A Memory for You

On the One Year Anniversary of my Dad’s Passing

Last Saturday,

I wrapped the fourth and final session of a writers workshop that I attended via the Black woman centered media publication Midnight & Indigo. In this class of all Black women spanning different backgrounds and age ranges, we practiced accessing our memories in vulnerable and deeply powerful new ways. I witnessed black women, as a collective, name our truths in ways that have inspired me to be even more radically honest with myself through my private and public writings. As I reflect on this class, I am also reflecting on the memory of this day in 2023. 

The months of March and April have brought me to understand that I am currently in what I am calling a ‘grief window’ or an intense period of feeling, remembering, and reflecting. March 4th was my father’s first birthday as an ancestor and today, April 5th, marks the one year anniversary of his passing. This last year has been rich, beautiful, weird, uncomfortable, freeing, destabilizing, rewarding, and a whole bunch of other things. Today, as I reflect on the day he passed away, I am also holding how beautiful it is to be witnessed by my community—the ones that hold me in my daily life and the ones who read these words that I write. Thank you for seeing me and for receiving my vulnerability. I really do hope that, in some way, it inspires you to offer your own vulnerability to the world. 

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Gareth O. James in nature