What Does All This Loss Mean?

Jaamil’s sister died when he was just 12 years old. His grandmother and great grandmother died when he was 13. His mother died when he was 15. His brother was murdered when Jaamil was 22 … and a week after that, his father died.

Yeah. It’s A LOT. But Jaamil’s story isn’t just about loss. It’s an episode about what loss can teach us.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

Jaamil: You know I think of a quote by James Baldwin who… remains to be one of my most… influential heroes… and he has this quote… “you think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world. But then you read.” And I think really like… situating myself inside of theory… being bookish… has allowed me an understanding to know that my… my story is not particularly unique…when you really think about it like the suffering of the world and the amount of loss… that so many of us endure… my story is not unique.
NARRATION
Hi, I’m Nora McInerny
And this is Terrible, Thanks for Asking.
A few weeks ago, Hans wrote me a note during an interview. He does this often. Usually the note is something like, you’re breathing too hard or please stop eating a plate of nachos before we record, I can hear you digesting and we’re going to lose listeners.
This note was different.
It said, “we live in a culture of achievement that makes no space for being.”
Wow, I thought. Hans is deep.
Then he attributed the quote to Meghan McInerny.
My big sister.
So, my big sister is deep. Hans is just… an impostor.
This is an episode about achievement and being. About success and grief. It’s about suffering and beauty and poetry. About a mother who couldn’t. A father who didn’t. A brother who tried. But more about a man who does and does and does.
While carrying all of these people, and all of their stories along with him. [POEM FROM JAAMIL]
NARRATION
This is Jaamil. He is a dancer. A performer. A poet.
Jaamil Olawale Kosoko has a bio that would intimidate anyone. From just after college…
Jaamil: I do programs like American Dance Festival. Um…I… study abroad, like, I study at the University of Kent in Canterbury. I go to the Monaco dance forum at 21.
NARRATION
Some of the names on his resume… Pew Center for Arts and Heritage… The Kennedy Center… Wesleyan University Institute for Curatorial Practice and Performance…
Jaamil: New York Live Arts with Mr. Bill T. Jones NARRATION
His art has taken him throughout the US… and Europe… and most recently…
Jaamil: uh, I’m teaching at Princeton, um… and I’m making work, NARRATION
When we spoke, Jaamil was on a tight timeline. He had to get to Introduction to the Radical Imagination, a class that charts black radicals from the civil war era to today. It’s a class that Jaamil teaches.
Obviously, though, we don’t make podcasts about all the good things in someone’s life. So what is this episode about? It’s about the price tag that came with all of these big achievements. Which are also the driving forces BEHIND these big achievements.
We’ll start in Detroit in the early 1990’s. When Jaamil is 11 years old. And… at that point… he wasn’t really Jaamil. Or, he was sometimes Jaamil. And sometimes…Stephen?
Jaamil: I had been living kind of like this double life. My beautiful mother was, so she named me, on my birth certificate, “Stephen Mercedes Anderson.” So all the while, you know, my father’s calling me Jaamil… and you know of course my, my father’s family name is Kosoko, so… you know my father knows me as Jaamil Olawale Kosoko…. my mother wants me to be the child of this man that she fell in love with as a teenager and never quite got over. And–and she also wanted me to be the Mercedes that she could never would afford or be able to drive. So I would go to school and I would answer to… Stephen Anderson, and then at home I would be Jaamil, and then my– my… grandparents, you know, they knew me as like “little man” or, you know, “little Steve” and all this sort of stuff, so… uh– So I had been sort of try– I wa– I had been sort of stuck in this, I don’t know, like be between, you know, these two dimensions of myself. NARRATION
Stephen and Jaamil. Jaamil and Stephen. Every day.
Jaamil: But at the same time, school… was this sort of refuge… Uh, I’ve– I’d learn that, you know, I, I was pretty good with… with words, reading, uh, you know, I really escaped into books early on. Uh, they– they became this way of, uh, denying or, or just escaping my, my present reality I think. Um… So the academic world and, and, and literature, and all of that really offered me, uh, a space to… uh, to really fall into myself. That’s right around the time I started writing poetry. I remember seeing Maya Angelou, uh, on the radio– or not on the radio, seeing her on television– …And I remember feeling the sense of promise really grow inside of me. And I thought maybe that’s something I could do, um… not thinking that… you know, I would ever, like, share my work or… um, you know, even be acknowledged for it or publish anything or even, uh, receive awards for this–for, for writing or performing or anything like that, just really using it as a way to… try to go about healing. And um… And that’s what I did. So… so outside of… you know, this world where I was at home, I was– that was so infused with… mourning, and grief, and– and sickness, and… and illn– I just like, all of the stuff, um… I was able to sort of escape, in… in, in reading and literature and um… and use that as a sort of vehicle, uh, to begin to maybe explore another part of myself.
