A Tribute to Babs: The Foundation

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Diary of an Angry, Black and Blind Girl

Blog 3: A Tribute to Babs: The Foundation

Tomorrow is your birthday, Babs. And the world feels different without you in it.

I keep expecting a voice memo.

A laugh.

A reminder.

A “hey pookie pookie” that lands right on time.

Instead, I’m learning how grief moves. How it doesn’t come quietly or politely. It shows up in airports. In strangers. In church pews. In hospital rooms. In moments when I’m not looking for you, but somehow… still find you.

Since the moment you had your first seizure, time stopped working the way it’s supposed to.

Everything froze.

Days didn’t pass. They hovered. Hours stretched until I couldn’t tell what had already happened from what I was still bracing for. It feels like I stepped into a twilight zone where the world kept moving, but I didn’t.

And I’d already been standing still because of the macular degeneration happening in my eyes, the same diagnosis you experienced in your 70s. (If you’re in healthcare, you’ll catch that.)

There is a before.

And there is after.

And I am still standing in the doorway between them.

You leaned in close to me and whispered, “Something is happening.”

Not loudly.

Not dramatically.

Almost like a secret.

I tried to explain. I told you about the seizures you didn’t even know you’d had. I used the words the doctors used. You nodded. You understood what I was talking about. You heard me, and still said, “Something is happening.”

And then you kept saying it.

You needed to go to Greentree.

You needed to leave the hospital and go where you felt safe - close to your husband. He’s been your rock in moment you and our family took for granted. And you knew that! You wanted to make it convenient for him! (And we’re doing everything we possibly can to make sure he doesn’t feel alone, but we aren’t you!)

You trusted your nieces to handle what needed to be handled, and in different ways, we did. Nicole and I had different relationships with you, and I honor that. Our bonds were sacred in different ways.

But still, you knew something was happening.

You knew it was time.

You prepared us and Uncle Charles in your own way, even when we didn’t fully understand it.

Not casually.

Not as a suggestion.

With urgency.

Again and again.

Greentree.

Greentree.

Greentree.

That insistence has stayed with me. I still have the notebook you wrote on, and I’m going to frame it!

Greentree is close to Uncle Charles, your beloved husband of fifty-four years. The man you built a life with. The man you loved deeply. And long before any of this happened, you had already prepared.

Uncle Charles knew what you wanted, but he was in denial too. You were upset about something you didn’t fully understand, and you’re not here to see how deeply your absence has impacted him. But I see it. Nicole sees it. And it’s not all okay, beloved. I want so badly to tell you how it is now.

You made me and my Nicole (your only two niece-daughters) responsible for everything during your life and after your death.

You didn’t leave it to chance.

You are a Council woman. You and the aunts (Mommy included) are my example. Our example. 

So when you kept asking for Greentree, it didn’t feel like confusion. It felt like clarity. Like you were already leaning toward what came next while I was still trying to hold you in the present - as a child, as your daughter.

I walked you home.

I watched you take your last breath.

And I will carry that sacred responsibility for the rest of my life.

I would do it again, but with better clarity and deeper conversation. I want to talk to you right now.

But I need to say this part out loud.

I was not prepared for how you died.At all. 

When you left the hospital, you were still responsive. Still present. Still you. And then, when we were finally allowed into the hospice, into solace, you didn’t respond at all.

It was the end.

Not to our voices.

Not to our touch.

Not to anything.

I stood there trying to reconcile the woman I had just spoken with and the stillness in front of me. My mind kept asking, How did we get here so fast?

The nurses and volunteers were kind. Truly. Gentle and attentive. I don’t question their compassion. One of them even worked with you and had sincere compassion for our loss! I know you saw her, and when I’m ready I will go and say thank you. Give me a minute. 

But I keep asking myself:

Did they want you to come out of it?

Or was the outcome already decided before we arrived?

No one prepares you for how helpless it feels to walk into a room where life seems to have been quietly concluded without you. And here’s the part that makes people uncomfortable, but I’m telling the truth anyway.

I come from healthcare.

I know the system. I know the language. I know how liability is protected and how patients are moved through. I’ve worked alongside neurologists. I’ve supervised them.

And in the end, those same neurologists - people who once reported to me - became your providers in the most tender and sacred moments of life.

You were discharged as “a patient with potential.”

Those words matter. Because once you were released under that designation, everything that followed was treated as inevitable instead of preventable.

That discharge did not save your life.

It contributed to your death.

The system you once poured your life and soul into did exactly what it was designed to do.

What it did not do was protect you.

And silence would be a betrayal of both my grief and my professional integrity.
Also, I might jus be in denial. The very thing you said you protected may or may not have protected you. 

While all of this was happening - while I refused to leave your side - my own body was becoming another battleground.

I was facing the possibility of four months of chemotherapy.

Four months.

The doctors in Asheville weren’t aligned with the specialists at Duke. Different plans. Different urgency. Different answers depending on which room I was in.

I was trying to advocate for you and for myself at the same time.

I didn’t know whose life I was supposed to prioritize. And honestly, I still don’t, because I’m not okay that you’re not here.

It’s not okay.

And still, I stayed.

Even as my own future was being debated in conference rooms without consensus. No one tells you how lonely that is. And yet… you still found ways to show up for me.

