Dear Friends,    

The same weekend we lost Chadwick Boseman, many of the folks in my life—mostly writerly—also mourned Randall Kenan. It isn’t lost on me that both are Black men, exceptional storytellers, from the South, and only a generation apart. Randall specifically died at nearly the same age as my father (that is, below 60) who, on September 14, will have been gone from me for 2 years. 

One of the narratives that has emerged from Chadwick Boseman’s life was how he had worked so hard, had given us so much even as his body was failing him. I can’t look at any movie of his now and not see behind him the specter of death, how he tried so hard to give us beauty—light like a candle—until the wick went out. I can’t imagine for Randall there weren’t moments in August when he wasn’t preparing his lectures for his upcoming semester at UNC. I can’t help but remember our days when I was 20 and searching for words to write about my own Black Southern family, and he had set aside time outside of his course load to urge me to push my pen…what reading lists were being conjured for his students? What audiences were waiting to gather around his new book If I Had Two Wings (y’all I’m reading it now, and I’m convinced he knew the time was nigh)?

My father, Thomas W. Dameron, Jr. (a story teller in his own right), believed so fervently in the ways in which his life would continue beyond what seemed a minor inconvenience and had requested only 5 days leave for an outpatient shoulder surgery. For his hospital stay he packed his work computer, and for months after I fielded calls of work left undone. 

That same month Daddy left I begged my colleagues and clients to let me work. I wasn’t dying, per se (though I am Black in America), but something ingrained in me would not let me be idle. I continued to volunteer, continued my board chair service in some fashion, in between cropping photos for my father’s obituary I was tasked with designing and his eulogy I was to give. I joke about it now, but, I say I lost 3 months of my life—it was such a blur—blinded by grief and pushed by the inertia of work. 

I feel it now, 2 years later. What it meant to work through it all. We will see it, later, what it means that we pushed ourselves, made justifications for avoiding a type of necessary rest and reflection (those of us who could) for all of the moments and losses piling up over the last few months. 

When I told my father I wanted to be a writer, he urged me to choose a way to make money that had no room for subjectivity. He trained me to be an engineer, and more and more I find days I am so thankful for that training, to have equal commands of both sides of my brain. One of our last convos was his own acceptance of how maybe, times had changed. I was almost a year into running Red Olive full time (“quitting my real job”) and Daddy said something to the effect of being glad he was wrong, and that I had found a way to use my words, my brain to take care of myself. It was like a relief had settled over him, and I swear it was the beginning of our goodbye. 

Also not lost on me is my immense privilege in this moment. That Daddy, like my sister, would have been an essential worker all these months, and that despite how he could have jeopardized his own health and my mother’s immunocompromised health to continue the cycle of barely having enough to pay bills to get by to work, etc. etc. etc.—I am a lucky one, with my degrees, with my intellectual work, my artistic work; someone who gets to decide this month to honor my Daddy by taking time to rest, and by doing so, will seek to honor the lost loves, artists, and storytellers of my life so that I can continue to do the necessary work for as long as this world will have me—certainly, I hope, longer than white supremacy has planned. 

So, a story to say I’m taking a break for the remainder of the month, but the work continues. Please reach out to my rockstar team this month if you need us (hello@redoliveconsulting.com). Otherwise, let’s as many of us try to make it to wherever the other side of this is, whole and together. 

In Black Love,