threatened.

But you have to hear me too.  You have to hear me say the positions you hold hurt others.  You have to hear me say that by allowing a person to represent one of your issues, you are also allowing him to represent so many more that you say you strongly disagree with.  You have to hear me say that your Jesus would never agree with the things your representatives and co-voters are doing.  You have to hear the cries of pain and injustice.  You have to look outside yourself and start thinking about how your struggles and my struggles and the struggles of every other victim of "the system" are actually much closer together than they are far apart.

You have to hear me say again and again that we are the system.  We are the change we want to see in the world.  We are the police, the judges, the governors, the mayors, the school board, the legislators, and yes, the president.  We give those people power.  If you are unhappy with the system, educate yourself, inform yourself.  Discover what decisions, what policy changes, what actual measures will improve your life, without hurting the lives of others.

But.  In order to do all of this.  We have to have a discussion.

I want to hear you.  But you have to hear me too.

Free State of Jones

I'm back!

It's been months, but I've finally gotten the chance to breathe and think about writing again.  And before I head out for my Avon Walk, and get inspired to write about that, I wanted to write about something that inspired me a few weeks ago, Free State of Jones.  Since it is History related, my boss asked me to blog for work, so I am pasting here the blog that will appear on my center's website.  

Warning:  it is not as radically, provocatively liberal as you may be expecting.  It is my attempt at academia over polemics.  

Happy reading.

Free State of Jones is a Lesson for US History

Right after finals in June this year, The Free State of Jones came out in movie theaters.  It stars Matthew McConaughey, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Mahershala Ali, and tells the story of a white man, Newton Knight, who leads a counterrevolution during the Civil War.  He argues that he will not fight for something, slavery, he does not believe in, and he defects from the confederate army into which he has been drafted and takes refuge with runaway slaves.  As the war rages on, an increasing number of men also defect and join Knight in the swamplands of Mississippi, where it is very difficult to pursue them.  Ultimately, Knight and his fellow defectors, along with a handful of runaway slaves, found the Free State of Jones County in Mississippi, a small, slave free, rebellious state in the south in the middle of the Civil War, a war the south was fighting to preserve the institution of slavery.

I am a history tutor here at The Bay Area Tutoring Centers, mostly because I am in sheer awe of history.  In college I studied literature from around the world, but my favorite reading was always grounded in truth.  Of course, stories are always grounded in someone’s version of some truth, no matter how abstract, but the best stories for me have always had some relationship to actual events, even if the relationship is a loose one.  As a result, I was instantly attracted to this movie.  When I found out that this movie was not only based on a true story, but was actually heavily researched and that great pains were taken to portray the struggle of Newton Knight accurately, I was determined not only to see this movie as soon as it came out, but to write about it here.

Why? You ask.

Why is it important for a tutoring center to cover a story that no history book bothers with?

The answer is precisely because no history book bothers with it.

Presumably, we learn history to see ourselves, to understand where we’ve been, who we were, who we are, and who we hope to be.  Few would argue that it is unimportant for students in the US to understand US History.  Fewer still would argue that the Civil War, its causes and consequences, is an unimportant piece of US History to understand.  As such, how can we tell a story of the Civil War, how can we teach it in classrooms or in tutoring sessions, without teaching about the creation of a slave free state in the south?  Put simply, we should not.  I have been studying history for over a decade and I have never come across this story.  We teach and write about Nat Turner’s Rebellion, about John Brown’s Raid, about Sherman’s March to the Sea, about the Battle of Gettysburg, about Reconstruction, about Post-Reconstruction, but nothing about a southern white man who founded a slave free state in the middle of the south.

Knight went on to spend the rest of his life with a runaway slave, with whom he had children, and the couple then even took in Knight’s estranged wife, who had left him when he defected, when she returned after the war penniless and desperate.  During Reconstruction, the Reconstruction government put Knight in charge of defending Blacks’ rights in the south, a south that was violently hostile to them.  Knight’s children then went on to further his legacy, and people in the Mississippi today either revere him or revile him for that legacy.

