When I was a senior in high school, I won the dance category of a local, prestigious competition called Spotlight sponsored by the LA Music Center. An article featured me in the LA Times, covering the achievement and my college plans. Within a week of publication, I got a call from the writer explaining that a sweet, older gentleman contacted the Times insisting that we might be relatives, as we share a surname.
I okayed the release of my info and within days I was invited to his house to meet and talk to him.
It turned out that the man, my cousin Benny Jr., was amidst gifting me in life-changing ways. He educated me on an entire branch of my family I did not know existed and then availed this family to me. Very much alive, he cosigned my access to his wife and their beautiful three sons and daughter, punctuating my younger-sibling glee with reminders that they, too, are my family (they have suffered me ever since). He showed me pictures of ancestors. He gave insight and history and reasons in our bloodline.
And then he became a spiritual resource, the ultimate example of how to siphon goodness as a choice. I use the word choice because though his longevity dealt him everything from Jim Crow race hatred to the current White House administration, his eyes were never absent kindness.
Always Umoja in his goals.
Always joy in his comings.
Always mercy in his lessons.
Always depth in his stories.
And despite any of our efforts to assuage his discomforts, he doubled-down on our stories, pun intended.
He reminded me that this kind of living is possible, that anchoring the soul in the residence of positivity makes complaining a form of asbestos. So it is with irony that I struggle with guilt about fervently regretting Benny’s departure from the planet (while being on the other side of it); in fact, it has taken me days to come clean with myself about this. I know that I am hardly alone.
But if he were here, with grace to spare folded on his shoulder and a joke or two tucked under wing, he would forgive me. He would forgive us all for having the nerve to wish he’d hung around 30 more years.
Or even ten.
I can hardly be mad at him. I watched in awe as he danced a brisk two-step at his 90th birthday party, his eyes shining; he could go few places from there other than up.
And he will be an absolute joy to our Aunt Margaret, Jessye Norman and Diahann Carol at the Gates.