A Clumsy Elegy: John Lewis and Cousin Carol

The grief continues. I don't know about you, but I went to bed with grief sitting on my chest, and woke up with tears just waiting to fall. Too many ancestors were created this week. Brave. Irreplaceable. The testimony of the lives of men like John Lewis and CT Vivian shout! Their lives are loud with decades of keeping one hand on the plough of protest and change, and the other to the Promised Land. Their integrity was evident to all, through speeches, through blood.

What stark relief. What contrast: that ancestors Lewis and Vivian constantly put themselves in harm's way for the people of this country, while our current administration prefers to harm others for self-gain.

I lament the people we know and don't know, who kept their hands to the plough, lived with integrity, and died in an era with politicians too much like the Bull Connors and George Wallaces they first fought. I lament the 400 years that have passed with emancipation still in the distance. I lament that Ancestor Lewis, riddled with cancer, was compelled to be out, masked, and protesting because his country failed him, yet again, in the twilight of his life.

Pancreatic cancer consumes you from the inside. Steals your ability to walk with strength; to speak up or act up; it wants to devour who you are and replace it with a shell.

Don't let anyone tell you that death is a blessing. It's a paltry consolation; perhaps an escape from the perpetual wantonness of this world, or a crumbling body. But if death were a blessing, God would have invited it into Eden instead of giving His Son to vanquish it. Death doesn't deserve honor or thanks or praise. It robs and it perverts and it decays. No; I will save my praise for life.

My cousin Carol, a beautiful soul who has towered over me all my life with a kindness that exuded belonging, was taken by pancreatic cancer last weekend. John Lewis was taken yesterday. The grief is unruly, intertwined, distinct. They are at rest, but oh, if only their eyes had seen Jubilee healing. Jubilee justice.

The plough is ours. The field is watered with our tears.

Press.

Photo Credit: Clay Banks