Seize the Day (24 page)

I did. “I will see you later. Soon,” she said. The way she looked at me, I couldn't tell if she liked me or if she felt sorry for me—or some mixture of both.

And I did not feel the need to tell her to keep my situation to herself. I took from her character that she would not share it with Natalie or anyone else. She had a sincere spirit.

I smiled and walked away, feeling revived having met Venus but sad that the meeting, in the long run, did not mean much because there
was
no long run.

O
n my way back to the hotel, I listened to talk radio about the protests around the country over young black men being killed by police. It was a disturbing conversation because here I was trying to build a life before a disease ended it, and consistently there were black men shot and killed by the people designated to protect them.

On the program, they brought up Anthony Hill, the former Army veteran who was naked and obviously disturbed—and unarmed—and yet was shot and killed about twenty minutes from where I was driving, in Decatur. He suffered from a post-war trauma syndrome that apparently made him hallucinate. He fought for his country in the Middle East and died ignobly in Georgia because a cop decided to kill him instead of apprehending him and getting him help.

I thought about Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley and Kajieme Powell, Ezell Ford and Tyree Wilson and Freddie Gray on and on. They had their lives taken from them unnecessarily, violently, by white men. I was never big on pulling the race card or conspiracy theories. But for so many black people to die so violently by whites who are supposed to protect during President Obama's terms didn't seem like a coincidence anymore.

I didn't believe that theory, but hadn't thought that way until I listened to talk radio. My eyes and mind were open to new possibilities, and some of that was not comforting. The police, by and large, were the enemy, and there was a bullet with my name on it if I was in the wrong place at the wrong time or said the wrong thing or dressed the wrong way.

It could have happened in Charlotte. That cop could have shot me, planted evidence, said he felt I was a threat to his life and likely never see a day in prison.

It was a place I didn't want to be. I had so much life to live, and I felt that way even more after taking the attitude that I needed to actually live life instead of riding the wave of life. That passive approach did not serve me well. It was safe but uninspiring. Unfulfilled.

It made me sad that I had to learn I was losing my life to begin
living
my life. With that I knew that I had to do as Pastor Henson said: Help others.

I was not going to try to save the world, but I had a responsibility to be a positive influence when I could, and in different ways. That approach opened me up to an entirely new life.

Here I was leaving a party and Venus, a woman of substance, because I had a dog cooped up in a hotel room. It very well could have been a luxury resort to Moses. What did he know? But my affection for him could not allow me to have fun believing he was tortured. I got that from my momma.

When I finally made it through Atlanta's traffic downtown, I hurried to the room. I was excited to see my dog. And there was Moses, sitting in the area I had laid out for him. He either understood what I conveyed to him or he was the best dog ever. Either way, I was so happy with him, partly because he seemed happy to see me and partly because he was comforting company. He represented life to me.

So I rubbed him as he wiggled in my arms, tail wagging. I had to calm him down. I grabbed his leash and we went for a walk and stayed outside on the property almost until sunset. I wanted to tire him out a little because I was tired.

The lack of rest the night before, the ride to Atlanta and then hanging out had gotten to me. And it was like Moses knew it.

When we got back into the room, he went right to his area and looked over at me, as if to say,
I'm good. You get your rest.
At least, that's how I took it.

So, I got dressed for bed, although it was just a little before nine at night. I pulled out my laptop and tried to catch up on what was going on in the world, knowing reading would make me sleepy.

But I ran across a story that almost gave me chills. It was about a kid in Virginia who had told his parents when he was six that he had been on earth before as a man. More than that, he gave his profession (a Hollywood agent) and the year—in the 1940s. The parents, scared and curious, did the research and found the man their son described. His life story fit every description their son had told them, from his name, age, profession, where he lived and how he died.

The child said the man was seventy-one when he died. The newspaper from that time published that he was sixty-nine. But further research found that he had given an inaccurate year of birth—by two years, making him seventy-one as the child had said.

Experts said there were thousands of cases where reincarnation was a viable explanation for someone—usually a child—being able to give details about events long before they were born. There was no other explanation.

I looked at Moses and wondered if he was so smart and well-mannered because he had been here before.
Did he really understand me?
My mind ran amok. I wondered if I were to come back, to be reincarnated, would I remember all this. The newspaper story said the boy's memory began to fade as he got older.

I believed the article wholeheartedly. Something changes in you when you know you're going to die. This kind of knowing is different from knowing that we all
eventually
will die. When your ticket has been stamped, you become the keenest person on earth. You notice everything and everyone.

Funny thing was, that was just called living. The people who get the most out of life are the keenest and the ones who decide to live it. You do that, and you will notice more than the next person and experience more than the average person. You'll consume everything and retain a lot of it—and become stronger, smarter and more well-rounded because of it.

