The Greats

There came a time where I didn’t feel it anymore, or at least didn’t understand the deep connectivity associated with old folk or any folk near death. Death was the prelude to a significant amount of money, which gathered people insignificant to the dead. When I was living with dead people I noticed. They all are in love with being nonchalant. I lived with my great-grandmother every summer as a child, she’d order me to play lottery tickets while seated in her loveseat that unfortunately was too small. Her birthing hips and wide dialysis legs were spread apart but still touched, so I was never flashed with details only real men are ready for. In shorter terms, she was a big woman, with a wide mouth, that seemed smack when it opened and closed.

Diara!! Diara!!! Get on up here boy!!!!

You ain’t deaf goddamnit.

She’d call me from the basement and I’d drag myself from the Nindento game cube extending my hand to receive the tickets. I don’t know what she was trying to do by playing the lottery. I thought for years that she’d win, though a week after she died. Her gift to me was four tickets that weren’t cashed, none were worth millions, not even thousands, not even a hundred dollars.

Though of course it wasn’t about the money, but more about the relevance of playing cheap tickets. I paused many pacman games for her tickets, and she wasn’t even playing for millions. During the days that neared the end of the summer she’d call me less. I’d walk upstairs to find her asleep on the loveseat with Family Feud in the background. When I turned the channel to adult swim shows like Total Drama Island she’d suddenly awaken and chastise me with wide words from her mouth, it was grandma’s tone.

The old southern draw behind hertongue and its ability to say foul language that was nearly english, similar to written curse words that were nearly legible. My grandmother was indeed a baptist. And those days felt longer than ever. I was twice denied by her during this time. The first was one I never intended to do. You see, old people don’t always smell the best, so I’d avoided using her bathroom at all cost. It wasn’t just the smell of shit that lingered in the halls and made the walls close in and twirl around you like a roofie victim. It was a funk, something unbearable, and unnatural due to the stillness of anal glands after coffee and cigarettes. So when the green mistiness crawled down the stairs of the basement, I went to check on her.

And there she was, seated on her handicapped raised toilet seat, stuck.

Why didn’t you call me?

When I reached for her shoulders, she swatted my agile hands away and hollered.

Boy I don’t need no damn help, get from up here!!

I helped her anyway, pulling her to her feet as she struggled to return to the toilet seat. Tissue flared between her backside littered with residue as I walked her to her bedroom and laid her gently upon the sheets. There she was vulnerable, lumbering from each side of the bed, sweating. I emptied her purse on her bedroom floor as she contested, and took the singles with me to the store to get wet wipes. When I returned, asking her to let me help her, she fought. Fought me to the shower and fought me until she was clean. I always wonder why? Why are people so prideful before death? There seems to be no in between, people approaching death either come upon it with the dread of facing their demons or it just happens, like another Tuesday. She never shed a tear. Though on the last day of the summer before school, she held my face and kissed me. Thanked me for the wipes and told me that she’d had something for me. And a week later, one of the numbers read,

Zero-Two, Twenty-Six, Double Zero.

My Birthday.

Shorty

I enjoy drinking, though I hated watching him drink. He is a small man, small enough to have issues with his height. Small enough for liquor to travel smoothly down the tubes that we call a throat. If he had died any other way, I would have never lived with him. His hands would tremble and his jaw would rattle in the face of customers.

Drink, I need a drink.

Repeatedly until he was amongst the living again. His head was bashed in at the top right corner, the Army did it to him. He’s lived with dead people. I watched him work with my father each day, trying to chase my dad’s dreams. Though his only compensation, a natty ice or a Bud Light. Not a man of particular taste. Neither was he concerned with the idea of being on top of the world. I found his mannerism to be kind, loving, and jubilant when he was drinking. I waited in my bedroom, listening to the high pitched screeches of the people surrounding him. Though he was silent and calm. They yelled and he’d rebuttal explanations as to why he can still have another beer. There are things that make the heart grow numb. One is silence in a basement where there should’ve been groans of a man soon to be dead. That’s where they placed him after he cracked half his head open attempting to dance. Blood thick laid calmly upon him, as if running blood was too much a bother for a person already dead. Is there a place for drunks, or veterans, or men who lean so heavily on bottles until they all tilt? I wish when I watched him lay with black in his eyes and world that wouldn’t stop spinning that I could think of something else. A lovely moment, like when he showed me his Heavy D and Biz Markie CD collections. He opened the CD cover and a picture fell of him and the rappers dressed in gold chains and jumpsuits.

Though when I found him spread across the cement floor of the basement, I’d already known what death was. I knew that he didn’t fight, didn’t ask for help from the mortal peoples. And I was afraid, afraid of the contentment that forces the body to hush and settle before it happens. His rolled white eyes nearly told stories, they seemed to have said that you have no choice. That fighting with what you don’t know is pointless.

