Earliest Memories of Loss

[Adrienne] What was the earliest time, what's the earliest concrete memory that you have of feeling loss, absence, grief?

[Hakim] Hmm, that's a good question. The earliest memory of loss. Yeah, it's a bit of an unorthodox one, but I would say I think of loss not just in terms of people or animals or things, but of just moments in time that I can't get back, almost like a kind of nostalgia.

I remember when I graduated from fifth grade, for example, and I had to go to middle school. I was very afraid of middle school. I was very afraid of all the people I'd meet, like just being far away from home. Middle school was like an hour away. I loved my elementary school. I loved the friends I made, the teachers I had.

And when I had to leave, I had this distinct memory of feeling like I'm losing a part of my childhood I can't go back to anymore. I definitely cried that summer. I don't often cry when I have to transition to a new thing, but yeah. I remember crying, feeling very sad, very just somber about the fact that this part of my life was completely over and I can't go back to it.

So it felt like losing something to me. That's the closest thing to grief I think I felt at that age. And yeah, I was right because middle school was horrible. I was even more sad and more upset. I felt like I was grieving that loss for three years until I found a place where I actually belonged.

So yeah, I was like 10. That was probably my earliest memory feeling like what people would call grief.

Mother Learns Her Father Died

[Adrienne] Um, tell me about Granddaddy Walter.

[Marilyn] Okay, so Granddaddy Walter was always there.

He was a farmer and he tried very hard to provide for his family. And I think he did a good job at that, but he was really fussy. He just really, fuss, fuss, fuss.

But in retrospect, sometimes I think about him and I know the tough life he had, so I realized why he did that. But when I think about my daddy, I quite often get sad.

I remember I was in the basement putting some perm on my hair, which is something I probably should never have done. But anyway, my oldest brother called me and he said, he wants to talk to me. So my husband brought the phone to the basement and I said, "tell him that I'll call him back". But then my brother wanted to tell Firosey that my daddy had passed.

And so he, so Firosey, insisted that I knew that my dad had passed. And I had perm and stuff on my hair that I had to wash out. So that was really a tough thing to hear that he had died.

[Adrienne] So you heard this while this very acidic chemical that's bad for black people was on your head and so you're you're handling this chemical. It's dangerous and you had to deal with that while you were sad and wash it out.

[Marilyn] Yes.

I Didn’t Want Ya’ll To Get Upset

[Marilyn] Now his service now, I would like to talk about the importance of music in helping you recover from grief. I want to contrast his service to my mother's service. For my mother's service, there was a high school choir from the school where my brother taught at.

They came and they sang at the service for my mother. I think it was, like, a good number of them, maybe about 20 of them. They sounded really good and they sang upbeat songs. But for my father's funeral, when they brought the casket down the aisle, they played the saddest song ever.

And I mean, I just couldn't help it. I had to really, really, really fight not crying because I didn't want my kids to see me being upset like that.

Wait, why didn't you want us to see you upset?

Because I thought y 'all might get upset.

And then in reference to the music, there was nobody there that really sang uplifting songs. There was a lady that sang 'Precious Lord, Take My Hand'. It was a version that I had never heard of before.

And it was very sad.

Unsolicited Advice

Yeah, I feel like people—and this happens a lot with people when they are grieving—people would like to offer you their advice. “Uh, she's in a better place”, you “know, God's in control, God's this, God's that…”

And I remember clearly somebody telling me that, right. And this person lost someone to them—someone close to them—and they really lost it. I had to help them out, and I have to find somebody who could do grief counseling for her after she told me to get over it.

“That's life. You know, that happens.” So I don't know why people say that. I know people do not want to hear that nobody wants to hear that, you know it was their time. It was their time and nobody wants to hear that

[Adrienne] Mmm.

Loss: An Element of Childhood

[Adrienne] …and you felt this profound sense of of, like, loss, absence.

[Hakim] Hmm. Like, in the last couple of years.

