Good Grief

A Meditation: T.R.O.Y. or Grief as Black Inheritance

me, life, and lemons have been intersectional like shit over these past 2 years. The homies said I’m handling it with grace; factually, I’m giving it all to the creator because I’m tired. I’ve written before that I’m not over my sister’s passing, which, to be completely fair, I was warned about. I had a long conversation with my oldest friend, Kenny, who also lost a sibling. He said that I would never heal, but I will gain distance from the reverberating pangs and chasm created in her absence. I thought I was distant. It’s been a minute since Bean passed, but I recently found a video from Christmas ’98. There’s a scene on that tape that set a bamma smack off.

I know we’re supposed to let last year be last year, but ‘25 done rippled into ‘26. From the macro, these fools still out here tryin’ to run back the 3rd reich, and in the micro, my pops has been in and out of the hospital for over a month. And though I’ve done a good job of roughing off the last clingy hands of the former year, the chorus of Simply Red’s Holding Back the Years has been on loop, these doldrums got a full chorus of I’ll keep holdin on, crooning in my subconscious, and consciously I’m like no, the fucclecheng¹ you won’t.

The past 30 days have been wild. I don’t think I’m having a crisis; it feels more like a steady barrage of breakthroughs. There have been several confrontations and life choices made to navigate what has been happening. As I decide in each set of circumstances, I balance whether to continue on the same path and expect different results. Or break what feels like strictness and shackles made to tether the ideas around emotions to a specific image of narrative that I or others have constructed for me.

A lot has stemmed from my parents’ decision to downsize. The house they purchased in a tony suburb is about to go on the market, and to prep, we’ve been helping them pack damn near 40 years of life into cardboard boxes. My moms is excited, my pops, not so much.

I’ve been watching him hold on to things my entire life, and much like the relationships between fathers and second sons who lack the onus of carrying on the family legacy as the 1st son, ours has been no different. I have been the obstinate one, opting to pursue the passions of my youth, the art I was taught to love, the music I was taught to cherish, to tell my own story, all of that against the familial folkways set at my birth and the vision of my life as mitigated through the eyes of my parents. So I’m watching all this, holding on, and I’m wondering why he can’t let go, wondering why there’s this issue with being old. But I get it, if you’ve been basically taking care of yourself since you were a teenager in the late 30’s Bedstuy, Brooklyn, where the do or die part held some of the bricks you personally laid in the foundation, I would understand that the idea of aging gracefully is a crap shoot. We are all marching toward the precipice of our own mortality, and every solar rotation, every loss of a loved one or hero of my youth, with an in memoriam and/or a GoFundMe is eye-opening, to say the least.

I’m watching my parents age, and for sure they couldn’t be more polar opposites, where my dad is lamenting that which is lost in his personal freedom and self reliance, my mom is seizing the days, burning every minute like it’s precious, opting in on choosing her peace in the way she wants it and intent on dragging whomever is trying to defer her continuing dreams of aging gracefully, into the brightest of futures.

So all these plans hit a brick when my pops had to go into the hospital in the middle of last month. Literally saw dude on a Tuesday. He and my mom continued their ritual of the off-key harmony birthday song, which I’ve embraced as a staple of the solar rotation, and he was all good. Then, 2 days later, not so much. Just like that, it’s hospital: visits and coordinating schedules, car-sharing services, and who can do what. Now he’s at rehab, and it’s a wash, rinse, repeat of the aforementioned, and my siblings, niece, and I are in the throes of the bedlam that is managing aging, personal responsibility, and one’s own healing.

In these moments, I remember what Bean, my sister who passed, brought to our collective: her ability to hold it down no matter the scenario. Her sense of giving, her ability to wrangle my parents and keep them on task, and her foot-in-ass approach to getting everyone to march and proceed with the plan, so in her absence, we are all assuming roles that we weren’t built for, and it showed. To keep it a solid 2, I think we all leaned in on this: Bean, as I’m learning, was very much the glue, literally holding us together, with 5 siblings, each with their own families. Bean made sure we were all notified and connected, and true to her profession, would serve as mediator and consigliere between our parents and us, and within our sibling circle.