NARRATION
Jaamil’s Tragedy Resume is as impressive as his professional resume. For every impressive accolade, there’s an equally devastating trauma. And while you wouldn’t know it by talking with him unless you were one of his five closest friends…or a complete stranger with a podcast? It’s all right there, in his art. In his poetry.
[MUSIC]
Jaamil: Stank. Weeks after my uncle finished dying in the summer of 1992, the death-fumes he left, left a particular scent in the walls of his vacant bedroom, lingering in the cracks and corners, settling like puss inside the tiny bumps beneath the skin of the eggshell colored paint. Even the floorboards stank of his demise, and so we kept the door shut, as if the room might clean itself, rid itself of the pissed-stained mattress, the pneumonia, the diarrhea, the vomit-stained mattress – all the viral signals of a body having rejected itself. A skeleton of himself, sores the size of silver dollars opening their fluid-filled mouths, voiceless hymns rising from the choirs of his body, most days he’d lay silent reeking with guilt. Perhaps retracing his steps, perhaps a footprint? Once he told me the present will always leave a footprint. NARRATION
The uncle Jaamil writes of died of AIDS. In the home he shared with Jaamil. Who, while most children of the 90s were going home to watch Power Rangers or play Ninja Turtles… took care of his dying uncle after school.
Jaamil: No sunlight. No visitors. Sleep without rest. For nearly a year, he sat quarantined in that house, in that stank room, in that stank body, cursing himself until, like a gift, he claimed his last breath. After his funeral, no one wanted to go inside. It was much easier to pretend he never happened. Although, I had been the one to feed him, to clean him, to brush his hair, I was afraid. Not so much for him as I was for myself, for how fast my concerns 23 shifted from keeping him alive to removing every infected memory of his existence. What scared me, and still does is how successful I was. No one speaks his name. His voice, his laughter are all questions, a Black bodied amnesia taken back by the ethers. Was he ever really here, on this earth, in that stank room, in that stank angelic body? Was he ever here teaching me something about love?
NARRATION
Besides a dying uncle, Jaamil had in his young life a very small brother – in 1992 he was 1 year old. Jaamil: Abdul Jamal Muhammad was his name. And Jamal… we called him Jamal.
NARRATION
…and a father who was in and out.
Jaamil: So my father was quite never present– I hate to say it– but he was, he was rarely there. You know, I would see my dad… sort of every you know pink moon I’d say. I remember, like, sitting down with him one day and he was like, “you know you should really call me dad” because at that point I just called him Rashid. I was like “Yeah, hi Rashid.” (laugh) I mean he was just like a guy who would come and take me to the movies, you know, every now and again or something and maybe give me, you know, five bucks. So we had a very sort of distant relationship. NARRATION
And then… at home, Jaamil lived with his mother, a paranoid schizophrenic who also suffered from schleroderma, a chronic hardening and tightening of the skin. Jaamil was, from his earliest memories, his mother’s caretaker. A parent to the woman who had given birth to him.
Jaamil: It was almost as if I, I sort of took on the role of friend, confidant, and child, and caregiver. By my mom, at the same time…as crazy as she was, I felt so much love from her. I know she loved me. Uh… You know, she would… make me dinner. Um… S-somehow she managed to… as– as– as a lot of, like, mothers and, and black mothers… specifically are able to sort of… just make something out of nothing… I would come home– and more often than not, she would find a way to have a warm meal there, um… and… and greet me, um, when she was in a more stable frame of mind. I learned early on how to… spot when she would start an episode. and by episode, I mean… on the verge of a breakdown. And I remember… you know some days I would come home and– and all the room– like all the lights would be off… and these candles are lit, and…a– I mean, what, I don’t know. I mean– I– (laugh) I would come home and there would just be, there was– there was always kind of some, some, epsiode.
NARRATION
And this continued. Until one day… after one uncle had died… when another uncle was at the house…
Jaamil: And… I remember coming home and… and this you know the the everything was black. Like literally from from… because she set the basement on fire she set the basement stairs… on fire… she set the house on fire. And so… that uncle ended up getting… Third Degree fourth degree burns on… multiple parts of his body. I mean she… she literally… she thought that my uncle was a… demon and… that she felt she had to like rid… like she had to kill the demon that was in him.
