Your exchanges below give many of us hope as members of the wonderful intellectual family that "Sir" Toyin has created.
Ken's message below is brief, but it has a poignant poetic force that speaks volumes about how wonderful our dear sister (Lavonda) can be, just as I too did find out with my own brief interaction with Lavonda, indeed after it was wisely suggested that we should assist her in any financial way that we could. She proved to be a dear sister, very grateful!
In Africa, men are raised stubbornly not to show or shed tears in public, but Lavonda's write-up or message below brought volumes of tears into my nimble eyes when perusing it. In fact, my heart almost fell out of its place in my chest when I saw the word HOSPICE in the first line of Lavonda's lovely prose. That was because I had my own HOSPICE scare about four years ago: after near--fatal postsurgical blood clots, I had to get home care from a female Nurse, who came every week to draw blood and do the test of my IRN (?) blood level. After about two weeks, the Nurse showed up in our home wearing a small badge, saying "HOSPICE".
"When was I declared a HOSPICE patient, Nurse....?" I asked her in a hurry.
"Oh, not you. I just now came here from my HOSPICE patient, and I did not take off the badge. You are not in HOSPICE yet," she said smiling.
"Yet? Well, I wanted to know so that I could ask my wife why she failed to tell me I was in HOSPICE care, " I responded.
"Did I say yet?" Sorry. You are fine, Porfesor," she assured me.
Now, Sister Lavonda, is this HOSPICE business not a wrong designation for you? I ask that because another scare that I had was in Graduate School, when I was hospitalized with unending pains in my lower back at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York. An Indian oncology specialist misdiagnosed me as having "localized cancerous tumor" in my spinal column. It was confirmed by a Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital specialist.
"You will never walk again to play tennis that you say you love very much, if we do not operate to remove the tumor," I was told in a variety of ways (and also in writing) by both medical doctors. The sad situation was also that the initial surgery would be exploratory, but the second one would be the real deal: to remove the cancerous tumor. Some of my immediate family members and I stubbornly refused to sign a surgical consent form and, as a result, there could be no surgery.
What made me stubborn was that when the Indian doctor was to introduce me to the other medical specialist, he said I was from Guyana. In the study of history, I had great friends, including Walter Rodney, from Guyana and other Caribbean countries, but I still protested the doctor's geographic ignorance, making Ghana become Guyana!
"I am from Ghana, not Guyana," I protested.
"He says he is from Ghana not Guyana. But what is the difference, anyway?" The Indian doctor said. That was when I said silently to myself that the medical doctor (with such ignoance) was not going to cut me open surgically.
Eventually, New York University (NYU) Hospital oncological specialist came to examine all of my records because I was an NYU grad student. Surprisingly, he agreed with my family and me that I did not need surgery, and that it was an abcess (or mass liquid) formed around my spinal column, but not a cancerous tumor, and that medication could clear it. He gave a prescripton, and I was on my way out of the hospital. NO SURGERY!
Sister Lavonda, this is why I am, prayerfully, wondering if you are not being misdiagnosed. Yes, I too felt sharp pains and I was in anguish when the Indian and his medical colleague(s) were basically "taunting " me with cancer diagnosis but, as the NYU oncological specialist said I was cancer-free, I did sprint out of my hospital bed like a gold-medallion runner!
W are praying for you, dear Sister Lavonda, hoping against hope that the HOSPICE designation will one day be a hoax (just like my own condition at the New York hospital in the early 1980s). In that way, again, all of us in this wonderful intellectual family that "Sir" Toyin has created will rejoice wih you, Amen!
A.B. Assensoh, Eugene, Oregon.
Sent: Friday, December 06, 2013 11:12 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A Mother's Pride Goes Beyond A Daughter's Belief: Love Given, Love Returned
thanks
ken
--http://www.lavondastaples.com/2013/12/a-mothers-pride-goes-beyond-daughters.html
I have been told that there is nothing more that the doctors can do. That I'm now in hospice care. And although my spirit is resigned to trusting in God my human feet are now directed to put my life in as little disorder as possible. I'm making my arrangements so that my children can be free to grieve my transition. This, despite the opinions of a few, doesn't mean that I no longer have faith in God. It means that I'm pragmatic and realistic. I live in this body, they don't. And I am the one who screams for relief from this pain. I am the one who tenderly puts a swollen foot on the floor each morning or afternoon or whenever the pain drugs run out and I'm brought out of the world of dreams. I am the one who awakes to this pain. Fortunately, I am also the one who wakes to receive emails, letters, phone calls and a few (too few) visits from those who put their love into verbs and display action. I'm happy to know many of these surprising sources of strength (and I say surprising due to the fact that if I had been asked, years ago, who would be by my side, I would have been wrong on each guess) which constitute the hands and shoulders that keep me from hitting the floor. I'm happy to know, finally, to really know, these friends and family. I am humbled that they have elected to give me their precious time.
