ABOUT ONE LAST SMOKE

 Grief.

Grief is a shared unit of the human condition, an emotion that hard as we may try, we cannot escape. For many years, I had been running away from grief, particularly grief as pertains to the loss of a loved one. I often testified, thanking God that I had never lost anyone close to me. I never knew that portion of grief, I never thought about how it would feel. Even when people I knew lost their loved ones, I prayed for them, consoled them, but from a distance. From the safe position of not feeling the pain that they were feeling.

Feeling.

Then, the unthinkable happened. Like a thief in the night, grief made its move; swiftly, definitively. He struck, and immediately, I got added to the list of those who had lost a loved one. Someone I had talked to, someone I had shared a laugh with, someone I had prayed for, someone I had cared for, someone I had touched...someone that meant the world to my best friend. Unthinkable...I couldn't think. What happened next shocked me. In the hours that followed, I was bereft of feeling (weird right?). Nothing! No tears, no sadness, no nothing.

But as the days went by, I discovered that most of my appetites had deserted me. Sleep was a luxury, no dish or meal was worth putting in my tummy, and my beloved TV became a vessel transporting noise pollution. I was numb... numb to all but voices. Voices that debated existential notions; the meaning of life, the certainty of death, what happens after death, etc. Voices seeking words that could aid the ailing heart of a best friend.

The pen

Naturally, these voices longed to be heard. So I transferred them onto paper. The written word was the other appetite that remained alive. With each stroke of the pen, feelings I never felt frothed and heaved. Paper after paper getting overwhelmed with questions, with grief, with metered words to a best friend, with hope...with comfort from God.

One Last Smoke is a statement of loss; loss of life, loss of love, loss of hope. Loss of fear, loss of sin, loss of slavery, loss of rejection. It is a journey of reflection; fear, and sorrow, but also; hope, love, comfort, and transformation.  

My prayer is that with every title, every paragraph, every syllable, and every punctuation mark, you will be taken on a personal journey, a journey that will lead you straight home.