It is important for all students who learn about the Civil War to learn about men like Newton Knight, and the many, many men who joined him.  There is a legacy in this country that teaches us that white people are slaveholders, that we are the devil, that even if we didn’t own slaves, we supported the institution, or at the very least, and in some ways the worst, turned a blind eye to it. 

“Not our problem.” 

It is important for our students to know that they do not have to see themselves, their ancestors that way.  That they can look back and say, “I would have been Newton Knight.” 

As Joseph Hosey, a forester in Jones County, Mississippi today says, “When you grow up in the South, you hear all the time about your ‘heritage,’ like it’s the greatest thing there is…When I hear that word, I think of grits and sweet tea, but mostly I think about slavery and racism, and it pains me. Newt Knight gives me something in my heritage, as a white Southerner, that I can feel proud about. We didn’t all go along with it.”  (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-free-state-jones-180958111/?no-ist)               

In this country so fraught with racial tension, when teachers and textbooks are teaching about slavery, the Civil War, Civil Rights, Martin Luther King Jr., Lyndon B Johnson, Bobby Kennedy, and Rosa Parks, we should also be teaching about Newton Knight.  He was a hero, and he stands as a role model of courage as much as redemption and reconstruction.  As the Smithsonian article notes, reconstruction is a verb; we are always reconstructing our big, diverse, complex country, and we know that our children are the future reconstructors.  We better equip them to do that reconstructing by allowing them to hear from a wide variety of voices from the past and by showing them complexity and contrast in what is often told as a one sided story.  In US History, Newton Knight’s voice is one our kids should hear.

My First Sister, On Her Birthday

You gave me the very first taste of what it means to be a big sister.

You made me love in a new way.

You reminded me that I had been there before.

You have always been the yin to my yang.

From the very beginning you were pretty and perfect, clean and shiny.  I was plain and impossible, dirty and rugged.  You picked flowers and I climbed fences.  You spoke softly and I shouted for everyone to hear.

You have always been a constant reminder to me that "different" does not mean "better" or "worse."  That challenge does not mean competition and that role model does not mean only way.

You explored wth makeup and I explored with sexuality.  You chose reliable stability and I chose constant change.  You chose one love and I chose what the hell is love?

As fully grown women now in our thirties, we are picture perfect examples of stark opposites.

Just look at us:

Some might say rivals.  Others might say enemies.  Still others might say incompatible.

I say yin and yang.

You manage a full time career, owning a home, mothering two children, finding marriage balance, and maintaining a strong group of girlfriends.  You keep everything in a well organized, prioritized, well functioning machine.

I do yoga and buy organic produce; I take my kid to squish mud between her toes; I barely see my husband; my friends are scattered around the globe; my life is organized and it functions well, but it ebbs and flows, changing its contours with the seasons.  

And because you're my sister, my very first sister, and because of how much I love you, I can see why and how what you do works for you.  Your children and your husband love you.  Your friends adore you.  Your work depends on you.  Your life is yours and only yours and it has nothing to do with me and my life.

Because of you I understand how to love deeper than I ever could have without you.  We come from the exact same place and exact same circumstances and we simply chose different paths.  And your path gets just as much sunshine and rain as mine.

I don't need you to be like me in order to love you as much as I could ever love someone that shares the same blood, same genetic code as me.

It is often said that the difference between friends and family is that we get to choose our friends.

But if I could go back and choose my family.  I would choose you as my sister.  My first sister.  Every time.

You are amazing in your own right.  And I have a feeling our paths, no matter how far apart they may seem at times, will find us at the same end point.  In the meantime, I look forward to their many crossings.

Happy Birthday little sister.

late night wine soaked thoughts

Everyone is stressed out about.... something.

work.

school.

family.

relationships.

future.

politics.

politics!

politics!!!

I am not truly stressed out about anything.  Except the fact that almost everyone around me is stressed out about something.

I think that what we've forgotten to do is prioritize.  What really matters to me?  What else?  What matters a little bit less, a little less, and not at all?

My family matters most to me.

