I stopped waking Mom up at the start of grade five when it would happen. She explained to the doctor that I was still doing it. He told her to limit my pop and gatorade. I wanted to tell him that I only drank pop at birthday parties and gatorade when my dad would stop at 7-11 after my baseball games. But I more wanted to evaporate into specks of dust right on that doctor’s table, so I didn’t tell him anything. The doctor explained that my bladder was overgrown. That it was too big for my age and that I simply had to wait for my body to catch up. Out of my control, really. That’s how I heard it, at least.

I developed a routine whenever it did happen after that. Something I could control. Sheets to the laundry pile. One towel laid on the spot. New sheets from the hallway closet onto the floor beside the bed. Lay on the dry side. Try to fall back to sleep. Without any feelings. No shame. Please no, guilt. Do all this in the darkness. Make the bed in the morning. Another day.

By grade seven it had reached a full stop. The warning signs became easier to read. Fighting with a maze of steps or turns or twists was a dead giveaway. The overactiveness probably slowed down too. My body caught up to me. Control of it was like looking up and finding the sun. So routine that it barely becomes a thought. Something that just happened. High in the sky. Again.

I knew before everybody. I was the most awake out of all of our family when Mom went to the hospital and never came out. This was a few years before Pops would need to be admitted. I learned then what the body does when it decides to give in. It runs ahead, forcing the person to now catch up. I noticed it in him slowly. He used to shoo the dog away when Blue would beg for food off his plate. A few years later he would leave her the bones with hefty chunks of meat and cartilage left around the knuckles. Towards the end he would rest his plate on the bottom shelf of the coffee table, letting Blue devour the dinner he barely touched. When she finished his food he would bring his plate back to the top of the table. He caught me watching him do this once. “It was just the scraps,” he said. His eyes pleaded with me. They were almost wet. I felt so sorry.

We buried him in the brown suit he wore to my cousin’s wedding back when I was still in college. I remember the photos of him in that suit on that day more than I remember that actual wedding. After a while, remembering the photos becomes a part of remembering the person. The remembering becomes a part of stretching out to hold on. A routine that becomes shorter and shorter and shorter everytime it happens. From being able to hold and touch someone to clenching onto memories happens in the blink of an eye. 

I knew something wasn’t right even before I woke up. My phone was on silent so it never rang, just buzzed. And buzzed. When the light started to peek through the morning clouds I heard it vibrating on my bedside table. Over and over. 

Thirteen missed calls. A dozen messages. All before eight in the morning. I scrolled down, the overlap of particular contacts connected one person and one person only. Only Jay would be privy and familiar with this select circle of work friends, friends friends, and family friends. Something bad had happened. My thoughts immediately drifted to a car accident. Or maybe a late night charge while driving, a brief slip in judgement. Everything would be the same. That’s what I told myself, at least.

Fellas he’s gone. I sat up after reading that text. All there was to do was stare at my phone. For two minutes or five minutes or ten minutes. What?? I waited two or five minutes, no response. When Batch picked up my call he spoke like he had sand in his throat. Jay’s gone. What are you talking about? He’s dead. What? He couldn’t breathe and stopped near a gas station. And? By the time the ambulance brought him to the emergency unit it was already too late. No. Please, no. You should come to the hospital. I could hear him trying to swallow the whole shore. Outside the window off my balcony the sun looked directly over the lake.

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I used to question why he uttered a phrase that seemed so inadequate to our present situation. Of course God would spare our lives. Why would he not? We hadn’t done anything evil and although there was a period of time where we didn’t take the best care of ourselves, we had functioning lungs and hearts and other insides that almost guaranteed the next morning’s rise and shine. God didn’t even need to worry about sparring us. 

Pops always knew things I didn’t. He was born and bred in the back country of Jamaica. Knowing how to herd farm animals and fend for himself at an age where I was just learning how to walk home from school on my own. When I reluctantly sat by myself at the dinner table, visibly frustrated with having to finish my plate of well done pork chops and green beans, he told me about his childhood, growing alongside twelve brothers and sisters, where “anything tan too long, serve nedda master.” When I later asked my aunt what the heck that meant, she told me to finish my food regardless of how it tasted. I wondered how she innately knew that I wasn’t particularly fond of green beans. 

God did spare us for a long enough time. Long enough that I started to understand why he asked Him to do so every single night. So many things happened in between my disdain for bowling and my distaste for certain vegetables and my father and my functioning lungs and hearts and insides that I wished I started asking Him earlier to spare us. And asking Him more seriously. I understand that the next morning’s rise and shine isn’t completely guaranteed. 

Pops taught me so many lessons. He did so opaquely. Through stories. And for the longest time I assumed that I got all my writerly sense from my proof reading book reading mother. I know different now. Pops learned me through grande stories and short sentences. Words that took you underneath deep deep waters. Understanding that you could only fully realize after you went to sleep and woke up and repeated that rhythm many many times over without giving thanks. I know now. I’m thankful now. I hope God spare my life too.

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