[MUSIC]
Jaamil: EFFIGY
Was it Tina or Peaches, one of my mother’s
vindictive personalities, who set the house
on fire with her brother still in it? When
I went to visit him in the Burned Victims Unit,
the doctors had just finished ventilating his lungs.
The hours hung long around his muscular-melted frame
like a bandage. Medical devices worked electric magic
to keep him alive. The past five nights, he’d spent
locked in an air chamber. Finally out of danger,
God was a reflection in the room—in the mirrors,
the windows, anything that let light in. The day
the gauze and layers of cotton were removed,
he was unrecognizable cooked meat.
His mother said he was such a beautiful man,
had such nice feet. The ten years after the blaze,
Lucifer took the shape of a drink he could not
put down. Now, uncle is the 40-year-old living definition
of a burnt blessing staggering in new skin, only
a trace of physical heat is left. Epidermal theft.
Crazy mother, you lifted the man’s clothes right off
his back. Scorched shirt singed while on the rack;
ignite the black leather coat. Some nights he wakes
in the hot rooms of his body still filled with smoke.
[MUSIC OUT]
NARRATION
His uncle survived. The house — though damaged — survived. His uncle didn’t press charges, so his mother {WHAT HAPPENED!}. And Jaamil and his little brother were sent to live with his Grandmother and Grandfather in Natchez, Mississippi. Just in time for Jaamil to start middle school. And life at his grandparents’ house is stable. For a while.
But like, nearly anything would seem stable after your mom nearly burned down your house. After you watched your uncle die of AIDs in the spare bedroom.
Not all of our episodes need a warning, but Jaamil’s message to us said:
HANS CAN WE HAVE HIM READ HIS EMAIL TO US? ABOUT BEING AN ORPHAN?
Really? We thought? Everyone in your life is dead? And yeah. Everyone is.
First, his uncle. And then, while he’s down south? His great grandmother.
And then, a baby sister, who he never even met. She died a week after she was born. Jaamil doesn’t know why. Jaamil: It’s strange because I never held her I never… I never…um… I never even saw her, really… but she, you know she was real she happened. She was in the world. And this is the hard part, Nora, is that there’s… all of this ambiguity. You know, so it’s one thing to kind of lose… you know, to lose family… and… and to know exactly how they died. And then there’s another thing when… you know you lose… someone and you are uncertain as to the cause or the, the exact conditions or… what the story was, why did this happen.
NARRATION
His brother Jamal is taken into foster care for a while… then returned… and then… when Jaamil is 12…
Jaamil: It was just, I remember in the middle of the night, waking up. I think it was my little brother, actually, that…uh… came and, was like, uh, “Daddy said ‘Get up.’” He called our grandfather “Daddy,” and he was like “Daddy said…said, ‘Come get up.’” Uh…You know, call the ambulance, basically.” I just remember her… laying there, and… on the bed… And my grandfather is like putting clothes on her, because I guess he don’t want, he doesn’t want the…I don’t know, the paramedics did come and find this, you know, naked woman, like, dead. So he’s trying to… I don’t know, like cover her up or something. And… You know just the Angel of Death. Just sort of… You know, it’s just present. And…. (sharp inhale)… and I don’t really, I don’t know what happened. It could have been a heart attack. But we ju–we just– there’s so– so many questions around her death. …but she was a young woman, you know, she was in her 50s…. I just, I literally just remember waking up… and… kind of being stunned at this, uh, just watching, seeing this– this dead body… lie there, who… just the day before, you know, was laughing. And… you know, making, uh… you know, like salmon croquettes. Um… So it was– I just, I– I was completely caught off guard by it. Jaamil: you know, I mean, in a lot of ways she was my… my… my, you know, she was my guardian. She cared for me. She was my caregiver for, for, for the most part of my life, really. Um…And so… when she died, that really… that-that that was, that was like a punch in the gut, really. Um…I… I’ve never cried, as much as I did for my grandmother. Um, but when I finished crying… uh, I don’t remember having… like really grieved… um, in this, in that way… since, if that makes sense– so, what-what I mean is, um… it was sort of like.. a-a- like a… avalanche… of grief, that sort of just came… all out, in… a matter of, I don’t know, days if you will. (Inhale)
Nora: Did you feel like you could ask these questions that you had?
Jaamil: Not as a young kid. Um… I did not feel as if I could. Uh, I didn’t even know how to… even phrase the questions. The confusion that I had, um… and honestly, you know truth be told, even to this day… you know, when a family member dies or, you know, someone close to me dies, I still struggle with like what are the right questions to ask.