Then work. I love what I do, and where I do it.

Then friends.  I have great friends, and some of them fall into that family category, okay, most of them.  And some of them fall into the work category.  And some into both.  (I don't have a ton of friends.)

Then the world.

I want to change the world.  I want to leave my mark.  I want everyone to have the opportunity to not be stressed out all the time.  I met with a student recently who was so overwhelmed by her work load that she could not focus even on simple questions.  8 hours of school,  6 to 8 hours of homework, 6 hours of sleep (teenagers should be getting 8 to 9), at best that leaves 4 hours, for eating, showering, family time, social time (which is incredibly important for cognitive development), family time, personal time.  At worst, if she actually gets the sleep she needs and spends the max amount of time on homework that leaves..... less than two hours.  What hope does she have to not have a crazy busy packed schedule life from now until she dies?  And she's just a kid!

I look at my kid, animatedly wanting to know, on her hands, what 1 and 4 make, what 2 and 3 make, what 5 and 5 make.  I didn't teach her to do this.  She thought of it on her own.  She started holding up fingers and I followed her direction, guiding her along.  She's hungry for information.  She's curious.  Naturally.  Like all other children.

This is my mission in life, wine or no wine.  (But c'mon, why not include the wine?) To feed curiosity.  To provide guidance.  To engage with people at all levels who are open to engagement.

It is why I can't put my kid in school in the United States of America, the richest, freest country in the world.  I would be directly combatting my own personal mission.  I cannot plug my kid into a system built, as of this moment, public, private, or charter, to serve as a daycare center and mostly beat the joy of learning out of my kid.

I cannot watch her be pushed around by kids and adults alike, a victim to a system that aims to "toughen" people up, to mechanize them, to plug them into a workforce where many people are unhappy, underpaid, and undervalued.

I'll keep her home, I'll introduce her to circles of people who want to learn, who work for a better future, who want their children to be kind, who value kindness over academic success (what does that even mean anymore?).  I'll teach her to squish her toes in mud and paint rocks, to read books about heroes, male and female, to engage in politics and society at an early age (it's never too young to start) to love deeply and be vulnerable, to laugh with her head thrown back, loud and wild, like her mama, to take deep deep pride in who she is, whoever that may be at the moment, and.....

to.....

slow.....

down.


In fact, she's teaching that lesson to me.  I will teach it back to her when I have the chance.  And I think I will have it.

I let her wander, let her smell the flowers, let her wade through giant puddles in sand pits after torrential rain storms.  I let her take her time while she eats, and I read stories to her before nap and before bedtime easily and freely, not rushing, not shushing her questions and comments, because what a joy it would be to enjoy every single day of life.

This is what I can give my daughter, and the world.  My joy in life can translate to her joy in life, and hopefully to my husband's, to the rest of my family, to my students and my friends.

Because, having a child has helped my vision clear up, it has helped me ask a crucial life question:

Why shouldn't life be one big party filled with people we love?

Really?  Why shouldn't it?

If we could all just focus on being good to people, on loving everyone around us, and on surrounding ourselves with people who deeply love us back....

Then maybe we could have our party.....

With wine.

The Rituals of Death

So his body was there in the box.  We watched it lowered into the ground.  My aunt sobbed into the shoulder of my cousin's only real beloved of his lifetime.  A picture of him sat there, so we could see him smile.  It was hot in the sun and freezing in the shade.  My daughter hid her face in my neck and asked if we could just go see Barkely (my aunt's dog, who my daughter does not even like).

All I could think was, these are the rituals of death.  His body is there, in the casket, a simple, wooden box that sends him back into the earth from which he came.

She opened the bathroom door with a key, his body blocked the door, she noticed the purple color of his arm ("that's not good." She thought to herself.), she noticed the thin white cord around his neck.  She noticed his head back and the peaceful look on his face, the most peaceful look she's seen in a long time.  And all she could think was, "well, he's okay."

"He's not okay." Her fiancée told her.  "Call the police."

The police rush in, straight upstairs.  They come back down, more slowly.  "He's passed away.  There's nothing we can do."

