White Like Me: Grief & Remembrance

I miss my friend Michael. He met my parents and I at this time of year, on December 18th, one of the few dates in my life marked by life-changing events.

I remember the date because it was the day that I left for an eighteen-month Air Force deployment to southern Italy, with an electronic security group, there. We met in a Philadelphia Airport terminal, before getting on a DC-8 bound for Naples.

Michael was an interesting guy and full of life. He was a runner and a weight lifter, as was I, though I focused more on the weights than on the road-running.

Michael was a unique Christian. Once in a while, if he had gotten to the chow hall before me and was eating by himself, he would set a place for Jesus, on the other side of the table. He also enjoyed making fun of the devil, by giving him names; Old Turkey-lips was his favorite.

I knew Michael some thirty years ago and regret losing touch with him. I don’t mean to eulogize him; I just don’t know if, since the time I knew him in Italy, he had passed away.

I’ve looked for him a number of times, on the internet, but have had no success. I wonder why I miss him so much. I’m thinking that it may be because he was kind of a fascinating guy, or it may be because he was my first black friend.

As long as I’ve been an adult, I’ve only had a few such friends as Michael. A man and two women immediately come to mind.

Marvin was a co-worker I had, when I lived in Maryland and worked at a federal agency there. I worked with him and a few others on a government project that was as much of a learning experience as it was fun.

Marvin and the rest of us learned how to program a network and we learned about each other. Some of us had nicknames; Marvin’s was Marvinus, which was later shortened to Venus. He kind of was a Venus because, in the course of the project, we learned that he had a part-time modeling career.

I miss Marvin, too. But, since I had seen him last, I’ve been wondering if I had said the wrong thing or shouldn’t have said what I said.

A couple of years after the network project was over, and my ex-wife and I had moved to New Jersey, we went back to Maryland to visit. The trip included seeing Marvin, since we knew that his wife had delivered their first child about a year earlier.

We told Marvin about the town that we had moved to. He asked how we liked it there. I said that we do, but we haven’t been able to find any black people there, let alone make friends. What I said was that it was “Too Lily White for me.” Marvin gave no answer and just stared back at me.

As a result, I have felt guilty ever since making that remark. I have felt guilty for even thinking about it. I wondered why I would consider a distinction like race, let alone voice it.

I tend to heap guilt on myself. In this case, I was heaping white guilt upon myself and have been wondering, since losing touch with Marvin, if I should be slapping myself on the head for letting that thought arise and then letting it out. This is, for me, one of life’s unanswerable questions.

And then there is Landoria, and Louvenia. They’re known as Lani and Beanie. These ladies were other co-workers I had in Maryland.

They each initially appeared to not know what to make of me; though, once I became friends with them and understood their intense sense of humor, we connected. I still remember chatting with each of them in an alleyway—where the smokers had been banished to, while on their breaks—and how Lani would always share her Lorna Doones with me.

I felt, and still feel, honored to know Lani and Beanie. Unlike Michael and Marvin, these two and I are still connected, though only through social media. Still, I miss the face-to-face contact that I once had with them.

I also miss my classmate Barbara. I learned, years ago, that she had passed away, but didn’t know how it had happened. I learned at last year’s reunion that it had something to do with her family being at a South Carolina beach and with her trying to swim out beyond the breakers to possibly rescue her daughter and that, in the process, her daughter survived but she had not.

When I heard this, I felt awful for her and her family. A reunion with her won’t be happening, this side of heaven.

In our high school yearbook, Barbara said that she didn’t like being referred to as You people. I think that this is more than an expression of a pet peeve, but her desire to be seen as an individual and not simply as a demographic. From what I remember of her, she extended that same courtesy to everyone.

Beyond the few mentioned above, I have had a few other black connections. Sadly, they’ve each been short-lived.

One of these was the result of a chance meeting. When I was on a business trip to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, I found a bible lying in the parking lot, outside of my room. A name was on it, and I inquired at the front desk in which room the owner might be staying. I went there, and the owner—staying in the hotel, after his house had burned down—was glad to see his bible once again.

His name was Mr. Brown. He invited me to church. I went, and had a great time (a better time than at the mostly white church I went to, the first of the three weeks I was there); he then invited me to dinner at someone’s house. I had never been so well fed or so welcomed into a group of strangers than I was on that day.

