From the Ashes

Octavia Butler wrote, “In order to rise from its own ashes, a phoenix first must burn.” in her novel, Parable of the Talents.  I feel I’ve burnt down to ash and reconstituted myself many times over in my life.

My initial foray through the flames was in leaving Kosovo as a boy in March of 1981.  It took me many years to realize how traumatic that experience was.  As a boy just turning seven, I did not have the knowledge or the words to articulate the ache in my soul.  I was leaving my homeland with my mother and two brothers, so I felt simultaneously unmoored and anchored.  We were off to join my father who had emigrated a year before us.

The spiritual pain I felt was in leaving behind my paternal grandmother, who I was very close to.  I only realized the depth of that loss at nearly thirty years old when my younger cousin was doing a writing assignment for college.  She interviewed my older brother and I to learn about our experience in immigrating to the United States as children.  At first, I answered her question by saying that it was sad that I was leaving the life I’d known behind.  When she asked why specifically, I responded through a trembling voice, “Because we had to leave our grandmother behind.”  As tears started to flow from my eyes, the grief overcame me.  I never laid eyes on her again, and she died when I was a teenager.  My father was unable to go back for his own mother’s death because we were not yet U.S. citizens.  He was forced to mourn her from afar.  In answering my cousin’s questions, I had finally given voice to the grief that my 7-year-old self couldn’t.  My grandmother was an incredibly kind soul and her absence left a void.

Turbulent flames would threaten my soul again when I lost my mother at 25-years old to cervical cancer.  She died two months shy of her 46th birthday.  I often feel like I ghost walked through that first year after losing her.  She was the most important person and most important influence on my life.  The magnitude of this loss still has reverberations to this day.

A year and a half later, my father died from cancer at the age of sixty-one.  He passed away about six weeks before my 27th birthday.  A month prior to his death, he left us with a selfless act.  My father encouraged my brothers and I to go to my aunt’s house for Christmas.  We didn’t want to leave him home alone and feeble, but he insisted that we go be with family for the holiday.  I often think that although we had hope for a recovery, maybe he knew that he was not long for this world.  My father knew we’d need the support of our extended family to endure the impending loss.

Although my brothers and I were fortunate to be close and to have a closeknit extended family during these losses, there is kind of an untethering that happens when you’re bereft of both parents.  At the time, I described it as tangibly feeling that my invisible psychic safety net was gone.  And it was definitively gone.  From those ashes, I slowly reconstituted myself again.

In the succeeding years, through all of life’s turbulence, financial hardship, and a failed marriage, I persisted to find joy and rebuild my soul after each collapse.

In my first essay on the original version of this blog, I came out to the world as a queer man at 43 years old.  That was incredibly tough as I also shared a childhood trauma at the same time; one I had long repressed.  I was open and vulnerable to the world.  The essay was met mostly with love and support, but there was criticism, too.  It hurt, of course, as some people said things that they thought were helpful or honest, which actually weren’t.  Others adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude.  I didn’t push conversations with anyone who wasn’t ready for them because I’m infinitely more than my sexuality.  However, I also had to learn to navigate this newest incarnation of myself.  In some ways, I’m still navigating this altered reality nine years later.

During the last five to ten years, I’ve had to adjust to some irreparably changed relationships, betrayals of trust, and losses of friendship.  Losing people to death is finite, but to mourn the living is an entirely different heartache.  As painful as these fires inside me have been, I have emerged renewed in my purpose.  I learned from my mother the art of making medicine out of pain, about not letting anyone or anything steal your joy.  I learned kindness and grace.  I learned resilience.  I learned to rise from the ashes.