The first time I saw human death was when I was six years old. Our dad took us to our great aunt June’s funeral. When viewing her body, my first dead body, I saw her eyes closed, her hands folded at her chest, wearing a sparkling pink dress. Her hair also looked different from the photo of her chosen for the program.  

I asked my dad why her hair was red. He explained, “She dyed it.” For weeks I thought your hair changed color when your spirit left your body. It made sense at the time.  

Why else would the hair color process be called “dying”? 

This is my earliest memory of Second Liberty Baptist Church, the primary church I grew up in. I never resonated with phrases like, “brought up in the church” because me and my three siblings’ presence wasn’t that regular to be “brought up” in it. However, it is the most important institution in my ongoing pilgrimage with death. 

It wasn’t too long ago when my toddler aged sisters, my bottle suckling infant brother, and I watched a cartoon series about Jesus, portrayed with white skin, calling Lazarus to wake up from the dead. Is it true that Aunt June really couldn’t wake up now?  

My dad—son of a Black father and a Black/Indigenous/white mother—and mom—daughter of a white father and a Black mother—split up when I was five years old. My therapist often points out that this is likely when my mental illnesses came into bloom. My mom once pointed out I had terrible separation anxiety as a baby, so maybe she’s got my therapist beat. My mom also once mentioned her grandma’s, my great grandma Mother Mary, history with depression either during or after her work as a missionary. My dad visited and picked us up when he could, along with my stepmom he took forever to marry, but I lived primarily with my three younger siblings, my mom, and my Granny in Fort Washington, Maryland.  

Granny’s house was a three story brick house with green shutters. Right outside of the green front door is a statue of a wide eyed gray, black, red, and white monster from when Granny, Grandpa, and Mom lived in Brazil. Two boxed sections that would be filled with mulch every spring. The front yard was of green grass whose small downward hill to the left led right into the next door neighbor’s yard. Directly in the middle of the yard used to be a tall thick leafless tree, which got chopped down to a stump years later, and years after that the stump was completely removed.  A lot of bike riding, rolling down the hill, sliding down the hill, digging out a toy horse shoe just to bury it again, and running in fresh summer rain took place right there.  

My Granny had lost her mom and a couple of her siblings while we lived with her; I was too young to understand the gravity of it all. I’m grateful for Granny and Mom’s patience with me and my siblings at that time.  

I’m also grateful for how well Granny included my Grandpa’s family members in her life before and after their divorce. Including her former mother in law and former father in law, my Great Grandpa we called Uncle Don. As a Presbyterian reverend, he officiated my mom and dad’s wedding in June 1995, six months before I was born.  

My siblings and I played with our cousins and play-cousins when with our mom and Granny. I mostly read inside since I didn’t like the outdoors that much. I heard Granny’s General Hospital or Judge Judy playing upstairs in her room while I was downstairs on one of her brown-cream couches reading a book. I likely sat on the couch with the pull out factor for my legs next to her shelf of records, a record player, plants, and photo albums. During this time, there was blue carpet, but then it got removed when I was in third grade, showcasing wooden tiled floors; under the coffee table was large floral garden imaged carpet with a black background. Granny had lots of pictures of family around her green walls, side lamp tables, and coffee table with marble games. But my favorite was her wall of me, my siblings, and my cousins as babies; it eventually became a wall with all of our high school graduation pictures.   

When tired of playing, or rather when tired of purposeful and non-purposeful bullying, I would spend time with Granny. Drank hot chocolate while she drank coffee. Watched her favorite game shows and soap operas together. Asked her tons and tons of questions about how to handle school and told her all I learned at school. 

I was especially excited to show her the book report Mom helped me with on Harriet Tubman when I was seven, eight months after Aunt June’s funeral.  

Along with the book report, we had to draw a picture of our Black History hero in action. When drawing a picture of Harriet Ross Tubman (how the children’s book I had at the time named her) in the second grade, instead of drawing her leading people to freedom with the North Star through the Underground Railroad, I drew her upset as white women shouted at her to clean and take care of their babies.  

I distinctly remember after drawing a smile on her round face through my seven year old hands, I erased it. Drew a frown instead. 

The last line of my report stated, “I admire Harriet Tubman because she was a brave woman.” I wanted to draw the struggles she went through leading up to the process of finally getting to freedom.  

Thank God she made it outside. 

Mom and Granny were so proud of me. 