[MUSIC OUT]
[PAUSE]
Nora: After your grandmother died, the first thing I thought of is… so what happens to you and your brother now? Like is it just the two of you and your grandfather or… you know, it’s like, what happens? And were you concerned about that as a 12 year old? Cuz’ I think that honestly possibly would have been my first thought. It’s like “Now what? Now what happens to me? What about me?”
Jaamil: [00:46:49] (inhale) Oo, goodness, that sort of… I guess it was good and a bad, it was good and bad. …It… that next chapter… is really sad. Um… As if it hasn’t already been sad! (LAUGHS.)
Nora: [00:47:10] Literally, I just…
Jaamil: [00:47:10] Exactly!
Nora: [00:47:11] I’m like, “the rest of this. Is about to get sad.” Just.
Jaamil: [00:47:11] EXACTLY! Um…
[MUSIC]
Jaamil: All these people who haven’t seen in… never, um (chuckle), sort of are present, and… uh, and they’re, and they’ve convened, and we’re all mourning together. Um… and, in my family, –it’s almost like the funeral is the reunion. Um… So, you don’t really see… or, I’ll for myself, I didn’t really see folks unless it was on the occasion of someone’s death, essentially. So here I am. You know, post… mor-mortum, of my grandmother, and… um, not only did my aunt come, but like cousins and all these folks, they all came up to older cousins. My aunt sort of takes a lead and decides to take us back to Detroit. Um… and by that point, we’re… we return back to that house that my mom, (knock in background) uh, you know, set on fire, but it’s, you know, it’s… back in a better condition at this point.
NARRATION
This aunt is Auntie Q.
Jaamil: (determined sigh). She… okay, so my aunt and my mom… biologically don’t share the same father. (Inhale), so my aunt Q, you know, by American standards might be considered prettier, fair skinned, just… more, uh… sort of “attractive,” if you will. And so there had always kind of been this colorism… And then also because mental illness is almost like the black sheep in this thing that is so looked and frowned upon… they… did not, while they were sisters, they… had their differences, we’ll say. And um…
Nora: [00:56:54] Like a gentle way of putting it.
Jaamil: [00:56:55] (Laugh.)
Nora: [00:56:55] You’re being, you’re like– they– I mean, as like many sisters they loved each other and also… hated each other.
Jaamil: [00:57:06] Yes. Yes.
Nora: And then your aunt Q who shows up.
Jaamil: Yes.
Nora: At your mother’s house.
Jaamil: Yes.
Nora: With her children.
Jaamil: Yes. Exactly.
Nora: So like there’s also like a mother threat there.
Jaamil: Exactly, exactly.
Nora: And like that’s a whole ‘nother layer.
Jaamil: Exactly.
Nora: Which is, like, they’re your mom– you’re your mother’s child, but also there’s this other woman who’s going to take care of you. And yeah so yeah that’s a lot.
Jaamil: That’s it. I mean you really hit it. That is exactly what was happening. And again I don’t– I mean, but, at that point I don’t have that foresight. I don’t know… (laughing) like, why these behaviors are surfacing the way that they are. Now, like, years later, I’m able to look back and say “Oh. That’s what that was about.”
[MUSIC CHANGE]
Jaamil: Yeah, I mean I… still believe that there are ghosts and… you know there’s a lot of just really, like, awful memories… in, in that home, in that environment. it was frightening. It was. It was really intense to go back, you know. And then… uh, in middle school, also like, you know, kids are awful…
Nora: Oh, it’s the worst.
Jaamil: And… uh.
Nora: It’s like “Hi! I’m the new kid. Everyone I love is dead.”
Jaamil: (Laughs) Exactly! Exactly!
Nora: I’ll blend right in here. Don’t worry.
Jaamil: EXACTLY! (he is wheezing here)
Nora: I love poems…. (Jaamil laughing.)
Jaamil: Yes! (claps.)
Nora: Ready to fit in guys. Just let me know.
Jaamil: Exactly. (Still laughing) …So that wasn’t gonna work out, you know, well in my favor, at all, uh, in inner city Detroit. Um… So… yeah, so you can only imagine, you know, so going to school, and, and kind of going through just all of that…awfulness…
Nora: And your mom is still– And now you’re in middle school and your mom is still (Jaamil clears his throat) having these… episodes, so you still…
Jaamil: Episodes.
Nora: So you’re back in that life, where you go to middle school. It’s the best.
Jaamil: Mmhmm, exactly.
Nora: Every day is a gift.