I met you again in Miami—through a woman named Maggie, whose spirit felt so familiar it stopped me in my tracks. I call her “Mami Maggie” now, because I felt you in the airport, where grace and kindness met me when I didn’t have the strength to ask.

Mami met me in the airport through a precious colleague who has taught me so much. Maggie and her son, Angel, brought me to you through one of my closest colleagues. It was a whole moment. A whole vibe. I will never forget that night and everything that came with it.

It was you.

And then I felt you again last Sunday at church.

You know how we were raised. I was raised in a church where women didn’t preach. Didn’t wear pants in the pulpit. Didn’t prophesy with authority.  Heck - we were raised to not believe in prophesy at all!

And yet, the Bishop who poured into me last Sunday was a woman. In pants. In the pulpit. Speaking life. Prophesying over me and over Kaila with clarity and power.

We received it.

And then she blessed us - tremendously.

I feel like I’m becoming a baby in Christ all over again. Not ignorant. Not naive. Just open. Like God reminding me that faith can grow beyond how I first met Him.

And I feel like you wanted this for me - even though I’m conflicted about how it happened, given how you raised me.

At the same time, another truth surfaced, so stay with me here.

The churches I work for, leading praise and worship every Sunday, wasn’t concerned with my grief, my body, or the weight I was carrying.

They were only concerned with what I wasn’t doing for them.

That has always been the relationship. I wasn’t raised in that church. I’m not a member. Ever since I was excommunicated from the church you raised me in, my involvement elsewhere has been based on gifts and talent - not relationship.

I can perform all day.

But how much does that really mean?

Your transition has revealed a lot.

I haven’t left God.

I left a version of church that couldn’t hold grief unless it was convenient. A version of church that would rather humiliate than heal.

You knew I didn’t agree with that. And even though I knew you were disappointed that I was excommunicated from the church you raised me in - we didn’t agree, but you still loved me.

The Women Who Stayed - and the Trauma They Couldn’t Name

I have opened up like this before. I have trusted people I thought had my back, people I believed had my best interest at heart. And each time, I was met with limits and conditions, silence, or disappearance.

What has become painfully clear is this:

The only consistent source of love I have ever had in my life has been Babs, my other aunts, and my mother.

Not my children.

Not the men who fathered them.

Not institutions.

Not churches.

The women.

As complicated as that truth is, it is still the truth.

And yes - I have the nerve to be bold enough to write about it.

As much as I struggle with the Churches of God Holiness - its rigidity, its punishment, its ability to shame - I also have to acknowledge this: that church forced a kind of love into the women who raised me. A love that stayed even when doctrine tried to push my own family away from me.

When I was shunned for having Kaila, it wasn’t just a moment. It was a rupture.

That kind of spiritual rejection doesn’t disappear with time. It lodges itself in your nervous system. It teaches you that love can be revoked. That belonging is conditional. That joy comes with consequences.

And even now, decades later, my life is still shaped by that trauma, and more recently by the trauma of losing the matriarch of my childhood.

What I’m realizing, painfully and honestly, is that I am speaking aloud things my mother and aunts never had the language(or the emotional safety) to say.

They survived by enduring.

By loving fiercely without naming the cost.

By staying quiet so that life could keep moving.

Can I stay quiet? That would mean remaining unknown.

I don’t fault them for that.

I honor it.

But I also recognize that my work is different.

I am of a different generation and I understand my assignment.

I am feeling what they had to silence.

I am naming what they had to carry.

I am saying out loud what was never allowed to be said.

This is not rebellion.

It is inheritance.

The Friends Who Showed Up Anyway

Grief has a way of clarifying who is real without asking permission.

My best friend, Millie, lost her mother just a couple of weeks before Babs died.

I showed up for her, not because I had extra strength, but because love doesn’t wait until you’re ready. She needed me, and I came running.

And when it was my turn, she showed up for me.

Not with platitudes.

Not with pressure.

Not with expectations.

With presence. 

She didn’t rush me. She didn’t fix me. She didn’t make my grief about her discomfort.

She stayed.

And in a season where so much fell apart, her presence reminded me that chosen family can be just as sacred as inherited ones.

Then there’s our family.

Since your death, the group chats are alive. The Zoom calls are full. Everyone is showing up.

And Lord….. how we miss you.

You were always chiming in, magnifying glass in hand, refusing to miss a message, a face, a moment.

I miss you on those calls.

And I smile because I have your magnifying glass now. 🫶🏾

I inherited them. Thank you.

A small thing.

A sacred thing.

As if you’re still reminding me to lean in and see clearly.

Tomorrow is your birthday.

I won’t rush myself into gratitude without acknowledging the ache. I won’t pretend this didn’t change me.

But I will say this:

I am still here.

Still believing.

Still telling the truth.

Still standing. Because of the foundation you laid.

Happy Birthday, Babs.

Thank you for loving me without conditions.

Thank you for being one of the women who stayed.

Thank you for loving your sisters who also love me.

Thank you for guiding this season of my life and holding my hand and making sure I still feel your presence, even when I push you away.

I’m not okay.

I’m mad.

Big mad about how this happened and about the ways I wish I had shown up better for you, Mommy, and the other aunts.

But I hear you.

I see you - better than ever before.

Happy birthday.

I love you.

I miss you.

I see you.

And I will keep telling your story.

Always.