[Adrienne]Yeah. Any recent. Recent. Recent. More recent than being 10.

[Hakim] Yes. Um, yeah. Hmm. Um... Yeah, there are a few examples I can draw on.

Um, I'll give an example where I lost someone. Well, I lost three people when I was in graduate school. I lost two aunts of mine and my grandma. And it was all within about the same two-year time frame. And, I think for me, it was very akin to the moment of transition when I was 10, because it wasn't just losing my family.

It was just the realization that the generations in my family are changing. Like, I'm entering a generation where I'm gonna start to lose people who I grew up with, who I came to know really deeply, who cared for me as if they were my parents. And now I'm entering the generation where I have to become those caretakers now and be...

Like, it felt, again, like losing an element of childhood. Losing an element of youth.

It felt, again, like losing an element of childhood.

But Grief Just Is

[Adrienne] …and but at the same time we're told in terms of the the cycle of grief—the stages of grief—that it's not linear and you're going to experience these different things multiple times. These different stages multiple times and that just seems like something that that, just, I don't know that ‘is’, and it's gonna happen for the rest of your life. And I don't understand why that's bad

Heart Attach - The Beginning

[Adrienne] Do you mind if I ask you about...

[Hakim] No.

[Adrienne] Okay could you relay to me the story that I already know for the folks that will be watching this at the concert. When was that 2020? I got a call from you and I found out you have been in the hospital. Can you tell me now, that you're recalling it right under a camera.

[Hakim] So yes, February 2020, I checked myself into the ER in Boston because I was having severe chest pains and problem breathing. After a number of tests, I found out that I was having a heart attack in that very moment.

Loss of Health

[Hakim] I’m alive.

[Adrienne] So when you think back on that now, is there anything—what if anything—that you don't have is gone now in terms of you related to that? And has anything filled up that loss?

[Hakim] Yeah, this feeling that people who are young have that they're invincible, that that they will live a long time. I think even throughout the procedure, even while I was in the hospital, I had this optimism like, "I'm sure everything's gonna be fine. It can't be that serious. I am still young. I still feel healthy.”

Then after I got let out of the Hospital, I thought, "no, I’m not. Like, I'm not a healthy person. Like I've got this disease that I always gonna have.”

They didn't fix the root cause. They just fixed the symptom.

So, I think the thing that I lost the most was just the sense of eternal youth. I felt old after that, and I still do. I try to stay healthy and active. I tried to work out all the time. But I came to grips with the fact that i'm probably going to die earlier than most people I know.

Like my prognosis for someone that young, a black man with heart disease, is not very long.

Unsolicited Advice

[Adrienne] Were there things you expected from other people? So, what would you have preferred that lady say to you?

[Marilyn] I think she probably could have said that "My condolences,” or "You know I'm sorry". "I'll be checking in on you”

Anything like that, but nothing like, "it was her time". Nobody wants to hear that, again.

[Adrienne] I know that sometimes I—when I was younger—I hadn’t… not a lot of people had died around me yet. I hadn't been to a lot of funerals… funerals that I had gone to when I was very small and young.

And when that started happening I always felt like I needed to say something deep. And it just seemed like hearing people say, "my condolences, my condolences" over and over and over again: it just seemed like I didn't understand how the person who was grieving wouldn't feel like that was hollow.

And so I guess I'm asking you, does it feel hollow for you? It sounds like you're telling me that that's what you wanted. That would have been helpful, even if you heard it a million and one times.

[Marilyn] Yeah, I think that would've been more helpful than "she's in a better place."

A Date That’s Too Hard To Think About

[Adrienne] Do you feel comfortable talking about Aunt Vert or Grandmama Jody?

[Marilyn] Absolutely.

[Adrienne] Okay. When did... Well, I guess when did Grandma Jody die? Because I was young.

[Marilyn I think it was around 1997, to be honest with you. I was one of five siblings. There were five of us. I was the only one who did not commit that date to memory because it was too hard to think about.