Jaamil: It’s a dream. Exactly. (laughs) Can’t wait to go to school. Um, and then yeah, then– but, but at this time my mom is there. But… and is causing all kinds of havoc and, um, I mean, my mom would call me, she would just come at random times of the night, screaming… “I want to see my kids…” uh… you know… You know, “bitch you not– you not– you not going still my kids,” like these– Like– it was always about us. Um… you know, and here my aunt is trying to like, do the best she can to… you know, stabilize as much as she can our, our family. Um… but then there would just be these… these moments… of, of you know, intervention when my mom would come, you know, knocking on the door… any kind of, you know, in times of night… uh, she might have a friend with her, we’ll call him, um…. who was also suddenly implicated into all of this. (laughs) Now we’re like, “Who is this guy, why is he here?” Um… uh…She… you know, she was, she, she suffered from… alcoholism, she had, you know she… you know, I know drugs was a part of the, the mix there. So she– she, you know, she was high at various points, so it was just… it was just ugly. You know, and she would come and… and it could be just to see us, she would really just want to see us sometimes, (inhale) but you don’t do that at 3 a.m. in the morning.
Nora: True. Yes.
Nora: Um… you know, there’s a time and a place to… (laugh), you know.
Nora: Typically that’s when children are sleeping.
Jaamil: Are asleep, exactly (laughing)… Yeah.
Nora: Oh, gosh, I feel for your mom, I feel for your aunt, I feel for you, I feel for… your little… baby brother who’s like, “I love–” you know, and you’re like, “I love my mom.” And part of me knows that something dangerous is happening outside, like this isn’t what a mom is supposed to be like, but also “she’s my mom.” But also “who’s that dude?” Jaamil: Yeah, so such a confused… state of feelings. You know, like do I lean into this, do I, you know, retract from it, um… you know, and then how children are oftentimes forced to choose. You know?
[MUSIC]
Jaamil: At the same time, my aunt is dating, starts to date this awful man. And… in a lot of ways, I attribute the… the demise of our sort of our family structure to him, because… it seemed as if he came… into this family, saw where the cracks were… and just sort of finished breaking it. Um…and when I say that, I mean… you know, he made my aunt, you know, sort of fall in love with him. And… I think as a result of that, she… not only became… lost to us, but lost to herself. and she had a daughter of her own, so… essentially what happened was they, they moved out of the house, we all moved out of the house, moved in with him… into a property that he owned… a duplex… lived there for a while… Eventually, he would create a circumstance that would… dislocate us all and would send my brother back down south with our grandfather. Um… my aunt’s daughter would be sent off to like, you know, her father’s side of the family. and then he forced me to go find my father. So up until that point you know my dad had only been this sort of, you know, this… you know, character that was sort of in and out but… so I had to go find my dad. So here I am, I think I’m like 14 at the time or something, and I’m being basically forced to find my father.
Jaamil: I… you know, I just started (sigh)… I became like a detective, (laughingly), like Encyclopedia Brown was one of my favorite, you know, like, (giggle) like, books growing up. Um… and so this was kind of like, you know, the case, I was going to find my dad. And um… and so yeah, I basically went searching for him, I made calls and… did visits, and just whatever I had to do, I just did it. [PAUSE]
Jaamil: So… here I am. I’m very scared, I’m like– scared, but I’m… I’m walking over to, to meet this person, and I knock on the door and… (inhale) and my dad opens the door. And um… And again, you know, he was not ready to be a parent, but, uh… you know I was like, I have nowhere else to go. You know. Um… and he let me in, the house was a mess, um… the apartment was a mess. yeah, I don’t know how I managed that year with him. I got chicken pox. Which, you know, at that age, you know, 14, 15… can be deadly… And I’ll never forget that my dad told me to, if I… if I bathe in Lysol, that that would like, you know, like… I don’t know, disinfect and like, cure me or something… I don’t know. And– and I don’t know why I listened to that, but I did it, and the things… Like, spread even more. Um… (throat clear) Of course I didn’t have health care… You know, it’s winter, uh, we don’t have hot water. We– like the refrigerator doesn’t work, um… you know, we barely have electricity. Um… I almost died. Like I literally almost died that year. [MUSIC OUT]
NARRATION
Sometimes there are moments in a life where you can clearly see when something changes. Not always at the time. But afterwards. Looking back.
During that year… that moment happened for Jaamil.
While all this was going on… he had started working at the Museum of African American History in Detroit and was bringing home some money, buying himself and his dad some food. But the museum had this program… a collaboration with the Interlochen Arts Academy. Which is a boarding school in northern Michigan. Very elite. Very prestigious.
