Happy Birthday to My Bay-Bay

I claim him. He's mine. Forever more until the day my God allows us to cross paths again to mend my heart that's been broken since age 9. All I know of his death is that he died of a massive heart attack on the steps of a friend. The rest is history and to be quite frank, doesn't even matter. The family came to a consensus not to tell me about his death until after the service. They knew I'd loose my mind. Oddly enough, it wouldn't have mattered one way or another. But what about my heart? And mending it? Impossible feat.


I'd just seen him the night before his death. He kissed me goodnight. And when I woke up the next morning, a copy of Aladdin was laying on the bed. Yet another gift from Bay-Bay for his Nurl-Nurl.


Yea, that man, is all mine.


I don't write about him often because the tears flow with ease. And I don't talk about him. It's impossible for me to tell you just how much he meant and means to me without a snotty nose, red tear stricken eyes, and much heaving. 


February is a super hard month for me. February like holidays and family gatherings remind me that who I miss more than words or even these tears can explain, isn't here. Furthermore, it's our birthday month. He the 19th and I the 28th. The perfect Pisces pair.


At 7, he insisted on a birthday dinner at Red Lobster for me, with the family, for my first time. And I tell you, I was the happiest little girl watching the lobsters in the tank as he explained to me that those lobsters soon will be someones dinner. 


I pray that I make and have made him proud, because life has never been the same since he departed. My grandma yells at me to this day because I don't call her like I should. And I know I'm wrong, but he's not there. Someone else is there in my Bay-Bay's place. I should still hear his hearty, boisterous laugh in the background or the horrible cinematography from his Sci-Fi flicks. I remember spending summers and nearly every weekend with my grandparents riding around in his white van with the burgundy interior and blue U-Haul floor cover in the trunk. Uncomplicated and true, true love.


My ex use to yell when we argued that "No one will ever love you like me". No sir, no one will ever love me like my grandfather did. The only time I cried over him was he I knew I'd never walk into my grandmother's project home and see him stretched out in bed, or ever see his beret hats or white button up shirts stretched over his protruding belly. He, was love.


And the amount of tears and snot I've blown in his remembrance, I will and pray to the high heavens for another day with him. Just to tell him one more time how much I love him. I didn't know how to as a child, but I'm sure he died knowing that there was one little girl left behind, would grow up with a broken heart because he wasn't there, loved him more than what her childlike vocabulary could express.


This year makes 16 years. And there isn't a year that goes by that I don't acknowledge his birthday or day of death. But then there are the days between: Christmas, Thanksgiving, my birthday, rough days, good days - that I don't pray for the closure that now as an adult woman, I never received as a child girl. I know he's gone. And I know that he physically is not coming back. And I know, at least I feel as though he is OK. I saw him a dream a little over a year ago, first time in over 10 years I'd seen him in something other than pictures. And he sat wearing his blue beret hat and white buttonup shirt stretched tightly over his belly. I woke up sweating, walked into my living room, hoping and praying I'd see him there. But he wasn't.


My mother is getting married this summer and Lord knows, as joyous as the day will be, to look into the audience and not see his black face all dressed up glowing and full of love, it will be harder than what I can tell you. But we'll make it thru, because I know his spiritual presence will walk us down the aisle. 


Sunday is his birthday. I don't know how old he would've been. I just know I have to say happy birthday to the skies, thru my tears, and let him know that this now grown woman misses him just as much if not more than the girl child he left behind and that my love, to this day is unyielding and unmoving.