Racine Lancaster

When She Made Me Promise

Growing up, I had spent many weekends sleeping in the childhood bedroom of a woman I never met. Everything stood where she had left it. The white canopy bed with baby blue accent flowers was accompanied by a small nightstand. On this table was a small book called “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, and a tiny lamp that I would leave on all night due to my fear of the dark. On this particular night, I stared at my shadow on the wall. My great-grandmother had been ill for a while. As I stared deeper into my shadow I began to think about her journey into death. All of a sudden it felt as if the Victorian walls of the home where my great-grandmother raised the grandmother I never knew were closing in on me and the floor was swallowing me whole. My breath had become shallow. My sight clouded with tears. It was in that moment that I had come to the realization that I was of this world, and because of it, I too would one day meet death. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was an eight-year-old having my first of many existential crises. My great-grandmother would succumb to her complications with diabetes March 11, 1995, The morning after my 10th Birthday. I am ashamed to admit how annoyed I was that my great-grandmother’s slow descent into death was overshadowing my birthday. Especially after the year I had. I was barely 10 years old, and I had already grown tired of talking and “living” in death. I wanted to focus on life. I wanted to focus on life because it was the only thing that distracted me from my nearly debilitating fear of death.