Then the coroner comes.  He talks about limbs getting stiff.  About moving the body.  About objective stuff that doesn't relate to the boy he was, the man he became.  That's not Carlos.  That's a body that used to hold Carlos.

That's not Carlos.

These are the rituals of death.

"I don't want a funeral," she says.  Why?  Carlos would not have wanted a funeral.  Carlos wanted his spiders to be taken care of.  Carlos wanted his mother to have peace.  Carlos wanted the fuck out.

"I'm having a funeral," his father says.  "I'll be there," she says.

Because we all mourn in different ways.  We all have different ways of dealing.  He needed the ritual, the ceremony, the words, the prayers, the large gathering.

We gathered.  Those who loved him, loved him deeply, for his greatness and for his pain, for his innocence, even as a twenty eight year old man, and for his transgressions.  We loved him not in spite of his "flaws" but because of them.  Because you cannot be Carlos without the flaws, you cannot have the sweetness without the bitterness.  You cannot love so deeply if you do not also hurt so deeply.  His emotional depth knew no bounds, and in the end, that is what killed him.

There were many people who also gathered because it is what you are supposed to do, which is kind of funny, when you think about it.  Carlos rarely did what he was "supposed to do," and so if he visited us today, on this gathering day, if he laughed at all, it was at that.  Haha.  A good chuckle.  Silly humans.

But she knew.  "I'm here.  She thought.  I'm still here.  And I will recognize you in the clouds, in the surf and in the sand.  I will remember you when those desert lizards cross my path and every time I spare the spiders lurking in the corners of my room.  I will feel you patting me on the back.  I will hear you comforting me in my loss"

We are sad.  Those of us who loved him.  Those of us who see him in the ones who made it.  "Why couldn't he make it?  Why couldn't he find a way?" We ask ourselves, selfish in our need to have him here in our lives, even at a distance.

The answer is so simple that it is beyond us:  this was his way.

How simple and yet how complicated for those of us who fight to live.  My grandmother has battled two cancers and survived running herself into glass shelving in the pitch black, fighting to live, to breathe, to stay here longer.  "I love life," she says.

And her grandson smiled at death.

There we were, eating cookies and laughing and crying and sharing moments and memories.

The great love of his life, a young, beautiful, broken, but healing girl was there.  I watched my daughter reach out to her, "can I play with her?" Celaya asked.  She had never met this young woman of twenty eight.  She had only met my cousin once, in passing, at one of his darkest times.  She reached out, recognizing a kindred spirit.  Brianna brightened, "exploring" the area with my daughter for a few moments.

Tears hid behind my eyes all day, dew drops ready to fall as I thought, "these are the rituals of death."

We acknowledge that this is now part of our story.

This is part of my story now.  My cousin killed himself.  He took his own life in a way that is unique to all others of which I know.  And now I look at my daughter and I see my cousin.  I see depth, empathy, emotion, an angelic sweetness that is unearthly.  I see my daughter ask if she can hold your hand, if she can let the ants run up her arm, if she can gently cradle the ladybug or the roly poly bug.  I see my daughter's heart break for a crushed snail, for a smushed acorn in the street.  I see her frantically want to save the crushed Cheerios from the wheels of the shopping cart, and I think, "how do I love you enough to save you from this fate?"

And is that even my job?  Is it even possible?

I don't think so.  Not anymore.  Before my cousin killed himself, completed his journey here on this plane of existence I would have argued otherwise, but now, no.

If anyone loved, anyone accepted, anyone gave, more than Carlos' mother, in all the right ways, not too much, not a smother, just a support, not a squeeze, just a hug whenever he needed one, it was her.

All I can do is hold her hand when she asks, mourn the lost life of the snail with her, pick her frantic body up out of the cart so she can retrieve the fallen Cheerios.  I am here as her guide.

The pastor said today that we have no control over our lives, over who our parents are, the paths we follow.

I disagree.

I imagine Celaya chose me, her soul reached out to mine, she needed a mother who would "taste" her mud pies, who would give her space and freedom and at the same time open arms and a predictable routine.