My siblings and I played with our cousins when with our dad, and he’d often take us to Grandma Reece’s house. Along with Granny having a role in raising me and my siblings, Reece was our primary go-to; each time Dad picked us up, we cried, “Let’s go to Reece’s!” Reader, note that we never said “PaRich’s house” or “PaRich and Reece’s house.” My Grandpa PaRich was typically working, but before he left in the morning, he’d always greet us, “Good morning Clarice. Good morning Maya. Good morning J.C. Good morning Danielle. Good morning Wayne Wayne. Good morning Good Morning.”  

When we weren’t playing outside in her blue, white, and gray stone-pebbled front yard, she took us to Vacation Bible School, and we played a lot there. We played tag in the back of Second Liberty Baptist Church, not far at all from the cemetery, and sometimes in the cemetery. FindaGrave’s images do not do justice to how vast the cemetery felt then and still feels now. Even in winters, the cemetery felt more green than anywhere else with more dried out grass in New Kent during the season. When our great aunt Ora died in 2004, that was my first memory of hearing about a dead person “up there, singing with the angels.” I’ve always admired how songs were signs of celebration of life at Black funerals, but it’s an ongoing mental debate now on how much of the celebration is an outcome of toxic positivity. I didn’t hear much angelic song all the way from Earth, but the sound of dragonflies, mosquitoes, and crickets was the closest song we got in the graveyard. My OCD didn’t respond well most of the time to bugs, but I had more patience with how activated I was whenever outside of Second Liberty.  

Whether it was with an extended family member, with one of my siblings or cousins, or by myself, during free time at Vacation Bible School, I would make sure to visit each family member’s plot, which were all the way in the back closest to the forest. I would close my eyes and ask God to take care of them, and hope that no one was worrying about us back on Earth. It was a space I would write in when by myself too.  

My parents tell me my first name is inspired by Maya Angelou, but they also tell me that every time they’re reminded how often I write. I wish I got the chance to meet her. Her ashes are spread out in North Carolina, so I’m unable to see a direct death site of hers like a tombstone, but at least I have a similar idea as her for what I want to do with my remains. Lawann is the same middle name as my mother’s. 

My mother has always received scrutiny as a single mother. Blame it on the sexism, blame it on the divorce at a young age, blame it on the intergenerational trauma, blame it on the Biracial-specific misogynoir, whatever. She received praise for being a great single mother too, but it’s as if the scrutiny was affecting her mental health the most. It makes sense that she wanted to try to raise us on our own without Granny’s help. Granny was a witness to my sadness, my dermatillomania–she helped me clean droplets of blood off of my white karate pants after school once–indicative of my anxiety, especially since my parents’ divorce. How capable of a witness could my mom be?  

Mom moved my siblings and me to Manassas, Virginia when I was nine. A thin cream colored townhouse with white shutters showcasing in black cursive looking numbers: 8559.  We moved from a predominantly Black neighborhood to a predominantly, white, Latine, Middle Eastern neighborhood. 

It was time and space to be closer to Mom as she learned to do things on her own.  

There were Blockbuster rentals of In Living Color with snacks over the weekend in our living room, the public park with the two swings and green and purple jungle gym in our backyard connecting us to neighbors our age outside of familial bubbles, my brother was in Boy Scouts where Mom was his troop’s “Akela,” and this was the first time we attended church more regularly: Parkland Immanuel Church of God. So we were at church when with Mom and when with Dad now.  

Thus, I was an annoying religious kid during this part of growing up from age nine to age eleven. Anti-swearing, anti-drugs, you name it. All the annoying aspects of the realm of compounded evangelical Southern training, I was it.  

One time during recess, I said to a classmate that we should tell our teacher about her and a few more students playfully saying curse words in hopes of showing I was a good servant to the Lord. She rightfully crossed her arms at me and said, “Don’t tell anyone, Maya, it’s none of your business.”  

My mother did not raise me with my former pushiness. My mother, while we were living in Manassas, once said that she may believe in reincarnation because some humans’ missions may not be finished. That terrified me then and it terrifies me now. (When I’m dead, I want to stay dead. I’m done. Done!) From 2005 to 2007, we kept going to Parkland Immanuel Church of God because my siblings and I kept asking her to take us. This was our first time living with Mom without Granny, so I think Mom tried to accommodate how to best spend time with us as much as she could on her own. We stayed over at the pastor and his wife’s house a lot too.  

I started writing more poetry at this time.  

