This week, my church held a memorial service for members we lost over the past twelve months. Sitting there, I realized how much I have been buried inside the urgent work of caregiving, of grief, of decision-making… that I hadn’t fully seen how many of us had transitioned in this short span of time.
I lost Mama in April 2024. Daddy in August 2025.
Both to dementia, although it touched each of them differently.
My brother and sister-in-law and I have been through a personal workshop in dementia, caregiving, patience, and heartbreak. There is nothing theoretical about it. It will remake your soul at the cellular level.
This year, I also lost my Aunt — 106 years old — the last living sibling of my grandmother.
She died peacefully. Still witty and sparkling until just a couple weeks prior.
It feels like an era closed a door.
A whole generation — gone.
As I sort through my parents’ home — my childhood home — every object has become precious. Every photo, every receipt tucked in a drawer, every scrap of handwriting. Wearing latex gloves in that house feels like touching Scripture.
I have been stuck on Mama’s white Sunday suits.
She was a Deaconess. First Sunday white.
She prepared the wine for communion. She cleaned it up afterward. Not a single stain on those suits — a miracle only Black church women can pull off.
And now those suits feel holy. I know I will let them go eventually. But right now, they feel like I’m holding the elegance of my mother in my hands.
Usually, I love change.
I embrace it.
I live in it.
But this time?
Change feels like a theft.
Who are we without our elders?
Who will tell the stories?
Who will anchor the family?
Did we teach the next generation what they need?
Have we prepared them the way our parents prepared us?
As I get older, I find myself pruning back everything — possessions, obligations, ideas I outgrew but never tossed — because the next chapter requires room. And yet… there are pieces I still clutch at like a child trying to stop time.
Memory is a house that must be rearranged over and over.
It is cluttered with love and grief and stories.
And in this season — with both my parents now ancestors — I am learning how to clear a space for the future… without dishonoring the past that built me.
It doesn’t get easier.
But maybe it becomes more sacred.