April 4 On My Heart
Written By: Henry C. Nelson
I share the accompanying video of my family made for my dear sister Cookie because it embodies this familiar story. It includes Cookies Three Daughters. The fourth daughter is one of the victims of this journey; you'll see many of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, her siblings, and I imagine you will also see yourself. Thank you for making time to meditate on two prominent dates, April 4,1968, the day of Dr. Martin Luther King's Murder at the Lorraine Motel in Downtown Memphis, Tennessee, and April 2, 2020, the evening our oldest sibling and sister "Cookie" died from Covid 19. Her vibrant 52-year-old Daughter, Melvenia, passed 8 hours later. We didn't know Mel was infected.
I stood at yet another "turning point." Those within my circle of love are familiar with turning points when one pauses to "ask for protection and care with complete abandon." Today, I take a breath to reflect and honor these personal memorial days. Cookie, whose government name is Lavonne Brazil, was hospitalized in March 2020 at St. Mary Mercy Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. A brief pause to recognize the coincidence that our mother's name is Mary. As we scrambled with our life-or-death dilemma, in January and February 2020, unarmed African Americans Manuel Taylor, Barry Gedeus, Donnie Sanders, Breonna Taylor, Daniel Prude, and Sterling Lester Chest Jr. were killed by United States law enforcement officers. Ahmaud Arbery was shot down by neighborhood vigilantes in Brunswick, Georgia.
On April 30, 2020, Cookie's 80 birthday coincided with a painstaking double funeral that included her youngest daughter, Melvinia Madison. We were not able to be there. Several courageous and caring Detroit friends and family gathered for a complex, awkward Zoom Video Homegoing service. I selfishly looked away after 10 minutes. Cookie's spirit was not there but in the room with me. The video funerals became a distraction. I was content as my mind wandered toward her, thinking about a visit to Detroit for Cookie's 70th birthday, where we had one of our casual conversations about faith, religion, and death. I adamantly said to her in my enthusiastic, matter-of-fact tone that I would not attend her funeral when she died. She looked at me with a stare of disbelief that I had only witnessed on my father's face when I was 28.
I had what felt like a natural rhetorical reaction to a point in a story he was relating when I said precisely, "You're lying, Pop; you must be joking." In that moment of sitting 8 feet across the room from him, I watched in slow motion as all 300 pounds of him began to rise from a chair quicker than I had seen him move in many years and take a step in my direction. Instinct told me to get up faster and step towards the door. He stopped and said, "Son, don't you ever call me a liar." I kindly agreed, and we moved on. We talked and laughed, and now I knew better. I understood it to be a disrespectful thing to say to him.
Following Cookie and Mel's deaths, as we navigated an unknown, difficult path to have funerals for my beloved sister and niece, more unarmed Patriots, Freddy Brown, Michael Ramos, Denzel Marshall, Shaun Fuhr, Maurice Gordon, and George Floyd, were eliminated.
The_numerous_memorial_days_of_African_Americans_killed_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_America was equally personal, heartbreaking, and unforgettable as the quick demise of Lavonne "Cookie" Brazile. For many years, April 4 represented primarily the reverence for Dr. King. My youthful spirit maintained the hope for an America that would always choose to cooperate with the necessary illusionary idea of "We the People." Often, I imagine possibilities of what could have been if America's fear had not murdered Dr. King.
Frustration and disbelief about the attitude of America's passive-aggressive leadership and disinformation that was saturating the news cycle were rising like the Memphis humidity. With reasonable deliberation, I know that sadness and anger are two sides of the same coin and have come to accept that my resentment was a cover for helplessness, which spiraled into fear of genocide of African Americans, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color at the time. With the arrival of overlapping trusted information, I reminded myself to step back from the conspiracy ledge of the Coronavirus being a planned intention to erase brown and poor Patriots. The death of my loved ones and the deceased family members of over 14,000 during the first three months of Covid 19's uncertainty was merely the beginning of a long, unknown destiny of surges.
Cookie surrounded by her daughters and and a grand.
I was also hopeful. Considering the confluence of circumstances, I believed America's collective situations would be discussed, solutions would develop, and most Americans would want to do the next loving and just action. With further understanding of the multiple catastrophes, medically and racially, at that moment, my naive instinct sincerely thought most of us would recognize that we are equally invested in current conditions. The culmination of distress seemed piled with unbearable, unordinary human experiences. Once the reality of monsoon grief rapidly washing over our family and many other families became apparent, we maintained hope for what eventually became unavoidable emotional trauma that pulverized my soul and the shared bereavement of families whose loved ones are among the 1,249,243+ COVID-19 deaths in America so far.
Cookie died of Kidney failure caused by COVID-19 pneumonia, satirically, 28 days before her birthday, and the crape draping of her Easter Star Badge, as part of the funeral ceremony for Order of the Eastern Star Members. The Winter and Spring of 2020 are bookended by African Americans not being able to breathe. Despite a delusional effort to cling to an air of youthful optimism about the American dream to create a better life than my ancestors had experienced, I was drowning in unimaginable oppression. The well-spring of hope, the illusion of justice, and equality in America were burst once again, and too many times, by hearing and feeling the deafening thought that the rule of law was not a 100-percent guarantee for me. I was seven months into the eighth grade at a predominantly European American school in West Memphis, Arkansas, when I read Letter from Birmingham Jail, where Dr. King writes, "I agree with St. Augustine that an unjust law is no law at all." Over the years, I have amended that statement to mean unjust and ambiguous.