More Unsolicited Advice

Well, people always like to give this advice that, “well, she was in her 80s, she's in a better place” and I will always tell them “I don’t care if she was 180, when your mother goes, you are going to miss her.”

So that was some unsolicited advice that they could have kept.

Reminders of Loss

I feel like I don't need reminders. I'm blessed. I have a really nice memory. I remember lots of things in great detail. I think that's what makes me a great teacher, a great academic. It's what allows me to have deep connections with people.

I remember a lot of the memories we shared together and that we built. They mean everything to me. Honestly, losing my memory in old age would be far worse of a loss to me than losing any organ. My memories, I feel like, are all I have.

I'm addicted to them. I collect everything. I save everything. I might be a hoarder when I'm older. Who knows? I value my memories so much, more than most people I know. I don't need reminders of those things.

I remember every single day of what I went through with my health scare. I think about the people in my family and my friends who I've lost all the time. What I think I have more trouble with is remembering it and taking the positivity out of it instead of just remembering the negative emotion.

But I don't. What I really remember is often the fear and the pain. I mean, God, I remember the pain. The post -surgery pain was debilitating.

Should We Forget Things?

I do also think that with remembering everything, I do want to work on just forgetting things sometimes. And I don't think I'm able to half the time. Sometimes I really want to forget things and, I just, how can I?

I will always remember them. I keep remembering them. So that's a struggle that I think I'm going to have until my memory starts to fade.

[Adrienne] Well, again, like, should you? Because, like, for example, I don't, uh, in The Lost, we've also talked about, we were talking about in the context of, like, relationships, when any end, through death, falling out, whatever, and sometimes people tell, they, they imply that forgetting is the way to.

you know say um i guess i kind of want to push back against that um because you're saying to yourselves you're saying like to yourself sometimes i want to forget and it's like how much of how much of what i just said like goes into

I guess maybe I should use the word forget more carefully because I like having the knowledge, right? I wish what I could forget, when I say forget me, I wish I could move on more is what I'm saying because I don't think it's possible for me to forget certain things, like certain traumas, certain losses, like how it's part of that, how can I forget it?

It's more like I wish I wouldn't dwell on it, I wish I wouldn't remember it all the time, like I wish my mind could just like sit still and just be in the moment sometimes. And I feel like because I remember so much I often feel like I'm living in the past and I don't know if that's a problem other people have as much or people I know, but I wish not just, I don't want to forget the event, I want to forget the emotion that I think makes me remember that event in nothing but a negative light, like I wish I could just move past that and just be present in the moment, form new memories.

I think people who don't tend to remember the past in much detail can do that really easily, they can move on from things because they don't have this clear vivid memory of the thing that happened, but when you do, you just, you feel like you can't really move on from it in an efficient way that other people can, so I think maybe that's what I'm wishing for, just like being able to just accept and move on even though I remember this thing.

Forever

So sometimes when I think about his service, I think I feel sad because of the music.

You would have preferred happier music.

Well, yes, I'm just happy I uplifted music, yes.

Okay, do you want us to do happy -uplifting music for you? Or do you want us to be super sad?

I'm never dying.

I'm gonna haunt you forever.

Remembering People Well

So one thing I try to work on more is just remembering the positive memories. I think something like psychologically, we tend to like remember negative things easier.

Do you think we should?

I want to. Yeah. I mean, I think deep down, I'm still an eternal optimist.

Like I'm always, always deep, deep down a positive person. I want to take the positive message from everything. So it really sucks that like, I tend to remember the negative memories in far more greater detail than anything else.

And I have to like train myself to like remember these people and like the way I want to, right? But instead of just remembering like seeing them in an open casket, right? Like, um, I think it's other people that help me with that.

Like when I see Brian, for example, I remember his mom and I remember all the great things about her because they were so alike, you know? So I think the positive memories I want to remember are just in other people. And I just have to draw it out.