By Kenneth L. Hardin

As I was walking on the treadmill recently, I nearly came to a full stop. It wasn’t because of equipment failures, but instead it was a temporary malfunction within my mind that caused me to pause. I didn’t panic because it happens from time to time. There have been other instances where I can’t stop the tears from climbing out of my eyes and sliding down my face until they form a massive puddle large enough for me to swim back to a better frame of mind. The impelling force behind this barrage of emotions stemmed from an external variable that evokes sweet memories packaged in sadness and delivered first to my heart and then to my brain. As I was pounding steps, a song by the late hip-hop artist DMX creeped into my headphones. Absent was the gruff, dog-like barking he made famous in his music. The song’s opening took a more solemn, somewhat religious tone as he professed, “I know that my Savior lives and at the end he will stand on this earth. My flesh may be destroyed but from this body I will see God. Yes I will see him for myself and I long for that moment.” My mind started with the mental gymnastics it plays when faced with something in which I don’t readily resonate. I didn’t retreat from this melodious message and allowed it to play on.  

The next line is when everything seemed to stop all at once, “Grandma, I really miss you and it ain’t been the same. I drop a tear when I hear your name.” A thousand memories of my two deceased grandmothers flooded my mind as I continued to walk on the belt impervious to everything else going on around me. My paternal grandmother died of cancer complications back in 1999 and my maternal grandmother took her rightful place in the promised land a few years ago.  

My mom’s mother lived the majority of her life up north but opted to spend her final years in this little slice of marginal heaven where I have a gym membership. Several months before she died, I took her out on a lunch date. I recall she was really dressed up and had on all her fancy jewelry. We had a great time, but the best part was hearing that distinctive laugh she had. I loved making her laugh. I feel like that part of her was all mine and not the many other grandkids who loved her. I got to hear that laugh again in the last conversation I had with her a few weeks before she died. She was in a local nursing facility, and I went to visit. Due to her advanced age with membership in the nonagenarian club, her mind and memory were in decline. I asked grandma if she knew who I was, and she looked up from the wheelchair and said, “No, but I remember that voice.” I jokingly told  her to get up out of that chair so that we could run around the block together, and there it was. She flung her head backwards and let out that deep piercing laugh. As I walked out to my car, not realizing this would be the last time I would see her alive, my eyes were moist with sadness, but my heart was filled with happiness. Like a tape recorder, I have that laugh stored deep down in my soul.

My dad’s mom suffered in her final days. Cancer was so cruel to her until the day she finally left us to go home. After work each evening, I would sit at her bedside and read the Bible to her. I tried to give her comfort with the word she believed in so strongly as a faithful woman of God. She would scream out in pain asking her God for relief, “Oh Lord, why are you punishing me?” When He finally called her home, I was sad but relieved. As I continued my pace on the walking machine, this lyric took me to another dimension inside my mind, “I thank you for my life…I thank you for the song that you sang in the morning…” As I walked, I quietly sang the song them did every morning while cooking us breakfast, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…” 

I want to direct profane language at cancer like I see on TV but no amount of yelling out “screw cancer” is going to ease the pain. I’ll save that energy and put it into recalling the good memories of both of my grandmas, whom I miss so dearly. “What I wouldn’t give for one more hug, from grandma…And like when everything comes to an end, I pray that I go to heaven to see you again.” Me too, X. 

Kenneth L. (Kenny) Hardin is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.