Then there was David Anderson, my pastor for a time, when I lived in Maryland. He was a tall man with a radio-personality voice, and he did have a radio show.

He wrote a book entitled Gracism, which he described as "The art of inclusion," saying that regardless of our race, we can extend grace to one another by understanding and appreciating each other—not just for who we are as individuals but also for how our respective cultures have shaped us.

I still appreciate this man. He extended grace to my ex-wife and I for helping us to handle the bullying that my son faced, at the hands of some black boys who wanted him to know that Cracker was a term he needed to get used to hearing. Pastor David recognized that bullying and racism are just that, regardless of the direction they faced.

But I’m speaking about more than a few lost connections. I’m also thinking of my wife. She has had to endure two lost connections of this nature.

These were severe losses, more intense than mine. They caused her to question God about why he would allow such a thing to occur in her life, something she would never have thought of doing before that day.

My wife had foster-parent custody of two beautiful twin boys. During the course of a year, as she lovingly provided for their needs, she sought to adopt them. After the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) had placed Jacob and Jack with her, and after DYFS had awarded her Foster Parent of the Year, they gave her a call.

“Hello, Miss ———?”

“Yes, this is she.”

“I’m Sheila ———. From DYFS. I’m calling about your request for adoption, for the boys that you’ve been foster parenting: Jacob and Jack. Your request has been denied.”

“What? Why?”

 “You’re white.”

“Yes. I know I am.”

“Well, DYFS believes that it would be in the children’s best interest if you were black.”

This was the call in which my wife was denied the adoption and also denied a chance to foster parent these boys any longer.

I’m not a mother, but I know what it’s like to be an adoptive parent. And I know what it’s like to lose a child that you are adopting. Such a thing happened to me.

Fifteen years ago, my ex-wife and I were in the process of adopting a boy whom we had named and had brought home from the hospital. Within a week, the birth parents demanded Nathaniel back from us. The state backed them up, because these parents hadn’t yet relinquished their rights as parents.

This was a crushing blow. Yet, I’m sure that it wasn’t as difficult a time as it was for she who had been raising two boys for over a year and then was told by the state that they were no longer hers—though she had been doing a very good job of it and though the boys were also loved by her depression-era parents, who held and accepted them, regardless of racial attitudes in place when they were brought up.

My wife went to court, to retain the twins. She lost. The judge later apologized to her, but that was little consolation. Since then, the law, on who can adopt whom, has changed. Also little consolation.

She lost the boys and the connections, though not entirely. They were placed in another foster home, nearby, but didn’t much like it there. When they were a little older, they would run away from that foster home and to my wife’s home. But, because she lost in court, she relinquished them all over again.

I had thought that time would have healed my wife’s wound—that is, until very recently, when we were getting ready to leave our neighborhood Walmart. 

This is where we noticed a young, Caucasian woman taking out her own, African-American, twin, toddler boys. They were about the same age as my wife’s twins were, when she lost them. We didn’t say anything to the woman; instead, we admired her handsome boys.

I didn’t ask my wife about whether she had cried, upon seeing that woman’s twin boys, but I believe she had wiped a tear from her face. I regret not being more in touch with how this reminder had affected her.

We might have misread that woman’s situation. To us, it appeared that hers was close enough to my wife’s to be felt in the depths of my wife's soul.

I ache for my wife. She is doing much better than she was, years ago, but the damage has been done, and her heart is still healing.

For the both of us, it seems as though too many connections have been lost, due to neglect, simple and unavoidable circumstances, avoidable remarks, death, and state intervention. These are the connections that we’d like to have back.

We miss those who are lost to us because we loved them then, and we still love them. They are our friends, family, and co-workers. They look a little different than us, but we have great admiration and affection for them. We may even appreciate them more, because they are culturally different from us, and for how their culture enhances our lives.

These connections are different than the many mundane connections we may otherwise have, in our monochrome world. They allow us to connect to a unique people, with a certain style and excitement about life that the rest of us can only begin to appreciate.

These connections, as short-lived as they may have been, have enriched our lives. And while we mourn their loss, we try not to create others like these on our own. Instead, we wait for the magic moment when God will bless us with new ones.