And I know Carlos chose Deena, his energy called out to her energy, so strongly that despite her being unable to bear children he reached across another woman, a biological mother, a birth giver, from another country, to bring Deena to him, to witness his entry into the world, to live in a trailer with him in the dingiest corners of Mexico, to bring him back to her space, her haven, her sanctuary.  A mother who would feed his reptiles when he was away, who would send him care packages when he was out of town, who would listen to him philosophize for hours.

This was always his end.  This was the path he was on from the very beginning.  He began with her, and he needed to end with her.  And he never would have been able to complete his journey on his terms, in his way, with a smile on his face, but for the mother he chose.

These are the rituals of death.

Blissful Suicide

They say "celebrate the life and mourn the death."

With Carlos I think it's the reverse.  I cry for his life, for his pain, for how dark it had finally gotten that he finally gathered the courage to flee his demons after twenty eight years.  I celebrate his death.  For him.  He won his last battle.

As far back as I have memories, to when I was nine, when he came home to the states, I remember an angel.

Only, ever.  An angel.

He had a big, fluffy, curly afro as a baby, and a big, wide smile.  "Is that real?"  People would ask my aunt as we walked through a store with my cousin.  "No.  I put a wig on my one year old."  She would roll her eyes.  Even then, people didn't get him.  But she did.

He loved dinosaurs when he was a toddler.  He played with Power Rangers as a kid.  His first bedroom was bold reds, blues, yellows.  Happy colors.  And he was a happy kid.

Except for when he wasn't.

Mostly, I think that when he wasn't happy it was because he was beginning to realize that his skin didn't fit right.  The world was too small, too straight, too.... just wrong.

When he wasn't happy he went to a dark place, inward, deep inside, and voices told him it was him that didn't fit right.  He was too big, too crooked, too... just wrong.

And, on some level, I think what the voices said was true.  He didn't fit right.  He was too free, too wild, too open, too observant, too wise, too... unearthly.

An angel.  A tortured angel.

He saw through all of us, through the need for a BMW, the need for the perfect hair cut, the need for an office job that pays 50k a year with health benefits and a 401k plan.  He saw the depths of the ocean and the smallest creatures as they crept.  He saw life as fragile and imperfect and too goddamn fucking hard.

Once, in the car when he was a young boy, he was struggling with a math problem in the backseat.  I remember the despair when he said "Ugh!  I'm such a loser!  I'm no good at this!"

My heart breaks for that kid.  The kid with lizards that he kept so carefully in a room whose door always had to be closed so as to maintain the right temperature as the beloved lizards, Luna and Sun, crept along their branches that reached up to the ceiling of his room.  That kid loved life, just not his own.

His mother always assured him that he was not a loser, that she loved him, that he was perfect the way he was, dreadlocks dripping down his back, plain black t-shirt over slightly baggy jeans and worn tennis shoes, drinking his yerba mate before heading off to another job, this time at the vet, that time at the shelter, this time at the reptile room, that time at the smoothie shop.

She loved him even when he drank himself to oblivion to chase away the demons, when she found drugs, pipes, empty bottles, and a passed out full grown man in her bathroom, still too drunk to pick himself up and head back to a bed.  She loved him even when he screamed at her "Why did you adopt me?!  Why should you love me!?  I'd be better off dead!  I should just kill myself!"  And even when she screamed back, out of years of pain and frustration, agony and a simple loss of what to say after she had heard these words hurled at her, thrown at her, leaving dents in her soul, "If you were going to kill yourself, you just would! You wouldn't be talking about it!"

Oh, what kind of mother says that to her son?  What kind of son slices himself up with a knife, hangs himself from the bathroom door in his mother's house, the house of the only person he could always turn to?

The kind of mother who is out of options, who is at her wits' end, who gives and gives and gives to a man who doesn't know how to do anything but take and take and take, crying all the while that he doesn't want to take, he'd rather be dead.

