The Potty Mouth Granny

  • Losing My Brother: A Soliloquy

    November — He was missing. Missing is a strange word. It sounds temporary. Like misplaced keys. Like a sock behind the dryer. It suggests retrieval. Resolution. But this was different. Received a call telling me that he was missing. Sending my son to the police station to file a missing person report. Asking friends on…

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  • Surviving My Brothers

    Grief keeps its own calendar. February comes in like a quiet thief, soft-footed and merciless, carrying dates that glow like coals. My brother Randy — gone on his birthday February 7th, just thirty-four, the candles never meant to be memorial lights. Four days earlier I was in a hospital bed with a broken leg, my…

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  • Sole Survivor

    Six years next month. Six quiet, thunderous years of carrying a title no one applies for. A sole survivor is the last remaining member of their immediate family—the final branch on a once-leafy tree. My mother gave birth to three children. I am the only one left. No siblings to call and say, “Do you…

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  • When Blood Recognizes Itself

    Lately, I’ve been seeing the faces of my ancestors in strangers. A jawline in the grocery store line. A pair of eyes on the bus that feel like déjà vu with a pulse. A woman laughing two tables over, her mouth moving exactly like my mother’s used to when joy caught her off guard. It’s…

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  • I Wonder

    As the season changes from fall to winter, I’m sitting here thinking as usual and listening to music. As the song ‘That Girl’ by Stevie Wonder is playing, and I’m thinking about my Aunt Mary who died the same year when this song was released. And my other matriarchs. I wonder if they are proud…

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  • Grief, Energy, and Coping

    Facebook memories can be a very painful experience. A picture of my brother Randy that I had posted two years ago popped up while I was sitting down thinking about how I have outlived my entire childhood family. Literally everyone with whom I had formed my earliest memories with has crossed over and it’s a…

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  • The Harvest Season

    When the picture on the right was taken back in September of 2020, I was in the throes of grief. In the trenches. Wallowing in pain. My last remaining sibling had died in February and the country shut down a month later due to the pandemic. I was working from home, and stuck in the…

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  • The Day Before the Holiday

    Tomorrow is the 4th of July and as a child, it would mean good times. My multigenerational family would gather together to celebrate and I would play with my cousins and friends until everyone went home. I can still remember the smell of the barbecue grill my Aunt Maggie would set up at 6am. I…

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  • PTSD, Black Youth, Drugs, & The Lack of Empathy

    My daughter is 22 years old and she’s been through a lot mentally over the past eight years. She’s lost so many friends to murder on the streets of Chicago that it’s heartbreaking. Some of her classmates from grade and high school. Friends from the various neighborhoods we have lived in. So many lost children…

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  • 2022

    This year was filled with some highs but mostly lows. The highs were the birth of my second grandson and attending a Duran Duran concert. And getting one of those “good” government jobs that Black folks aspired to for decades. But it was a rough year for me again because I lost more people I…

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