We texted a couple of times while Cookie was hospitalized and spoke two weeks before her death. I couldn't understand why she had been in the Hospital since the second week of March. Neither did her four daughters, which included Melvenia, known as Mel to the family. On the phone, I heard her project the problematic, breathy words, "I don't know why, Lil' brother." That's how she referred to her six brothers. "They say I got some kind of flu." She said, "I'm not feeling so good; I'll call you later." I didn't get a phone call from her. That was the last time I heard her voice. An urgent message arrived from her daughter Casandra, saying, "Mom's not doing well; she's on a respirator, and the doctors are trying to pull the plug."
Cookie was conscious but not responsive for most of her last 12 days. The on-duty staff were kind and always willing to give a report. Contemplative moments allow me to recognize my selfishness with more empathy for what the Hospital's ICU staff were dealing with and to allow forgiveness for myself. Erin, my Fiancé', suggested making a video for the family and asking the staff to play it for Cookie. They reported that "She smiled" upon hearing it. Cassandra was allowed to visit for the last time. We were told, "There is only dress protection for one person, and the fewer people exposed, the better."
With the shock and confusion of having unfortunate conversations with the doctors at St. Mary's, my anger scaled! The last five days of trying to negotiate not releasing her from a respirator and contravening their efforts to do so with my sincere and self-convinced suggestion to perhaps place Cookie on Dialysis, the Doctor's reply was the same but for a different reason. "Kidney failure cannot be fixed on Dialysis, and her body is too weak for such a treatment." To this day, my response still causes tears, feelings of disbelief, desperation, and a little embarrassment as I said to them, "If you're telling me she's going to die, why can't you try Dialysis anyway or consider a Kidney transplant, I asked. The on-duty Doctor and social worker were kind, patient, and as compassionate as they were able to be during such a catastrophic experience for them that I could not and did not care to imagine. It did not take long for me to do so. I only wanted my sister to go home and be with her children, grandchildren, and more than 40 great-grandchildren.
After several days, I finally recognized they were trying to gently help us understand that another patient might survive on the respirator that was helping Cookie breathe. Cookie is not coming back. On April 1, all the information gathered about the rise in white blood count was good and evil. A good count defends against infection and disease. However, the other life-preserving count is going down. The Doctors were done with exhaustive talk about Creatine infiltrations, PH levels, glucose, and insulin injections. My heart deflated like a balloon, and there was a brief ache. They had given up on Cookie in advance of our desperate talk. Many phone conversations later, the Doctors were saying again, "Your sister's body is deteriorating. Her kidney is absolutely decaying; I'm sorry, nothing we can do will fix it at this point; if you don't give us permission to release her from the respirator, I will have to make the decision to do it for the Hospital". At that point, my only choice was to leave the conversation to Cooke's children to make arrangements.
As we are accepting and saying goodbye to Cookie, my older brother's wife is also dying from complications of a contrast dye given to her at a Baltimore Hospital. We got the news from Cookie's daughters that their sister Mel is ill, but she's OK. We are all relieved. Cookie and Mel have managed Asthma. Mel visited Cookie often as a primary caretaker for one another. After being released from the respirator on the afternoon of April 2, we received word at about 7pm that Cookie had passed. The following day, we are told that Mel died around 3am April 3.
Melvenia Madison, the daughter who transitioned hours after Cookie.
For years, my sister's spiritual faith was solid as an Order of the Eastern Star Member. Her daughter Cassandra has shared on two occasions a conversation with her mom a month before her death, that she listened reluctantly to Cookie sharing information about accessing life insurance and other documents that were in order after her death. Cassandra has since found peace in the certainty of Cookie saying that if she died right now, it would be alright. All she wanted to do was see her grandchildren grow up.
My opinionated dialogue with Cookie that I would not be attending her funeral if she died before me has become an integral part of our current spiritual relationship. She loved to laugh, and it will always be the infectious chuckle that swells my heart! After my selfish words to Cookie about my "transcendence" beyond the natural world of being a body, her voice elevated with a hurtful pitch, her neck, and head stretched back towards the shoulders with a deep breath and a sigh. I realized how out of touch I was when she said, "What? You're not coming to my funeral? How can you say that to me? You have lost your mind!" Surprised and rather timidly, I tried to explain that I believed in a metaphysical thought system that implied there is no such thing as death, there is only life eternal, and that she and I are, in fact, not a body, blah, blah, blah. At that moment, she had heard enough. "You're talking crazy," she yelled, ending that little chat of enlightenment.
Over the last five years, our "crazy talk" philosophical differences have become a genuine connection of spiritual humor between Cookie, Mel, and Me. I can see her plump, lighter shade of Brown. Mel's smooth, darker skin, Cookie's sideways grin, and Mel's runway model "sparkling like a new dime" smile; both features are familiar family characteristics she is saying to me, "Looks like you were right, Lil brother, you couldn't and didn't come to my funeral, I guess the jokes on me."
###