The kind of son who knows that his mother's home is where he needed to die.  And who is finally ready to do it.  He needed to be with her even in his last moments, even if that meant she found him, even if that meant breaking her heart one last time.

Carlos was tortured soul.  An angel sent here to battle demons.

An angel?  You ask.  How could you call this monster an angel?  He terrorized his mother, he destroyed himself, he caused everyone around him pain and misery.  An angel?

Yes, an angel.  Let us remember that Michael was an angel.  Raphael was an angel.  And yes, Lucifer, was an angel.  They were also the fiercest warriors.  They battled demons and fought endlessly against a reality beyond our comprehension.  And Lucifer, God's mightiest warrior, his most trusted, beloved soldier, dared to question his will.  So we label him devil.

So Carlos questioned the world.  He questioned the boxes we all live in.  He never belonged in a box.  He questioned the rules of the game.  He was never any good at games.  He battled with the voices in his head that told him he was in the wrong place, wrong time, wrong life.  Just because we couldn't hear the voices doesn't mean they weren't real, demons with black eyes and charcoal wings, snickering at his pain, chasing him wherever he went, turning dreams into nightmares and love into agony.  And he battled with the real live voices of those all around him who he knew were saying the same:  loser, waste of life, devil.  He battled and battled his way through a world he never really belonged in.  And he battled his way into a death that gave him the sweet release he had no other way of finding.  Like a warrior.

We say, about those who commit suicide, "if he could only have gotten through this phase, if he could only see, if she could only wait, if she could just listen."

Carlos did wait, he did see, he did listen, and none of it helped.  He put his pants on one leg at a time countless times, went into work countless times, surfed through his pain countless times.  He cared for animals, and he mostly remained calm and patient with those of us humans too attached to this world and determined to stay on our hamster wheels, running and running and going nowhere, then judging him for daring to refuse the wheel.  We say "carry on."  He did.  He carried on, and on, and on.  Until he just couldn't carry on anymore.

He did cause everyone around him pain, but only because it hurt us to see him hurting so badly.  Our hearts break to see him so broken, and always with that broken smile.  And he was so quick with a smile for so long, but it was always a smile with sadness in it.  He was ethereal, made of material that shimmered if you looked too close, like he was already half spirit, but couldn't shake his flesh.

Looking back now, I hear different words in his enraged outbursts, the quieter, softer, hidden words under the shouts and the yells:  "let me go.  let me go.  please just let me go."

There was no other path for Carlos, there was no day that saw a brighter future, the world was not going to change, and neither was Carlos, and the two could just never see eye to eye.

I'm a mother of a child very similar to Carlos when he was a child.  She's sweet.  She loves dinosaurs.  She's an angel.  She's ethereal.  She's an empath that carries a sadness in her that runs deep for others' pain, especially animals and small creatures.  And she's a warrior.  I'm lucky my aunt and I have seen the similarities from the beginning and I can try to learn from Carlos' trouble.  I can try to help her stay out of the boxes, shape the world to her vision, ignore the voices that tell her she doesn't fit.  

My grandma and my aunt have said to me, time again, "you're the perfect mother for a child like her."

I would say the same thing about my aunt.  No other mother could have loved Carlos the way she did.  No other mother could have seen his purity through his pain.  No other mother could have been strong enough to listen to his distress year after year, and still smile, still buy his tea and his granola, still keep a bed for him.

My cousin held on as long as he did because of his mother, the love, the bond, the only thing that kept him in his skin.  He didn't stay for drugs or alcohol, for money or material things.  His mother was what kept him human, flesh.

My uncle says he didn't kill himself.  The disease killed him, the depression, the voices in his head.

I disagree.

He killed himself.  He did not die a victim of depression or disease.  He died a warrior.  He killed those voices, the depression, the disease.  With a knife and a rope, a smile, and a fuck you, he escaped.

If there is a God, and even if there's not, I imagine that when he finally shed his skin, finally burst free from his earthly box, a giant fellow angel swooped down from above, eager to embrace his spirit, pulling him into the shroud of her shimmering wings and whispering, "finally, finally, finally, you let go."