Anyways…. the collaboration was a writing class. And one day… Stephen goes up to the teacher and asks about the school. The teacher directs him to her assistant, who was a current student at the school.
Jaamil: (Inhale), and I remember, I, I– you know, we’ll call her Z, and I just, I ran, and I like, I was like “What’s up Z? And um… I’m like “My name is Jaam–” by that point, I was really– as I said earlier, you know, how I was like Stephen and Jaamil, I was in the process of really fully changing or correcting my name to Jaamil so I could be just one person. Um… And… and so I introduced myself… and um… and she was like “What?” You know, “You, you, you write, you know, you have good grades,” Um, “Let me connect you to that admission’s counselor,” and um… and so… I did that application that summer. And… you know, by the fall… I was accepted and I had a full ride to Interlochen Arts Academy. And um… and that– that literally would– that would change the, the the focus of my life.
MID-ROLL BREAK
We’re going to take a break here. And when we get back, Jaamil will be on his way to school.
[[MIDROLL]]
NARRATION
We’re back. And Jaamil is finally getting a break. He’s 15. He’s off to boarding school.
Nora: Did your… how did you get there, on your first day. Like. Who brought you to Interlochen?
Jaamil: (Chuckles) My dad. The most parental thing… (laugh) he’s ever done. But he managed to get a car, however… you know, black dad magic, we’ll call it. Uh, but he managed to actually get a car and drive me to school.
Nora: What was… do you remember him… like, saying goodbye to you? Or… like settling you in at all?
Jaamil: I do… I do… And I was surprised because I thought he might stay the night or something… but… he dropped me off. I think he saw… he saw… my future, or something. He saw that I would be OK. He saw… possibility, and… I think he just felt comfortable to leave me there. And um… and that’s what he did. He must basically said goodbye. You know. “I love you.” You know, “Call me.” (chuckle) And… and that was it.
NARRATION
Boarding school is whole new world for Jaamil. Jaamil: (Laughs). Wow. It was like… Narnia, or something. It was like a whole other… like, reality. Like it was a, it was a… it was a world I never even thought could be possible for me. And so here I am like, immersed in this immense amount of privilege… and whiteness… and, and beauty, and art, and… and, and possibility… You know? And, and that was… I mean, it was a lot? But… thinking about the world that I was… that I had come up in… it was my only choice. So, failure just was not an option, like I couldn’t– an–and I had come in, I knew other… students from Detroit, who failed out or who– who couldn’t make it work, for whatever reason, I think it just was too much for them. For me, I was like “I can’t go back, like… I have no other options.” This– this, it’s either this, “I have to make this work,” or… or nothing.
[MUSIC]
NARRATION
So of course. Of course! We’re so sorry to say it, but the other shoe has got to drop. It’s November of his first year. He’s been there a few months. And one afternoon… out of nowhere…
Jaamil: [01:15:21] And my, sort of, house mom, Debbie, never forget… um… You know, she came…And she was like “Yeah, there’s a call for you.” …. it was like uh, it was like the front desk, basically, of the dorm … And so I went, and… you know, my aunt– and it’s my aunt who like never really calls me, but um… and that’s the sad part, was like whenever I get a call from any family member, I’m always like “Oh God, what’s happened now…” Um… And just, you know, the heart sinks and it’s just like “Oh god.”
Nora: [01:15:54] No one’s calling just to just talk.
Jaamil: No (wheeze laugh). There’s always something devastating, like… it’s just… yeah, it’s so intense. Um… but yes, so it was my- my- my- my, my aunt, uh… It was basically like, you know, uh… “I’m sorry there’s no easy way to say this, but your mom is, is gone.” And I just remember saying “No. …(Exhale). [LONG PAUSE]
Jaamil: Don’t… no, just… no.” She was like, “yeah, I’m sorry.” And then my dad called. And I was like, “Dad, it’s– I know, already.” (chuckle) It’s… “I know. You don’t have to–” He was like trying to like, you know, make small talk, and it was like “I know my mom is dead. It’s fine. I, you know, I’m making plans to come back.” NARRATION
Three months into his new life… a door is closing behind him on his past. So now, while the rest of his peers are off to go skiing or to their cottages. He is back in Detroit, planning a funeral.
Jaamil:I’m like shopping for her… You know, her… her, her garb. And… I’m finding it, like an Imam to do the burial. And I’m… I’m, I’m telling family where the funeral home is… and… just all these logistics. You know, at… at 16.