Whether I like it or not, this was the time my faith really woke up. I wasn’t just praying before bed for the cadence and schedule my parents and grandmothers provided. It was because I actually wanted to. A baptism was solidified for me when I was ten. I’m sure my mom has my certificate somewhere. 

At age ten, there were still pertinent parts of my queer and nonbinary identity that weren’t firm yet. However, even in the midst of its exclusive or binary imperfections, I will always have gratitude for my younger self for teaching me how to be articulate about how I feel in my religion. Overtime, the general intentions are the same:  

1) I want to maintain goodness while also making sure no one gets hurt in the process 

2) I want to keep my writing and my faith intersected and inseparable 

I met my friend Michael when I was ten going on eleven in this journey of navigating goodness. Out of the friends I made during that time, he was the one I enjoyed hanging out with the most. Granted, we called each other “boyfriend/girlfriend” a little into the spring semester of intermediate school. The rules of compulsory heterosexuality meant going to a dance, saying “I love you” super soon, calling on the phone to schedule our first kiss before I moved away and never came back (because I was eleven). It’s always the queer kids who don’t know they’re queer yet who date each other in middle school first.  

*

3/24/07 

Dear Journal, 

Guess what; I started a relationship! With Michael. 

Only two little problems! I don’t see him much during school, and we’re moving back
to Maryland. It’ll only be a two month relationship! That is so unfair! 

*

We got priced out of Manassas and moved back in with Granny in Fort Washington. On my last day at intermediate school, Michael and I gave each other our first kiss. We broke up on the phone two or three months after I moved. We said to each other we would always be the other’s first kiss. Olivia Gatwood spoke on her podcast with Melissa Lozado-Oliva Say More the intimacy of grief when she heard the first person she had sex with died. My first kiss’ suicide appears in my memory, poems, and conversations over and over and over again.  

I understand everyone’s mental processes with the idea of “first kisses” are different, but the fact that it was Michael is something I’ll always treasure; especially after his suicide years later. 

From 2007 to 2008, any time back with Granny was a treasure as well. She advocated for me to have my own room and to get it painted (I chose lavender).  We watched Double Platinum starring Diana Ross and Brandy dozens of times on weekends while my siblings were staying overnight with our play-cousins. We had screaming matches over who earnestly loved each other most.  

“I luh you MOOOORE!”  

“No, I luh YOU MOOOORE!”  

A trove I didn’t ask for and don’t admire, but will always have, is depression. Blame it on puberty, blame it on the bullying that I didn’t read as bullying at the time, blame it on the move, whatever.  

Michael and I remained in touch until he was consumed by toxic masculinity middle school urges.  He lied about having a new girlfriend. He got suspended playing a contest with boys his age hitting girls’ butts. A friend of mine I haven’t spoken to in years now was one of his victims. 

I ghosted him. 

A death that hit much closer to home didn’t help either.  

It didn’t help that my PaRich died that year.  

After a weekend with our play cousins, Granny and Mom led us to the living room to tell us that PaRich died of cancer. This was the same day Aunt June died of cancer years ago.  

Good morning Good Mourning.  

This is my first death where I allowed grief to cradle me in ways it hadn’t cradled me before. Grief had me intermittently sob myself to sleep. Grief had me sit with a sense of emptiness. Grief made me hear explicitly for the first time things like “he’s in a better place” and “God just needed another angel.”  

*

6/24/08 

Dear Diary, 

PaRich passed away.  
I cried a lot. I feel so guilty. We didn’t call his house, we couldn’t see him, or anything. 
His last words were “Love you too, bye.” 
So tomorrow we’re visiting Reece to see how she’s doing. 
At least he’s not suffering anymore. He’s now in a better place. If only I could see him one more time, though. The last time I saw him was in the hospital. 
He was a grouch sometimes. But I love him. We all do. 
Now I’ll miss every time he says grace before we eat dinner. Who’s gonna be the one to sit in his rocking chair¹? Who’s gonna be the one to ask me to fix the tv so he can watch the news? Who’s gonna be the one to sing “Rock-a-bye” the funniest?  
Now I keep on thinking about the new Mariah Carey song “Bye, Bye.”  
Teardrops are on this page of my diary. 
I miss him and love him so much.  

*

It’s interesting reading these entries as an adult. I was very honest about my grief when I was younger, which is good for me. I was also repeating euphemisms from adults in my life experiencing similar grief, which is not good for me.  

