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.

My great-grandmother would be buried a week later. I sat up front at her wake with one of her daughters, my favorite great-aunt. I could hear soft weeping echoing around the room as a man I’ve never seen before gave the eulogy.The last two years of her life she couldn’t focus on anything but her pain and discomfort. During her last Christmas with us, my great-grandmother was almost unrecognizable. Her plump body had turned frail and rail thin. I had caught my grandmother putting food in a napkin and throwing it in the trash during one of our annual Christmas parties, after hours of her children begging her to just “eat something.” She caught me catching her, and with a stern voice, told me not to say a word. I nodded with confidence because despite her fragile state I was still afraid of my great grandmother. At the time, I was frustrated with the adults not coming to terms with the fact that the only thing that is promised to us was death. That no matter how many times they cried and begged their mother to eat, or searched for 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th opinions from doctors, their mother was already on her journey into death. I wouldn’t understand the grief and desperation myself, until someone I loved deeply was taken by the promise of death.

Before I met Corey, I met his voice. I was in bed pretending to be asleep. I never heard my mother so content and I never heard a voice so fascinating. I silently laughed at all the jokes that were only meant for my mother’s ears. I laid in bed hoping I would get to meet the person behind the voice. It didn’t take long for he and I to form a bond. I was like his side kick and becoming the daughter he would never live long enough to have. Corey would either bring me to school in the morning or pick me up afterwards. On the days he didn’t pick me up, he was usually at home waiting for me to return safely. On this particular day, I walked into the apartment and felt uneasy. It was the feeling of void I felt months prior while staring at my shadow self on the wall. The first place I went was the bedroom Corey shared with my mother. His things were missing. This was the only time I had hoped that we were robbed. My mother had arrived home a little after I did. My mother barely walked through the door when I shouted

“Corey’s gone!”

“How do you know?” she asked with skepticism. To be fair to my mother, Corey and I had a habit of making my mother the butt of our jokes so her not believing me right didn’t offend me.

“Because all his stuff is gone except money and a letter!” She picked up the letter and laughed as she read it. I was on the verge of tears and she was laughing? Maybe this was a joke?

A whole year went by before we would hear from Corey again.

“Is she still mad at me?” Corey asked on the phone.

“I don’t know, why don’t you ask her yourself.” My mother hands me the phone.

“You still mad at me?” he asked.

“Yes!” I exclaimed. “You just left us without saying goodbye. You don’t just leave the people you love.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. Would you want to see me again? I really do miss you and your mom?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Cool, How about next month?”

“You promise?”

“I promise” he said.

“When She Made Me Promise” by the band The Beginning of the End is the last song on their first album, Funky Nassau. The song fades in as if you’ve arrived to a party already in full swing. “When She Made Me Promise” is one of their lesser-known tracks, and if it wasn’t for producer Pete Rock using it as an intro to the solemn anthem “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y),” the song would have probably faded into the ethers. Throughout the song, drummer Frank “Bud” Munnings keeps tempo while bass player Fred Henfield performs his soliloquy to the listener. For 4 minutes and 14 seconds, you are taken on a journey of life, death and rebirth, or the beginning of the end as the band is poetically named. Death anxiety is something I have dealt with on and off throughout my life. It usually peaks when someone of significance to me passes on. The only thing that curbs this fear is knowing that if I live long enough, I will grow out of it. Turns out the only cure for death anxiety is to live a fulfilling life. “When She Made Me Promise” forces me to think about what happens after the promise of death is fulfilled with nuance. The song is already in motion before you realize what is going on, and the song feels like it never truly ends, it just moves on.