My dear friend, of two intense, revelatory years of intimate and prolific communication
died
penniless, alone and helpless, one week ago today in the early morning hours of Wednesday, February 26th,
in the squalor of an assisted living center of very, very last resort — housing that was only secured for her by her friends’ intervention and advocacy as she was on the precipice of homelessness — back in 2022.
at first, they rejected her application because she was wrongfully convicted, and sentenced to be incarcerated — to lose 30 years of her life.
they were not lost years, they were knowingly stolen.
there is no way to write or say or hear or read that without crumpling from the injustice. //
her building, located in Chicago’s West Garfield Park, is a facility of neglect, disrepair, frequent violence, unsanitary conditions, minimum meal quantity, quality and variety, regular infestation and viral epidemic,
and soul-crushing isolation, boredom, deprivation and poverty.
On the Saturday before she died, I listened to LL talk about death, as her physical and economic struggle was even more dire after breaking her wrist – in two places – on her dominant hand, her precious “art hand” — after a fall onto the hard floor of her apartment unit; she had already long been experiencing intense back pain in her tailbone and that pain was exacerbated by the fall — she was only barely ambulatory.
A CT scan during her most recent hospitalization for her broken wrist had revealed that she had at some point recently also suffered a stroke, to add to her known vascular and kidney disease.
She mentioned that while she couldn’t draw or paint with a broken wrist, she was thinking she could do collage pieces on boards by gluing cut-out text and images from magazines — though she conceded that holding the magazine and using scissors with her non-dominant hand would be challenging. One of her friends had gotten her new scissors and some old issues of National Geographic magazine, but she wanted some fashion or tabloid celebrity magazines too — I told her I would get some and mail them to her. She wanted to make and sell some art to have a little money for herself and to send to her dear daughter; but more than that, she was missing making art — as creative expression and as her “therapy”.
During that conversation she casually yet very intentionally, told me that when she died, she wanted the rites of a Muslim burial:
ritual bathing and anointing of the body with fragrant oils, wrapped or dressed in white burial shroud or garments (the Islamic ritual of the funerary Ghusl), interred in a simple wooden pine box, buried facing East toward Mecca,
and if possible, near her beautiful eldest Son’s grave.
She then said that once she was in the ground to say “goodbye” and then to “get the fuck outta my face, because I’m gone.”
But added:
that everyone, and that my ass, specifically, should pray her spirit onward to the afterlife, to Allah.
I promised her I would. I assured her she would not need my or anyone else’s petitions to Allah — that Allah already knew her heart; but that I would pray and pray and pray for her.
LL had turned toward and chose Islam as 18 year-old girl — the only one in her Christian birth family to do so — toward the beauty, joy, mercy, justice and promise of the Holy Quran.
Allah had carried her, mind, spirit and body — her very life — ever since.
Islam had carried her as a young, single mother of three babies in a dangerous and deadly inner city environment; through a wrongful prosecution and conviction — and 30-year wrongful incarceration by America’s systems of oppression; through the forced separation and foster care diaspora of her three beautiful Children; through her own Mother’s rejection and abandonment of her and her Children during that wrongful 30-year incarceration; enduring the murder of her oldest, beautiful Son by police during that wrongful 30-year incarceration; enduring a concurrent, wrongful conviction and imprisonment of her only Daughter and the subsequent juvenile detention and foster care diaspora of her only Grandchildren; and enduring a post-release life largely of birth family estrangement and isolation.
“they never once asked me about my story — they never asked me what happened.”
Islam also buoyed LL in her post-release life of activism, of advocacy, and in her relentless pursuit of justice and truth and economic reparations and economic stability for herself, her murdered-dead Son; for her Daughter, for her Grandchildren, and for her youngest beautiful Son.
Islam had sustained her through the hard and cold first streets, the hard and cold prison cell, and the last cold streets — and hard rooms of her life.
On that Saturday afternoon,
I encouraged her to go back to the hospital despite her protestations — she had frequent, repeated and recent experiences of anti-Black medical racism — and, to please keep her orthopedic appointment for her broken wrist — and injured tailbone. I retold her stories of the broken bones my own family members had recently suffered and emphasized how they had completely recovered — and said that she too would recover. She felt she needed to be in a rehab facility for a couple of weeks because she was unable to fully take care of herself. She let me know with a laugh that she could still manage a “hoe bath” to wash her own ass. She was going to ask the doctor to get her into a temporary nursing facility at her appointment, but she was worried about who could take care of her cat while she was gone.
I ordered her favorite Chinese food delivery for both she and her dear neighbor and friend — and also ordered her a case of canned cat food to be delivered to her on Tuesday or Wednesday.
She called me back later to say the Chinese food was good and that she and her neighbor friend had enjoyed eating some of it together.
I missed her call on Tuesday morning, but almost immediately texted back in response to say: I hope you’re on the way to the ortho doc appointment —
I didn’t expect her to respond via text as texting was limited because of her broken wrist, and I knew she would be tired when she arrived back home — if she, in fact, had kept her appointment.
I texted the next day to let her know that the cat food had been delivered to her lobby by Amazon; then I called her three times over the next several hours. I hoped that she had been admitted back into the hospital — or even into a nursing rehab facility — and that she was just temporarily indisposed. I felt uneasy because it was not like her to not answer at all or to soon call back — at least the same day. But maybe her phone was out of reach, or she had gone for diagnostic testing, she was resting, or had misplaced her charger?
I never heard back from her.
I learned later that night, that she had died sometime over the previous night.
Since learning of her death, one week ago today,
her beloved Daughter and I were able to make certain that LL at least received the Ghusl she wanted — together, we got her to the Mosque, at last, and into the Mosque, for these last rites — where her precious body was prepared with tender care and such dignity according to the Holy Quran — and where her dear Son was able to behold his beautiful Mother one last time.
Thank you to most kind and good People of the funerary service of the Muslim Community Center of Chicago.
Their effort and generosity, was astounding and unparalleled in my experience of funerary arrangements.
and I have prayed this prayer i wrote, unceasingly:
May Allah grant Her Jannah
May She reside in Paradise
May She know ease, and feast and peace, denied her, in Earthly, human life.
I am so profoundly and eternally grateful and privileged to have known her — to have had the gift of her friendship, knowledge, truth, wit, comedy, stories and most of all, her trust. I miss her presence and voice already so very much; she was absolutely unrivaled — I will miss her and love her, and pray for her and her beloved Descendants always and forever.
i was only actively loving her in the mo
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 