We were all dressed in our dark and bright Sunday best, sitting in a black limo on our way to Second Liberty. I remember my siblings and I would watch the limos in awe at previous funerals, and how our Dad told us that main family members got to ride in them. This was not as fun as we thought it would be. 

Our Aunt Carolyn, my father’s sister in law, told my youngest brother Wayne, who was eight years old at the time, “Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t cry because you need to stay strong because you are a boy. You let yourself cry, you hear me?” Our Uncle Mitchell, one of my father’s older brothers, nodded in agreement, which allowed Wayne to nod too. 

Second Liberty was the most crowded we had ever seen it. Someone in the community who was asked to give the eulogy had only found out about PaRich’s passing that morning. 

I don’t remember if there was air conditioning that was helpful or if we only had doors open to let natural air come in. I remember PaRich’s face looking much thinner than when we last saw him, his skin much paler, and wearing a suit, looking asleep in his bright blue casket with white cushion on the inside. It was the prettiest casket I had ever seen. Thomas Lynch once wrote in The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade how careful the living are in presenting the dead in mourning while the dead are careless (or, perhaps, care less), because they’re not alive to care about it. At Uncle Mitchell’s funeral years later, Aunt Carolyn recalled a story where she asked her husband what he wanted at his future funeral; he immediately replied, “I don’t know, I ain’t gonna be there.”  

As we all got up in line to view the body, Reece gave PaRich one more hug and a kiss on his lips, teary-eyed. It’s wild looking at photographs of us with her where we were grinning widely while Reece could only give a small smile. 

I hated the bugs while we were outside. We left before we could see PaRich’s casket gradually sunk to the ground through the metal casket lowering device for the repast back at Reece’s.  She made all of that food. 

I appreciate my Grandma Reece being more honest with me as she gets older about how PaRich’s death definitely could have been prevented if he had named what was up with his body sooner. She wasn’t as honest about her grieving with me or any of us as she could have been. Blame it on how women of her generation were encouraged to “hold it together” and “stay strong” for the rest of the family; blame it on her years of lived experience as a maternal figure as an older sister, a caregiver for babies, a mother, a grandmother, and since the early 2020s a great grandmother.  

One day, when PaRich’s plot was still fresh, Reece brought me, my siblings, Dad’s brother, myUncle Ricky, and Uncle Ricky’s wife, my Aunt Karen, with her to set red flowers down for him. The flowers were artificial so they would last longer, but that doesn’t stop her from returning every season with a new set of artificial flowers in a new color for her late husband and her late husband’s family members.  

We were in the usual cemetery of Second Liberty Baptist Church, so I followed my instincts at the time. I kneeled down to pray that God would take care of him and that he wouldn’t worry about us back on Earth. Because it was PaRich, this was my first time doing this while about to cry. 

In an act of sadness masked as anger, she forced me up by my elbow and dragged me back to her car. She shouted, “Stop that! It won’t bring him back!” before returning to her flower arrangements.  

As I dusted the dirt from my knees to focus on swallowing my budding tears, Uncle Ricky, Aunt Karen, and my siblings said nothing. I don’t blame them. You don’t disagree with Reece when she’s upset. 

Of course I knew it wasn’t going to bring him back. He and the rest of the people in this graveyard were no Lazaruses. All I wanted was to cry it out, and if necessary, others may want to cry with me.  

When I recounted this story to Reece as an adult, along with other stories of depression and religion in my life, she widened her stare at me to say, “…Oh, I don’t even remember that.”  

I didn’t have the word “depression” until we moved out a few months after PaRich’s funeral to Charlotte, North Carolina, so my Uncle Travis could help my mom be on her own with us again.  

Mom has told us that we also moved a lot so that her children could be exposed to as many new places as possible just like she was growing up as a third culture kid with a traveling journalist father who was raised by traveling missionaries. I feel her explanation is completely valid from her lived experience and I believe we truly did become the well rounded individuals she desired us to be. Simultaneously, I will always question what having roots would have been like.  

We lived in a predominantly Black area where the schools we went to had predominantly white teachers. The punitivity of my religiosity really calmed down during this time as I made more queer and trans friends.  

I read The Color Purple for the first time for a book report PowerPoint presentation. It gave me an insight to my potential queerness even if I couldn’t articulate that at the time. It taught me how to write to God more directly as a form of prayer. It was also my first insight into missions as pilgrimage for Black folks. 

