A letter to my Mema in her passing

Spoken at Joyce Evelyn Locklear’s Memorial Service

New Bethel Baptist Church,

Sunday June 26th, 2020

My Mema,

I’m not totally sure what’s unfolding in your passing. I feel relief — an exhale that you’re beyond the confines of this bodily difficulty these past years — that you’re free, again. It feels right — all in good order — and there’s an immense sadness for me. Sadness that you’ll never rub those worn and delicate hands through this curly hair of mine. Sadness that you’ll never be on the other side of the phone reminding me to keep my britches up. Sadness that you’ll never again hold my hand and say, “Thomas, pray for us now, son.” Oh, Mema, I will miss this, and I am glad you’re back with the sun, the wind, and the stars.

What feels clear to me right now is the magnitude of love I hold for you in my heart. How much I see my life now growing out of all you took care of. You have been one of the most important relationships in my life, and I know I’ll keep learning from our love and from your being here for the rest of my days.

Mema, I know I’ve only seen some small part of your life in my adult years. And, through your stories, I feel like I can touch what was alive before I came to Earth. Those stories I would beg and plead for as a child going to bed. Stories that would put me to sleep easy and stories that would keep me up all night. Stories that had me running down the stairs in the morning to ask, “mom, is this really true what Mema told me?” And I came to see that so much of what they were trying to tell me was true. And this shaped me, Mema — in ways I can see now and in ways I’ll only know with time.

Through your stories — and those I’ve been gathering in these past several months on my visits home, I’ve come to see you in so many forms: a mother, a ghord-maker, a basket-weaver, a plant-lover, a caretaker for all the children, a busdriver, a protector, a quilter, a Coharie Queen, a fancy-dancer, a faithkeeper, a provider, a shameless comedian, a cat whisperer, a story-sharer, a life-maker, and an indigenous grandma.

And when I think about all these roles you inhabited, I realize how brave you were. How much strength and faith you had to hold on the inside to live in a world that no longer understands and celebrates what many of these mean. Mema, I see you as a Matriarch — the one who looks after and brings forth all of Life — at a time on our planet where we’ve lost a lot of the knowing of what this really means for us. I feel how much pain encompassed your life — watching a sister die by gunfire at 7 years old, living in a marriage where your sovereignty, strength, and wisdom was not cherished, watching your eldest daughter’s life diminish because of a familiar and ancestral pain until she died all too young, a handful of bouts with cancer, experiencing the loss and destruction of the very lands that raised you, living through bigotry, racism, and exclusion without an identity to fall back on. I see the world and environment you chose to inhabit as one you probably knew couldn’t hold the fullness of your wildly loving spirit, and yet you came, and you never stopped loving. You never abandoned that whisper that brought you to this Earth.

Mema, I know there was a time, maybe even a few centuries ago, where your life may have looked a lot different. You would have been the wise council our people came revered and needed to keep living well. You would have been respected as the keeper of the stories. Your crafts, your dance, and your songs would have been paved the way for the young people to follow. Your faith and your knowing would have been held above all else. And still, you found a way to carry all these medicines for the people at a much different time on Earth. You were the council and listening ear for the hundreds of people, stopping by 320 church road. You were a keeper of the Old Ways with your gourds and your quilts. You paved the way for hundreds of kids, trekking them nationwide to see a world beyond Sampson County. You kept your stories alive. You were an expression of a love that only comes from someone who knows who they are.

I don’t know many people that have had a life as difficult and demanding as yours. I also don’t know many people that have cared for others as willingly and full-heartedly as you. Something about these two living side-by-side speaks to me the story of your life. One I hope to be able to fully grasp as I grow older.

Mema, I see that so much of my life today and what’s to come rises from the ashes of your life. Who you kept on being, amidst so much pain and challenge. My life is a result of your will to live and your capacity to live inside of love. I look at my budding relationship with this Earth, our Mother — to be able to tend her and be tended by her, and I see it’s only possible because you survived picking 200 pounds of cotton a day in the sweltering heat at 8 years old. I feel this connection to our people and where we come from in my bones. And I know this to only be possible because you kept on being Indian, no matter how much hate that evoked. I think about tobacco, a teacher becoming special to my life, and I remember that was the very first plant you tended. At 6 years old — in a very different context than the way I get to be with it. I have an opportunity to find my way back to these Old Ways because somehow you kept them alive for me — for all of us — when everything around you was trying to beat them out.

I’ll wrap up with this, my dear Mema. On one of my recent trips back home, it really hit me how many lives you’d touched. Anywhere I’d go in Clinton, upon introducing myself, I’d hear some version of, “if you’re Miss Joyce’s grandson, I have to hug your neck.” And then these kind folk would proceed to tell me some way you kept their fire burning when their days were dark. I was struck at your capacity to let love pour out of you when in so many ways, you were given so little. And I remember coming home to you that night, in one of our last conversations where you were really there. I asked, “Mema, how could you give so much?” You awoke from that fog that surrounded many of your final months — very alert for the first time that trip with me, and said, “Son, it’s simple. It was God’s Will.”

And Mema, you were so human. You had your bitterness. Your prejudices. The places where Life got stuck and hurt. The places you struggled to love. You had a wildly perverse sense of humor for an 80 year old. And that’s what makes this all the more special to me — you really were just you. Coming here as a part of God with your intricate and one-of-a-kind cloak.

Mema, you were here acting out a bigger story than most of us will ever comprehend. Something seemed to always be living through you, showing you the next step, bringing you back to your prayers. That’s one of the biggest gifts you leave me with. Mema, your stories and your love rest as seeds in the enclaves of my heart. I sense I’ll need the rest of my life to see how they’ll grow and shape what I become and what I tend.

I feel lucky to have an ancestor like you, looking after me, in the place we all come from and the place we’ll all one day return. I’m going to need you; this life here isn’t always easy; you know this. Keep me connected to my prayer. Keep me interwoven with the thread I came here to weave and follow. Help me feel and remember what it’s like to be loved where you now rest. I promise to keep crying, to keep missing you on this Earth, to keep noticing how you take care of me in the shining of the sun and the whispers on the wind. I promise to keep cherishing all that you were here, keeping putting down my tobacco and my cedar, keep on missing you and telling your story — so that you can reach that place you’re going — that place we need you to get to take care of us here.

Mema, in all your nuanced humanity and simple divinity, I am so grateful you were my grandma. I love you to the moon and back,

T