Queen Butterfly
Below is a reflection that came to my heart shortly after losing my aunt/2nd mother. She died unexpectedly the day after Mother's Day 2022. I attempted to read some of this at her repast but delivered an abbreviated and perhaps too passionate version as the normal ceaseless cacophony of “mourners” continued, some looking on at me shouting in my best kolloqua. I cried for her a bit this holiday season and re read this memory a few minutes ago & thought to memorialize it here…
For Jennifer Jumah Gray-Brumskine.
My Queen Bee 😘
Before Aunty Jumah belonged to the community, she belonged to a family, and before she belonged to a family she belonged to God.
So it was disheartening to hear so called men of God claim ownership and the power off chastisement over her family last night at that time and that forum. It was wrong.
Aunty Jumah used to call on her family—call on us from Brooklyn to come here and defend her honor and integrity when the community chewed her up and spit her out. The names are forever engraved in my mind. We will forgive but never forget. We praise her work ethic and leadership today, but I was there when it was met with resistance. I learned much about not being afraid to speak my mind in servant leadership from her. I was the daughter she took to work to “Take Your Daughter To Work Day”. She would then drag me to DC, long before her life on Staten Island, she had 9 year old me on buses for Mothers of Liberia. She lost her own son during the war, yet she still had a heart to serve.
Aunty Jumah was an astute community activist and leader--- yes because it came naturally to her. She was a woman, a proud Vai woman, who set herself apart from the “riffraff” as she would say. She was the one that would enter our apartment building and roll her eyes as she approached the elevators —talking loudly in front of the offender about the cigarette smoke in the hallway. She lived in neighborhoods like Bensonhurst and by the mall far away from the so called “riffraff”. Yet and still, she was able to humble herself and serve the very community who couldn't appreciate then, the vision she had. There's an established Little Liberia in Staten Island today because of her.
But before she was the leader you all know, she was a family woman. The one that would sit between my legs for me to grease the softest hair row by row. Always with one plait-— after no matter what kind of style or braids you tried to force on her. Aunty Jumah, who always somehow showed up from wayyyy Staten Island as soon as the food was finished cooking. She would sit for hours in the kitchen with my Mom and my aunty Doris ringing the Vai about all the things under the sun. Her last food request at my mother's house before she died was "dry rice"...
"My Aunty Jumah". She hadn't been mine in a long time because she had become the world's…I watched her metamorph into a community activist, a safe haven and a familial confidante to my mother, who had "a difficult child"-difficult until she Aunty Jumah would born herself x 10 of course, a wife, a daughter, a funny cousin we used to call "the lawyer", the one whom I would show up from Brooklyn to defend in Staten Island as she had fiercely defended my own case for admission into some of NYC's top schools. I defended her too fiercely—until I couldn't defend her anymore. She was the one who I found myself stuck in a shootout with one Park Hill community day. I had witnessed her metamorphosis. Heard all of her dreams, and ambitions and plans. At times, I wondered about her sanity—to be dreaming so big, telling stories so large, becoming an aunt of the world. I would lament the day she was no longer mine, just as today, she is no longer yours.
She was more than a tempest, more than a storm, she was the FULL SHOW- actors, musicians, lights, camera, and action caller. And now it's strange and lonely because the curtains have closed. I witnessed her become not just mine anymore, but the world's. I witnessed her metamorphosis into a butterfly and I'm blessed that while she was a caterpillar–still blooming into her prime, while she was in a cocoon I too might have been with her then. Watching as she made her cocoon bigger and bigger fitting in more people, more and more and more- many who I knew were not worthy to share the space. The space she had taught me was sacred, the space she had taught me was spun with gold. I watched my aunty let all into her cocoon and thought well, it's time I let myself out.
I would rather witness this metamorphosis from the other side. Today, I smile because that butterfly flies amongst us now. Delicate yet strong, beautiful and complicated stripes adorn her wings. The beautiful caterpillar that was my aunt, still the driving force but this new being—this butterfly that many of us will weep for days about…she's not weeping.
Knowing my aunty very well, she's planning to fly amongst us all one day when we are not suspecting it. To remind us that she never left, she will always be here. Here to remind us that she held space for all of us in her tiny cocoon at one point-old and new, young and old. That her cocoon caused rumbles in the jungle and in heaven when she burst out just as beautiful and as fragile and as triumphant as ever!
Make no mistake, she's everybody's colorful Monarch butterfly now. Yes she was queen, a Vai Queen, a butterfly of the people if you will- whether you knew it or not you were bowing down to her will and her plan-- her vision. You will for ages to come.
She will always be my caterpillar. A fuzzy, cozy, soft, sometimes prickly place. A familiar reminder about what is possible. What is worth the risk of making others slightly uncomfortable. A reminder to be selective, finer, and set apart intentionally & effortlessly at the same time. I will always remember the days when her cocoon was not as crowded. When her cocoon only fit a few. I would like to think, I was one of those few. I love you Aunty Jumah.
She embodied many virtues of the Proverbs 31 woman.
"Honor her for all that her hands have done, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate."
Proverbs 31:31
Asé
Written in strains of thought & pieces. June 2022