I loved being a teacher because I love knowing things and sharing them with kids. But it became my world when
the world
should have been my world. I finally got that.

My friend Kevin got it. And he got that I was not doing enough, that I needed to do more than teach and golf. That's why he wrote me that letter. That's why he gave me his kidney. I didn't have that much time to live—I reluctantly accepted that. But I believed my past few weeks have made Kevin proud.

I got out my own way. I still was not sure what that exactly looked like, but I knew what it
didn't
look like. It didn't look like me staying in D.C., reading and waiting for school to start again. That was a slightly exaggerated portrait of my unfulfilled, uninteresting life. But the point was I could have and should have done more.

I was different from the black men who were slain by cops. They did not get the chance to realize that life could be better and to do something about it. Their lives were abruptly taken from them. That was the other part that was sad about cops killing unarmed black men: They were young and the world was in front of them.

I wanted to go to one of those cities—Ferguson or New York or Cleveland or Baltimore—and march with the protesters. As much as they understood the value of life and as angry as they were about the killings, I was probably more understanding of the value of life while also angry. We should all get to live out our lives, make our mistakes, correct them, grow from them and take a place in the world that was ours to mold and shape.

Having it stripped from you—by a bullet or by a disease—just wasn't right.

T
hose were my last thoughts before I dozed off, which likely accounted for the dream I had of being hunted by Atlanta police. They wanted me for driving in an HOV lane with no passengers in the car. I pulled over and the cops immediately had their guns drawn.

In the dream, I pulled out my gun and pointed it at them.

“You don't get it; I'm dying. You think I'm worried about you shooting me? So pull the trigger. You can't kill a man who's already dead—not even with a bullet.”

And so the officer pointed the gun right at me and said, “Have it your way.” And pulled the trigger. I stuck out my chest and took the bullet. It was so vivid that I could feel the pain—or at least I thought I could. I didn't go down. I laughed at the officers and they riddled me with shots. I had taken away their power because I wasn't scared.

Without a gun, many police officers had all the power of a limp noodle. In the dream, I shouted, “Black Lives Matter,” and they stopped firing. And I felt so empowered.

Of course, I was disappointed when I woke up and I saw a dog sitting there watching TV. I was in bed with my laptop having fallen off to the side.

It was an intense dream, but I had gotten used to intense dreams. There was a time when I didn't even want to go to sleep—every dream I had was about death. And not just my death, but just about anyone I knew.

When I dreamed I was at my daughter's funeral, that's when I was afraid to go to sleep.
That
scared me. That
shook
me. For all I felt about my own eventual demise, it was Maya who I worried about. I woke up from that dream so frightened that I was unable to go back to sleep. It was about two in the morning and I lay in bed, my heart pounding, for at least a half-hour before I could calm down.

Finally, I was able to gather myself, but only after I had texted Maya. I wasn't sure if she was up at that early-morning hour or if my text awoke her, but she texted me right back. “Daddy, I'm great. Just a couple more days and I will be there. Now go to sleep. Can't believe you're up at this hour.”

Those words eased my mind. My life had been committed to protecting her. We had come to rely on each other. Wherever I was going in death, I could not imagine it would be better without my Maya.

Thinking about her could make me cry. I cried at the thought of being without her; and I thought of how hurt she would be without me. That hurt me.

She loved her mother, looked like her and, at times I couldn't stand, even acted like her. But she was a daddy's girl. We connected from the moment she was born. I took her to her doctor's appointments when she was a newborn. I took her to the park, to school, to school with me.

I taught her how to play golf and basketball and how to drive. We went to the park together, to the movies, to restaurants. When she was ten, she ordered filet mignon—and sent it back because she said it was not cooked enough.

She grew up to be everything I would have expected: smart, funny, caring, kind. That attitude she could have sometimes when she did not get her way, well, I could have done without that. She was spoiled and it was my fault. But she was as much a part of any happiness I had as anything.

My only concern was that she was like me in that she was not as social or adventurous as she needed to be. How would a good man find her if she didn't make herself available?

Of course, when I brought it up to her, she didn't want to talk about it. “Daddy, I'm fine. I have more going on in my social life than you.”

I did not believe her, but I never pushed Maya, either. I just shared my views and hoped that they stuck with her and she applied whatever I said that made sense.

It spooked me a little when she called me on my cell just as I was thinking of her. That happened a lot and not just to me, but it still freaked me out a little each time it happened.

“Hi, Baby Maya.”

“Really, Daddy?”

“That's my nickname for you that you used to like. You think you're too grown for your daddy to call you that?”

“I am too old for that, but I know you're going to call me that anyway. What I'd like to know is how things are going; how you're feeling.”