I'm so happy to know you as well. One of the reasons, in September of 2011, that I started the blog and really a life in the public sphere, was that I said to myself, "there just has to be some goodness in this world." I have learned that we call to ourselves the elements of which we are comprised. In street language? Game recognize game. Game know game. And game is always game (it can never suddenly transform itself into anything other than what it is as when revenge turns into a blessing). I decided that I would be as honest as I could. I would say, "I love you." I would search my heart and truly mine that source for its greatest treasure: love without reason, without cause, without quid pro quo. I sought to meet Black American men (on a micro level of my theory) who could do more than spout meaningless and endless nauseating slogans and banter. I wanted to meet males who had become men. I didn't want to date them. I wanted to encourage them. In short, I wanted to mother men like you. For a mother is the ultimate and first cultivator of the gifts God gives to all men and women. In my small way, I wanted to keep you congratulated by letting you know that your duty is to lift up like-minded men.
I wanted to shelter Black women and I wanted to let our White brothers and sisters know that they were not exempt from any judgement of God because of what man had told them about their non-White fellow citizens of this great nation. Yes. I wanted to speak truth to power, caress those who have been too strong for too long, and to remind those who were meant to lead that we (the women and children) were ready for them to come home and take their God-given place at the head of the family table. All eyes on you. I knew I would be a small voice. Tiny little whisper trying to hurl my heart into the whirlwind. Yet two years later it is this very pursuit which has sustained me. I started something for someone else and it has born fruit which feeds me. I'm stunned. I was talking to my mama the other day and I said something she didn't believe. She said, "you're a smart woman and I know you don't believe that." You see, my mother has just now become my mother. We have let past pains go, for the most part and as much as we can. I had to realize that no matter how old I get, I still need to be mothered. I am always growing so that means I am never grown. Until you are grown you need a mother. This means that as long as I am taking in oxygen, growing, stretching my fragile fonds to the sky, I will need to be some one's baby.
What prompted her in my face remark? I said, "I never thought that anyone would take me seriously." And I'm telling you and everyone else that I am telling the truth. I was telling her the truth. But, we know that God is the only one Who truly knows our hearts. My mother, although she is my longest running friendship, has no idea how insecure, afraid, and anxious I am regarding my written work. If you think I've written a lot in the last two years I invite you to take a look at my portable drive as well as the u-haul moving box full of files, not documents, but files of written work from 1979 to 2002 (this is the year when I started using a computer to save my work; until that point, I made hard copy printouts and stored them in a metal cabinet).
All of this work as well as my notes (in yet another u-haul moving box) which were taken down in long hand on yellow legal pads (I think there's at least 100 of them), UMSL (University of Missouri at St. Louis where I earned an undergraduate degree in psychology and a graduate degree in Contemporary European History along with a not so small variety of courses on African politics) 3 and 5 section notebooks (about 10), and stray napkins, post its, and index cards are stored as well. There is a small, sealed box of my journals. These are very different and will never be read. As soon as I am well they will all be burned along with my autobiography (And All Of These Things In My Father's House). Even my library of 1,000 books bears witness to my failure to believe in myself fully as I've never removed all of the tabs that were used to mark pages of text I had planned to use as footnotes. No. Even though she has seen all of this, for lack of a better word, stuff, she doesn't believe that I do not possess an endless stream of confidence. That's fine. I have to accept it because it's her truth. I can't change it. I can only tell you that I wanted to have this relationship with the world because I needed it. I needed goodness. I used the only tools I possessed in pursuit of realizing my dreams. I wanted to send something out and I'm so happy to say that something came back. Something very special which cannot be bought or sold. You. I thank you. For every breath inhaled and exhaled along my journey is executed with your assistance. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. And it is a heart which is bottomless for it has to store my love.
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