When Grief Turns to Fire
I remember her smile. It was beyond beautiful, I can’t even describe it. I remember her laughter; airy and bright. I remember her wisdom, great beyond her years.
And I remember the day she wasn’t here anymore.
When I was just a little girl, my cousin Ivetta was shot and killed by a stalker. Yet this fact does not begin her legacy. And I’ll be damned if this fact will end it.
A one-time chairperson of our local Democratic party and an officer of the Women’s Democratic Club, she was also a singer, a career woman and a mother of two. She lived so much and so fully in thirty-one years of existence, doing so with so much laughter, kindness and spirit.
The day she was killed is among the darkest in my family’s history. It’s all a big dark cloud now — I remember my father picking me up from school and telling me what happened. Ivetta’s name blared over and over again on our local radio station, until I wanted to scream. Then I went home to see my mother and aunt, their dainty exteriors seething from within with the fire of Amazon warriors.
One of her number had been taken from us because she would not be possessed. Our grief and anger resounded from our beings, threatening to overwhelm us.
So what on earth do you do with those feelings?
In her novel The Root, my friend Saqqarah explores the basis, the very fiber of what drives her heroine to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. In considering her inspiring story, I stopped to consider my root; the origins of a lifetime of activism.
I, of course, attribute my feminist and humanistic beliefs to parents who raised me to do, and be whatever I wanted to be — and a mother who taught her little daughter the ideals of equality; who was reading me books about Golda Meir, Eleanor Roosevelt and Gloria Steinem as far back as I can remember. She herself always has been a feminist powerhouse, never afraid to speak her mind — to speak up for what’s right.
Yet there’s another voice in my head, this one softer and farther away — ah, but she’s always there, driving me to do and write everything I can to help victims of domestic and sexual violence.
When grief turns to fire, it drives you to be stronger and more resilient than you ever thought possible. Suddenly your voice is louder, your resolve is iron clad. You’re determined to save as many families as you can from the pain that still lives within your own, to save as many as you can from the fate that befell she who isn’t here anymore.
Or is she?
I love you, Ivetta. I hope I do you proud. Your fire lives in my soul.