I was grateful for the teachers, particularly my Black male English teacher, encouraging my reading and writing. Because those presentations had to be done on a monthly basis, we got to read whatever we wanted. Besides The Color Purple, other favorites included The Secret Life of Bees and Romeo and Juliet. Every lunch period, he read whatever poems or stories I had I was working on and gave me helpful feedback.  

*

4/28/10 

My last diary was full, so I started on a new one (hint, hint!). I started on a new one right away because writing really helps me express what’s on my mind. Writing is my sanctuary to free my mind, so I couldn’t just stop.  

*

I was grateful for seeing a grad student who was studying to be a therapist throughout my eighth grade who gave my first experience with counseling. She had long blonde hair, often wore knee length black skirts or black slacks with a pastel colored blouse, and had us sit in the back of the main office that had a conference room with a long white table, gray cushioned chairs, and blank walls. She had a gray tape recorder with her each time for her to either take notes or go over with her supervisor later. She entertained my sub-par short stories, singing, and quoting B movies. She helped me get better creatively and mentally by giving me that space.  

*

11/19/08 

8:36 pm 

I got to meet [my counselor] today (yes, I get to call [my counselor by her first name]), and I’m very glad I spoke with her. I talked to her pretty much about everything. But, no, I didn’t read my diary to her.   

*

At the time between 2008 and 2010, between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, I was grateful for phrases like “just pray about it” and “God doesn’t give you any more than you can handle” that all came from good intentions. 

Unfortunately, although it gave me courage to talk to God a lot, it didn’t give me a lot of courage to talk to my own family about my anxiety, depression, low self esteem, and undiagnosed signs of obsessive compulsive disorder through my scratching of scabs in dermatillomania. In our adulthood, my sister Danielle admitted her hesitance to try therapy because of how often she saw me still struggling after my sessions. 

I was thirteen when I told my mom out loud I wanted to kill myself before she was leaving for a trip for the weekend. We were upstairs, closer to her room. It was house with odd levels and even odder paint design choices for the walls (e.g. red and brown checkerboard in the dining room, or a sickly green in the kitchen), but it was bigger than the Manassas townhouse. Almost every floor had eggshell colored carpet. I don’t remember where my siblings were that allowed us privacy.  

Her voice became low. “Oh. No. Definitely not an option.” I wish I remembered her exact words after. It was something along the lines of how I can’t expect that decision to take care of everyone. 

I also wish she asked, “Why?” instead of going for the straightforward, “No.” 

For the next year or two, even though I didn’t recognize this until years later, my mom executed safety measures by making sure I didn’t lock my bedroom door and that I asked before taking Advil or Excedrin for headaches, which were becoming chronic because of my anxiety riddling throughout my body. 

When I was fifteen, in the midst of struggling in my relationship with my siblings and my mother, in the midst of my mother’s emotional distance because of her dealing with finances on her own, in the midst of her beginning to date someone I was unsure whether he was the right fit for her, I attempted to take my own life.  

*

7/3/10 

Dear Diary, 

Is it all truly happening again? The depression, the low self-esteem, the doubts, the bottling up? The craziness, the headaches, the tears…the suicidal thoughts? 
Why is deja vu from eighth grade year all coming back to me now? I mean, I embrace black more than ever before today. Last night I kept crying to God saying “Take me home. God please take me home” repetitively until I drifted off; when I woke up–and throughout the day–I constantly asked Him ‘Why didn’t you take me home?” I prepared my death position too as I continuously said “Take me home.” I hate my hair up and out of my face now. I want to ‘fess up all of this to someone, but I just can’t. 
Such doubts. Such doubts right now, such doubts! 
I don’t want this all to come back. 
Maya just stop thinking. Make it stop, make it stop, make it STOP!!!!!! 
“Calming breaths” won’t help me and peace and quiet actually makes it all worse sometimes.

*

Before my suicide attempt, I wrote how I wanted to be buried in the black and white sleeveless dress I wore for my cousin Nia’s sweet sixteen. I looked good and I had fun dancing with a crush; even when I got an allergic reaction to a nut brownie at the time we thought it was nervous hives for dancing with the boy.  

I refuse to specify how I made my attempt. Sit with your curiosity and mind your business.  

*

7/26/10 

Dear Diary, 

As this month went along, I have been trying.  

*

In my suicide attempt was where I became the closest to God.  

Truly, I believe that’s why my faith has remained so consistent. God didn’t fail to bring me comfort then when my attempt wasn’t fulfilled. Why would He fail me now?