WHITE LIGHTERS: notes on memory, death, growth, and being 26
No white lighters ‘til I fuck my 28th up. [Frank Ocean, “Nights”]
March 1, 2023. I watch bodies lumber past and over snow-scattered grass at dawn through a foggy full-length window overlooking the east side of Central Park. The night before was NYC’s first snow of this winter, the longest the city has ever gone without it. Today marks 19 days before the beginning of spring, 11 days from the start daylight savings time, 21 days before Ramadan first night, and 21 days from my 27th birthday. Apollo’s chariot will ferry the sun across the sky, the snow will melt, and today will become yesterday. I am thinking about death.
I didn’t think I would live this long but I ain’t died yet and I've only had a few close calls. Wasn’t supposed to make it past 25, jokes on we still alive. Every moment since I turned 25 has felt like borrowed time and borrowed time can go two ways. The first way: you wake up grateful for every second you get and recognize that you should do the best you can with the time you have left. The second way: the clock ticks faster. For a while, the second way was all I got. I woke up everyday anxious and ready to die, not because I wanted to but because I had to, because that’s what was written for me.
I am 26 years old at the moment. The same age Jay Z was when he released his debut album, Reasonable Doubt. The same age Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was when he led the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The same age Napoleon Bonaparte was when he conquered Italy. The same age Stevie Wonder was when he released Songs In The Key of Life. Older than my mother was when she gave birth to me, her third son. She turned 26 a few months later. My father was 27 when she gave birth to me. He turned 28 a few months later.
I often think about a poem I wrote in the summer of 2018, at 22 years old. It was partially inspired by a conversation I had with my mother when she revealed to me that she never thought she would live past 30 years old. Each day for her is an incredulous discovery, even at 52. The poem outlined what I thought the next eight years of my life would be and I’ve proven to be prophetic in this instance, at least so far.
-
“8”
At 23
I practiced smiling in my dusty mirror.
At 24
I only talked to myself on late nights.
At 25
I lived outside of my mind, in your world.
At 26
I fell, I met the lost love of my life.
At 27,
I gripped a white lighter for a whole year.
At 28,
I fell, I lost the love of my life.
At 29,
I gave away my soul to keep my life.
At 30,
I cried for the final time, my last dance.
-2:37 AM, 6/24/18
-
Infamously, there are a lot of famous people who have suffered an early death at 27. Legend says many of them died with a white lighter on their person. I don’t have a white lighter yet because I don’t smoke but I thought about buying one to carry on my person while I was 27, as a gag and just in case. The 27 club includes icons such as Jimi Hendrix, Robert Johnson, Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kurt Cobain, and Janis Joplin. Another member of the 27 club is my paternal grandfather, Finis Sylvester Rankin.
Grandpa Finis died in 1975 at age 27, beaten to death in his cell at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. Grandpa Finis was serving a life sentence for killing a store clerk/singer on December 15, 1969. He walked into The President Shop on 3101 Troost Ave in Kansas City, Missouri and asked for the clerk, Antoine Ashcraft, by name. Ashcraft presented himself and Grandpa Finis shot him twice and left. I’ve never been certain of his motive. Grandpa Finis walked away from the incident unscathed for months.
On February 9, 1970 my grandfather was detained by the police when he pulled out of a parking lot at a suspicious speed in his 1963 Chevrolet. The police were responding to a call in an area where a string of burglaries had taken place. The weapon he used to kill Ashcraft was in his car (which the police searched without a warrant) and the police seized it, claiming it was in plain view. Grandpa Finis was arrested along with an accomplice and after ballistics confirmed it was the same weapon, a lengthy case in the Jackson County Circuit Court ensued with a life sentence on a second-degree murder conviction at the end of it.
While in prison, my Grandpa Finis had dedicated himself to the arts. He was an avid participant in convict art exhibitions, paintings were his primary medium of choice. I’ve only seen one of his pieces, a drawing of a dog he mailed to my grandmother with a poem inscribed on it. It was mostly apologetic.
November 25, 1975. Kenneth Ray Richards, another inmate serving a life sentence, murdered my Grandpa Finis in his sleep with repeated shots to the head with a hammer and a knife. An additional 15 years was tacked onto his life sentence as punishment. At the time of his death, my Grandpa Finis left behind my Grandma Reba and their three children who were all born in a two year span while my grandparents were still teenagers. My father was one of those children.
In The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley, Malcolm X says that he expected his life to come to a violent end while he was young, just as every man in his family had done before him. His father was murdered by a white supremacist gang and all of his uncle’s lives came to a violent ending as well. As it turned out, Malcolm X was prophetic. He was murdered on February 21, 1965 at only 39 years old. I’ve felt the same sensation throughout most of my life. I didn’t grow up with many older men in life, whether it was due to death or desertion.