So personally, I feel like I’m scrambling; my siblings seem so much more together, but I feel that they miss her too, not just for how she would have stepped in, but because she was a part of our familial Voltron. A piece is missing, and that shit ain’t cool by any stretch. I’m back in that space that my mans Kenny, spoke about; this grief remains as steady as an integer constant, however, the time that has transpired, along with what I feel are consistent reminders of who she is and what she wants me to do, has largely kept me solid, but I promise there are days.

I was finished helping my parents pack up. My mom told me to take the video camera that my dad had squirreled away in the basement. I tossed the bag into the whip along with some speakers and vintage stereo equipment, then dipped for the hacienda. Unpacked all my things, set the camera on the table, and plugged it in. I charged the battery and popped the tape in—and realized it was from 26 years ago. Christmas ’98, when my mom was sick, and we had gathered for the holiday. The only reason the tape existed at all was that my dad wanted to have it for her when she got home from the hospital.

I hit play. The first thing I heard was her laugh, and I got choked up. Then she comes into focus, her full self: funny, loud, joyful. I was overwhelmed by all of the emotions. My grief had me suspended in that liminal space between joy and deep sorrow. I was crying and heaving while also laughing because it had been years since I’d heard my sister laugh with her full voice. I cried for damn near an hour, rewatching the same ten minutes of video, not that there wasn’t more on that tape, but in those ten minutes, was all the healing I needed.

This was the cathartic side of grief we rarely mention in the endless “affirmations” and “all is well” spiritual missives. We forget that grief needs the ugly cry, the one that hits the muscles and recesses where we’ve cordoned off sorrow and relegated it to silent suffering. Loss sticks with us on a cellular level; it’s in both the body and the spirit, and that release, through the physical exertion of breath, and that release of saline, and in only what I can call a wail, are the vibrations and tones and frequencies that are a catalyst. This catalyst puts us in a grief cycle that includes a healing component, in which we can extend our own empathy, if only we allow it.

That day, in that moment, hearing her, i had to let go and let it happen.

So I’ve been sitting with these moments, these fragments of life that remind me of the fullness of people I have lost. For anyone navigating the aching absence, seek out the echoes and embrace remembering. Ignore anyone telling you to “move on.” Lean instead into the gratitude that your loved ones existed, that you shared space and time with them. Make it tangible. Write letters you’ll never send, listen to old voicemails, rewatch videos on your phone, play their favorite records, cook their favorite food, hold onto the ephemera, the objects, the small traces they left behind because their impact is indelible. That’s your personal familial archive, containing the history of them, letting those histories provide context and commentary on who you were, are, and will be. Let them breathe again through you, pour into your spirit, remind you that they were alive, that they were dope, and that oftentimes they wanted more for you than you wanted for yourself.

Lean fully into whatever therapy, practice, or ritual helps you process. Give yourself grace. Give your grief the time, space, and attention it demands. Let it be ugly, let it be loud, let it break you open. In honoring your grief in these ways, you are not just remembering, you’re understanding that they are still here, still shaping you, still loving you, still alive in every memory.

easy

k

about:
KOKAYI
Artist | Author | Speaker | Producer | Preeminent Improvisational Vocalist, GRAMMY-nominated musician, and multidisciplinary fine artist, is a Guggenheim Fellow for Music Composition (the first emcee to have achieved this distinction). Host of the Interledger Foundation’s Future/Money podcast. Author of You Are Ketchup: and Other Fly Music Tales, creator of HUBRI$ and Blackness and the Infinite Potential Well, whose artistry and work reflect a rich tapestry of life experiences shaped by DC and the cultural innovations of the Black diaspora—an enduring legacy that continues to shape the world, often without the proper recognition. Here for all the panel discussions, podcast yakkin’, DJ gigs, and keynote addresses, should you need me, holla.

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1. My interpretation of the new Baltimore slang and further evidence that Baltimore is not the DMV.