That is why I died nonchalantly, that is why I drank myself to death, nephew.

Camo Clothed Man

People who have near-death experiences commonly report feelings of peace, serenity, and even acceptance in what were almost their final moments*. Though, when you’ve killed people in front of community center basketball courts, the children know your walk. It is always inferred that you lean slightly left because the barrel of your nineteen-eleven might alert the police or poke you in your leg. So that’s how he walked. A gray, blue, green and purple camo outfit with matching shoes. Handing out money and stirring crowds of kids because that is what the drug dealers did when he was a child. He’s just passing on good ole tradition. When men of this profession become old, they don’t retire. Someone just calls them an OG and they preach street gossip to the younger people like a grandfather. When the day is done, one wouldn’t be surprised to find them traveling back to the mothers home, because he’s convinced the world that he’s taking care of her. Though, the truth is he’s never left the nest or these four blocks that he patrols. He is in some sense an elder with a criminal record, and especially not your grandpa.

He died nonchalantly too, he didn’t run, blink, or flinch. A white Nissan sped toward the court where he, I and my cousin stood bouncing the basketball and two men sprung from it. He made a sigh as if to say he’s been here before. And without question or hesitation, the two men proceeded to fire multiple shots at him, pushing the residue of his brains upon my face and clothes as I stood there long enough to recognize the walk of men who shot him. I stood there until the police arrived, looking through the holes left in his face. I stood there because I couldn’t move, or at least didn’t feel compelled to move. Even then death seemed like a forced acceptance. And the dead know this, so they accept it. There comes a time where running doesn’t matter because you’ve been chosen for death. And it moves like a well placed arrow, too swift for there to be denial.

On A Dying Student

When I think of death, all I can conjure are people that are alive. People that live aimlessly knowing that it’s coming. No one dies abruptly, nor do they have the choice of life. When my great grandmother died, she made sure to send me off with a kiss to the other side of town. She and I both knew that there’s no escaping reality. After years of life, one seems to simply shrug off the moments lived before death like any other. It is watching another episode of Family Feud, waiting for the winning numbers of an insignificant amount of money. The moment carries little relevance to the dead. They are nonchalantly exiting this world. The deep sigh before being shot in the face, is all too similar to the deep sigh before a shift at work. As if Camo man had to clock into his job in hell. His death made me realize that people are the death dealers themselves. I figured the more you deal death to others, the harder death will be dealt to you. Camo man had his card slammed on the table like a drunken spades game. When they put candles out for him, the same men that shot him kicked them over. They lay scattered for days.

Not many people showed up to Shorty’s funeral. And the ones that did were there to collect. He owes everyone and even after his death they still wanted their money. They hassled his daughter for days over $250, $150, $300 dollars and some change. They’re all dead too. They were closer to death than they thought. They waited and wished for it to be longer and nonchalantly died, just as you are doing right now. Dying to read, or dying to live in a world where one doesn’t think about the cliché: “before it’s too late”. One where we are not on drugs and the clothes on our backs isn’t the black coffin in a hearse being towed through someone’s streets inconveniently. Living with dead people is okay, because you of course are excluded from that group of dead. They belong in the line that kills every second. And you belong amongst the living, or at least too young to be shorty, my great grandma or camo man.

These deaths happened when they were alive. My grandmother died from a strongheart, and shorty a strong liver. Camo man died from strong manners, while the student died from something else strong. Something that will probably be nonchalant. Somewhere where they will say he died in peace. And in my obituary they will read good things that don’t represent my character, like “He was loved by all, and was an honest man and devoted husband.” These will be lies.

Though before death there will be a truth that lingers about me, that I knew I was living with death like the rest of them. That no one can abruptly die and death could never be an unforeseen tragedy. It will be the death that you don’t realize until you’ve realized you’ve been dying this whole time. And well, for these three people who have been dying for as long as I’ve known them, they have no choice but to live. So the student, he will die and is in fact dying. Though, I am simply waiting for the mirror to be put under my nose, waiting for the chance to live without dying or unknowingly counting the days. Waiting to die from something they can’t put in my obituary, but that feels real. Where real people show up to spend their dying days over my stuffed body because they understand that when you’re not dying you’re living.

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* Angela Morrow, RN. “Why Everyone Deserves a Chance to Prepare for Their Own Death.” Verywell Health, Verywell Health, 10 Sept. 2023.

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Author Bio: Diara Spencer a senior at Fresno State. He is majoring in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing. His focus is poetry though he decided to try non-fiction. His poetry has been published in other poetry journals, though this is their first submission for non-fiction. Overall, he feels he is an honest writer.

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Recollections: Of Being is a literary column brought to you by The Collegian, a student-run newspaper at Fresno State. We publish writing and art, either political or personal, to create a bridge between varying valley voices.