[MUSIC]
NARRATION
Jaamil described the trajectory of his life as post traumatic enlightenment. That’s where he operates now. A state of creation inspired and illuminated by these traumatic events. But at the time? This was just LIFE. And he needed to get through it. So he does. But while Jaamil is taking on the world in leaps and bounds, his little brother is experiencing a different life.
Jaamil crushes it at boarding school. And Jamal — 10 years younger — is back in Detroit.
Jaamil: [01:29:52] Yes. So… (throat clear) he is five–we’re 10 years apart. So, uh… he’s five, going on six. Um… He’s with my aunt, uh… again, I think by this point, um… sh– That awful man, and, you know, he’s, he’s left the picture.
Jaamil leaves Interlochen and ends up at Bennington College. A real fancy east coast place where he met our Senior Producer, Hans Buetow. Jaamil: [01:31:34] Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Exactly. Um, eight (throat clear), if you will. By the time I start Bennington, um, and– and still, like I’m trying to… be as present in his life as I can. But I am very absent, because, you know, I’m focusing on saving myself, really. Um… And so I’m trying to call when I can, and just… you know, let him know… trying to really be an example, um, as much as I can. But, you know, he’s really, I think at this point, he’s trying to… communicate but… you know he’s… I think he’s beginning to display episodes, um… and… and, you know, he just– I don’t know, he– I.
NARRATION
Jaamil goes abroad moves to Philadelphia. Then New York. Is working in the arts and gaining accolades.
Jaamil: [01:32:29] Exactly. And that’s the thing, right? Because I am mostly away, so I’m not seeing this stuff. You know, I don’t have a front row seat. Um… I do know that, uh… I mean, I can talk more about like, sort of, his behaviors later, …uh with like drinking and alcoholism and, and, and smoking and all that kind of stuff, and just sort of, you know, staying out… early on, I think because, you know, my Aunt really tried to… I mean she was quite strict on him, I think, early on, so… you know, they–they went to church a lot. You know, I think he was trying to like, do all the things, you know, like be a good little boy. And um… and just sort of, you know, show up the best that he could. But I don’t know sort of like what his interiority was, and, sort of, what he was going through, um,… deeply. You know. All I could do was, when I had breaks and things like that, I would go back and… you know, take him to the movies, try to… insert a bit of levity… in the situation, and try to talk to him. But, I– you know, I will say that he… did not… He had problems communicating. He–He did not know how to communicate his emotional life and what was happening. And, and, and many young people struggle with that. You know? But they can tell you if they’re sad or happy or whatever, um… (throat clear) but he just kind of started becoming quite numb, it seemed. Uh…and that–that was clear at a rather early age, and then his bipolarism would start revealing itself I think pretty early on as well and he would sort of… you know he would have like almost these panic attacks… where he would just sort of you know… if he wasn’t completely shut down and closed… you know he would just like… you know just kind of go into these like these fits. And I remember… like just thinking like what is happening with this kid. Jaamil’s trauma is fuel for his success, each achievement a way to push past the scars from his childhood, to burn brighter than anyone ever thought he could NARRATION
And then, in 2015. There’s another phone call. No. This time it’s a text. Because it’s 2015. And that’s how we deliver this kind of news.
[CALL ME… CALL ME… YOUR BROTHER IS DEAD.]
[MUSIC]
[JAAMIL READING WAKE]
Jaamil: Wake… for my brother. I suppose if I’ve learned anything, it’s all been tethered to loss. My 16 year old self, lowering my mother’s body down into that black earth, and now, exactly 16 years later, I’m back at this same place, same broken body, same face. But this time it’s not my mother. This is her son, and he is just as fragile as he is strong. His 22 year old self: long and muscular, dark and bruised, punished and weathered. I lay him down, like a question to God. I ask, Lord, if I am still here; why can I not obey?
NARRATION
Jaamil’s brother was just 22 years old when he died in Colorado. And once again, Jaamil took over the role of funeral planner. This time for his baby brother.
[JAAMIL TALKING ABOUT HIS BROTHER’S DEATH, HOW HIS BROTHER WAS SEEKING A FAMILY.]
NARRATION
Jaamil is now an only child with no mother. And a father who has moved back to Nigeria. [HIM TALKING ABOUT THE WHATSAPP CALL WITH HIS DYING DAD.]
