by Yusef Raahman Sudah

Created on: November 18, 2008   Last Updated: July 18, 2010

Although I have had as many births as deaths I am never ready for the loss of a  love one or a friend. No matter how many times I return each loss leaves me lonely for those that have left.  As my understanding and love of humanity improves I have become increasingly troubled by the loss of  "strangers".  I cannot help but feel pain when I read of the loss of a child in drive-by shooting or a fire or the passing of a 97 year old or a baby still born. I feel the agony of their departure even as I know what awaits them has no equal here on Earth.

Of my most agonizing moments was the loss of my sister Jacqueline.  I was only seven years old when she was born. She was my first "discovery" of seeing my mother pregnant. I remember well my mother's wobbling sway from side to side. I remember mainly because my mother's pregnancy because as the African midwives would say , she was truly "with child".

Before the birth of my younger brother and later my sister I had been the youngest in our family. And though I had a younger brother, he had been born during the time my two older brothers and I were away visiting our grandfather. When we returned after a two years there he was! So for me he was a "surprise" brother. By the math mom was 30 years old when she gave birth to my sister. It took me a while to adjust to seeing my mother with a round belly and the glow of expectancy. A glow my eyes would only truly witness when my first wife would give birth to my second son.  

When I figured it out my mother's pregnancy I whispered to my oldest brother, "Mom is pregnant" and he told Mom. When he told her of "my discovery" I felt a bit ashamed and frighten at the same time. But they both laughed with amusement. Within months like magic mother came home with the first and only girl in our family. She was a doll!

Time pass quickly and today I can vaguely remember my sister's youth. Jackie became the center of my mother's world. She had a delightfully magical smile and seldom cried. I only have foggy memories of our playing together but what I can recall makes me smile even now. By the time she was a teenager I was away in college or the military. I was away often doing those things that a teenage boy does between 13 and 21 years of age. I was away as my sister evolved from a little girl to a teenage heart throb dating boys. My mother moved from Chicago to Milwaukee and by the time I saw again she was an adult. After I was discharged I decided to

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