I’ve had two grandfathers in my lifetime. The first, my Great-Grandpa Scott, died when I was three years old and I have no memory of him. In my heart, I’ve only had one Grandpa compared to the five grandmothers I’ve had (down to only two now). My Grandpa Hazziez passed in 2020 at 73 years old like his father, my Great-Grandpa Scott did before him. The disparity between the legacy of elder men vs elder women in my family always astounded me. As of now, 73 years old is as long as I could expect to live.
Currently, I have seven nieces and nephews with an eighth one on the way. Watching my Dad be a grandfather, something his father never got to experience, gives me a lot of joy. The most recent time I went down to Maryland to see him, he showed my oldest sister and I his photo album of all his children and grandchildren. I have never seen him prouder of anything, ever. Suddenly this was something I wanted and I broke my own heart that day because it’s tough for me to imagine for myself. My Dad is currently 54 years old and that’s hard for me to wrap my head around, both the passage of time and the many times he’s had to re-allocate his identity to accommodate for who he had to become as time did work on him.
Time has done a lot for us both. I leaned harder on my father at age 26 than I had ever done before in the preceding 25 years. Following my move to New York, he is the family member who lives in closest proximity to me. Money, time, an ear, a voice. My father’s relationship with me has never been exactly what it is now. It has been a blessing.
A letter I slipped under my mother’s bedroom door when I was teenager dealing with a bout of melancholy comes to mind. I began the four-page handwritten letter by telling her that I prayed for my own death each and every salat. Not suicidal, just ready to die. I spent the rest of the letter lamenting what I didn’t have and the things I wish I could do to make it better. I felt like I was denied a lot of things, my health included. And I’m still denied many of those things. My Momma called my Dad that night with tears in her eyes and told her she hated him, something I didn’t know until later.
The letter I got in return from my mother broke my heart. She wrote about what she was going through, why I was being denied these things, and how she wishes she could help. I had failed to consider her and I came to realize that my problems weren’t just my own and they weren’t just going to go away with time. Time would only intensify my problems.
At 26, my problems were as real as they had ever been. I remained alone for most of it and my life seemed to only get more difficult. I felt like I woke up everyday with a hole in my head. A lot of my problems seemed to stem from a lack of vision and my previous inability to foresee what was fated to find me. I didn’t have the imagination to see myself at 26 and I hated myself for it. Hell, I ain’t feel 26. I felt like the same kid who wrote that letter to my mother all those years back, trying his best to catch up to the years ahead before they left him behind for good.
In December 2022, I suddenly felt a weight lifted from my shoulders. I am unsure why, but one day I woke up and I didn’t hate myself anymore and I forgave myself for hating myself for so long. I forgave myself for all of my failures, for the kids I didn’t have. For the people I’ve hurt. I forgave myself for being angry, for being denied, for being alone, for feeling alone, for all of my doubt and the guilt that came with it. It just all slipped away from me like water off my back.
A few things I did at 26: my writing was published in my favorite magazine ever (aside from Tribe Mag), I began teaching a course at New York University, I listened to a lot of music, spent some time with my family, struggled with my health to the point near-immobility, took an overnight security job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, didn’t do the right thing, discovered additional emotional intelligence, reading books, sinning, and I wasn’t enough a few times. Maturity? Fully developed prefrontal cortex? I don’t know. I’ve been happy for the most part. My life isn't so different, I’m just accepting it better. The truth of my life and the truth of my spirit are finding each other. I’ve been writing, praying, and listening. That feels like ablution as well. Forgiveness of self is the most important thing I did at 26.
I’m not completely certain what I will remember most from being 26 in 26 years. Maybe it’ll be New York’s first snow. Or maybe the memory will be like the snow, too late in the season and destined to melt rather than stick around. The snow, just like my doubt, guilt, denial, and self-hate could slip to the wayside like water off my back. But I hope it sticks.
The first snow has melted. If I was to die at 27, like my Grandpa Finis did, I don’t think I would be afraid but I have so much to live for. Too much to live for and a lot of time. Maybe time will move through me and I will become my father or my mother or my grandfather but I’m most likely to be myself when it’s all said and done. I’ve set myself free to live and to trust that the minutes that’s brought me to 27 will take me away from it as well. I still have possibilities! The sun will rise and set and rise again. Right now will become yesterday even if today doesn't promise tomorrow, Alhamdulillah the opportunity has found me. I am thinking about life.
[postscript: I’ve always thought that birthdays were more of a present to your parents than they were to me. As far as I can remember, they didn’t mean that much to me. But that may have just been the trauma of poverty speaking. I try to remember that my brother with whom I share a birthday has never forgiven my Dad for not calling us on his 12th birthday (my 17th). So it must mean something for me as well. This is me trying to find the bridge between my birthday being for me and being for my parents with this really bad public birthday card for them. I love my family more than the sun in the sky. More life, Happy Birthday to me and my parents. We grew up together. I wish I knew that when I was a kid, would’ve made this life thing a lot easier.]
published March 20, 2023