[POEM – DEATH’S CHILD]
Jaamil: [00:27:23] Father, your 60 year old weight stacks before me like bricks. Thick with soot, and pieces of cobweb stuck in your throat, your evasive tongue speaks dust: asbestos and lent floats like fumes, like smoke. The words choke. I say it now as I tried to say it when you were still alive, your lousy half-truths — so cliché, so repetitious. Such sloppy lineage running fugitive through my blood, slave-spat into a flood; I do not want to do it. Not another Black boy forced to build his own father. His own mother, already twenty years in her grave, stops picking at death’s lock, rolls over, shakes her head. Boy, did I just hear what I thought you said? Her fingers, unfed and corroded, chipped down to their bones, forgets how they once felt and bled, how they once traced little man’s face before bed. Immaculate thread held mother/son stitched. So now, son-of-a-bitch cannot escape her—trapped in her black box as father is trapped in his black box, so full of past and memories. Two shady Houdinis, your disappearing acts fuck me up, hijack my sleep, my bed-time. What’s a fairytale? Who needs magic when you’ve got two dragons burning through your dreams? Night space useless, pillows like rubble, fire spitting sopranos, useless. Thank God you stopped singing.
Nora: [01:51:34] So reading your professional bio there’s basically no way to tell any of this about your past which I don’t think is like necessarily abnormal it’s not like professional bios are like guess what has happened to me in my entire life.
Jaamil: [01:51:53] Exactly.
Nora: [01:51:54] Guess my dark secret. But… the… you’re achievement oriented for, probably a lot of reasons.
Jaamil: [01:52:12] (laughs)
Nora: [01:52:12] And I’m wondering how you’ve been able to square that with… like trying to create a space for all the other things that are a part of your life and a part of who you are.
Jaamil: [01:52:28] Mmhmm.
Nora: [01:52:28] All these experiences.
Jaamil: [01:52:37] Yeah. Oh goodness. …I think there’s something about… how we– well there’s something about how life just reveals itself. And… how we compartmentalize as a protective mechanism, um, how we cut off parts of ourself. Um, the parts that we may be… ashamed of, or that are too… that are filled with too much pain to really present daily or to even think about daily? And while many of us do think about it daily… we are so well rehearsed in a very specific kind of performance and so… I’ll speak for myself and just say that I… I feel like I know how to perform… um, you know a kind of stability. How to present myself… in various environments so as to be deemed respected… educated… someone who is worth listening to. But at the same time you know what it means so I carry a lot of pain a lot of loss… a lot of grief. And to be in a constant carrying of that. And to also know that I had that grief will not destroy me. And again this is only the outcome of years of therapy.
Nora: [01:56:06] No we don’t. I don’t know if this is a weird question. There’s a part of you keeping this portion of your life to yourself professionally which I’m sort of like just assuming you have… but sounds like you have, right? Um, is a part of that just to avoid… sort of I think like a knee-jerk reaction to a story especially when you are… just surrounded by these like systems of white privilege? Is to be pitied. And to be like you know and to be like now you’re this poster child for… like hardship but like this guy can do it. So…
Jaamil: [01:56:50] So can you or whatever.
Nora: [01:56:52] Right. Yeah. Or like I like turning into like sort of like a really specific brand of tragedy porn… which is like poor black kid tragedy porn.
Jaamil: [01:57:02] Yes.
Nora: [01:57:02] Which people like… especially rich white people love that.
Jaamil: [01:57:07] Yeah yeah. And the sad part is that is not you know it is not… untrue you know there is a… you know sort of rags to… I won’t say riches but to sustainability–
Nora: [01:57:24] (laughs)
Jaamil: [01:57:24] —Uh, you know story here.
Nora: [01:57:28] Rags to– you know, it’s pretty good.
Jaamil: [01:57:31] I mean I’m OK right now. You know, thank god. But it’s taken… it’s taken… like it’s taken… so much… so much energy so much life force literally for me to arrive in this place. So… you know as you mentioned earlier you know… I do what I do not only for myself but I am… I’m carrying my ancestors I’m carrying my family… literally into these spaces with me. Their memories, their… as much as I can… you know their stories… but I don’t explicitly share this stuff… not in this way but… in my poetry, my poetry has really always been a site for confession and… and to just reveal the ugly the the dirty… parts of my interiority that I rarely am able to share in other you know professional points of my life. But the poetry does that and I think the live performance work as well is is also doing this thing that reviewing some of these socio-political anxieties that folks don’t want to really look at. But you know you come to see any any work that I’m doing and you know you should prepare yourself for… I’ll just say you should prepare yourself.
Nora: [01:59:26] Going to want to stretch those feelings out beforehand. Loosen them up because…
Jaamil: [01:59:31] Yes.