My mother died February 8th, 2022 at the age of 55 from a rare and aggressive form of cancer. I have taken a brief hiatus because of this, and feel neither ready nor able to finish my other writings at this current moment.

In a family that already has one significantly and chronically ill parent, we thought my healthy-living mother would, like the rest of the women in her family, live into her 90s. I was extremely lucky that my mother left this world to be with God surrounded by love, care, and closure. Our relationship, while loving, was often fraught during our lives. I am not sure how I would have gone on without this closure. 

Some of our arguments clearly stemmed from the ways we experienced life and Blackness differently, both due to skin colour and some degree of social progress. I sought to understand the reasons why we, while still holding the same values, could differ so drastically in our opinions on how to handle various issues. And in the end, while we each thought we were right, and the other wrong, the answer almost always laid in between.

As an artist, a lot of my work has ended up discussing mental health, and as such I have been more open (and sometimes too open) about the issues I struggle with. My mom tended to have a hard time with that aspect of me, despite her always being proud of me. While I was lucky enough to come into myself in an environment where people ostensibly appreciated my openness, which led to several people feeling they could trust in me, my mom was not so lucky. 

I am not going to divulge in death what she wouldn’t want shared in life, so I apologize for any vagueness. 

My mother, as a Black female immigrant working in health sciences from the 1990’s onwards, had to work unjustly hard to be respected in her workforce. Despite her passion, care, hard working nature, organization, intelligence, and that natural British-born Caribbean professionalism, respect did not come to her as readily as it ought to have. As we argued about how much of my experiences with mental illness I shared once, she told me that at one point she disclosed a minor mental health related issue she was dealing with, and her coworkers treated her differently (and not in a good way) until she left that job. She was worried about me. 

And while I was right that I could indeed safely be more open about my mental health issues, and that there were benefits to it for me and hopefully others, unfortunately my comfort in being so open about my mental health has left me feeling like I ruined everything I had worth living for.

My first commissioned article, about a year and a half ago, was about antiblackness and white supremacy in the artist-run scene in Alberta. My mom had long been my de facto editor, as she was excellent with words and gave amazing feedback, helping me to become the writer I am today. However, it was around the time of writing this article that I realized we had some differences in what I will call ‘editorial opinion.’ She FIERCELY opposed me using the term ‘white supremacy’ at all; she feared that white people would immediately discredit me and any value in my words due to getting offended over its use. We had to agree to disagree, as she thought my use of the term would be detrimental due to racism, but I felt that the white audience of the article was going to be mostly apologetic liberals who like to say “listening and learning” a lot. In this case, my use of the term was perfectly appropriate and I have no regrets using the words ‘white supremacy.’ I am outspoken, and it is important to me to speak out about things as I see them. 

I realize that this outspokenness and difference of opinion stems from the privilege I have in my Black experience. Once again, had it been her writing on a similar topic decades earlier, at my age, she likely would have experienced the very consequences she feared I would in using a potentially divisive term. Heck, even if I was in a different political sphere I may have too. 

My mother had worries about how the world would treat her non-white children, and these worries stemmed from her very real and troubling experiences. It was not until I realized these lived fears that I was able to see our arguments from more than my own perspective. Colourism no doubt plays a role in what privilege I have that my mother did not, but my abilities to do things, like be outspoken against racism, stem from the hard work of so many Black women before me. To them, I owe my freedom of expression.

My desire for independence and what I saw as her need for control clashed into fierce conflicts far more frequently than either of us would have wanted. While it never really made any fights less heated in the moment, I eventually theorized that her perceived need for control was likely rooted in the disenfranchisement of the Black woman. As Malcolm X said in one of his most repeated quotations: “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.”

Sadly, feminism that showed any care towards Black women lagged far behind the feminism that benefitted white women. While white women were slowly gaining more traction and acceptance in the workplace, Black women were often left behind. Under burdensome ‘traditions,’ the home was basically the only western domain in which a Black woman MAY have any power. Treated lesser in the workforce, it only makes sense that my mother would seek to exert what control she could in a world that systematically disenfranchised her.

In conflict, it all came from love and eventually I realized that. I miss all our arguments, because our arguments came from a time where I took her presence for granted. To argue with her meant she was alive to argue with. I miss all the good times, don’t get me wrong, but I miss her so much that I would take any manifestation of her presence now if I could, positive or negative. I am glad I got my closure and I hope others do too. Having a Caribbean mother can be trying sometimes, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way.