DEC 2023 | JAN-FEB-MAR-APR-MAY-JUN-JUL 2024
i returned to the 33rd Parallel – N33°57.57′.6″ – W77°55.19′.2″ during the new moon of 12/13/2023. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was next to the sun. When something is for you, you don’t have to chase it. You don’t have to beg for it.
I laid down a new prayer (1/2 inch and biodegradable) on the beach and sacrificed it to the Atlantic Ocean.
By New Year’s Eve (12-31-23), I had made considerable progress on my apartment.
My mother entered a nursing home in 1991, and one of my favorite movies of all time, “Fried Green Tomatoes,” was released in December of that year. That movie hit home with me on so many different levels and inspired me to fill the walls in my mom’s room with images of cut-out flowers. My mother loved flowers.
I lived in Durham, North Carolina, and moved to Washington, DC, during that time. Whenever I came across a greeting card with images of flowers, I would buy it and mail it to my mom. I would retrieve all the cards I had mailed from her nightstand during my next visit and pin them to the walls surrounding her bed. I did this religiously for nine long years until she passed away on January 10, 2000.
After she passed, I returned to her room, took down all the cards, and placed them in a plastic bag. I brought the bag of cards back to Washington, DC, where they remained until I left the East Coast in 2005. I carried the bag of cards with me everywhere I went for the next 19 years, and it was also in my van when it was stolen. To say that I was thrilled when I recovered the cards was an understatement. I was beyond grateful.
I brought that bag of cards back to North Carolina and, within the first two weeks, created three 24″ x 24″ pieces of wall art and placed them on the south wall of my living room. It had been close to 24 years since my mom passed away, and these new pieces of art now served as a celebration for my homecoming.
My dear friend, Casey, passed away on January 22, 2024. Casey wrote all of the poems for the 72 Days of God journey. She was one month away from turning 98 years old.
On January 28, 2024, I drove my 82-year-old brother and his wife from Little River, South Carolina, to our hometown and then to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to attend a consultation for treatment for Nodular Melanoma. We learned during this visit that he also had congestive heart failure. We returned to Little River two days later, on January 30. I came down with COVID-19 two days after that. I felt like I had been hit by a truck. I was down for the count until mid-February.
Once I recovered from COVID-19, I began driving my brother and sister-in-law to Chapel Hill every few weeks for Cancer treatment between late February and May 2024. He had his last round of shots at the end of May and followed that up with radiation over the next couple of months near his home in Little River. It was the most time I had spent with my brother in my entire life. In the past, we never had much to talk about since he was twenty years older than me, but he told me so many things about my mother during these drives, things that I never knew. I cherished this time with my brother tremendously.
I poured my limited resources into my niece’s apartment, trying to make myself at home as much as possible. I continued to move through life as I had during the last nine months—organically! Ricardo and I still talked to each other regularly, and I often asked myself, “Why Wilmington?” Why did fate bring me to Wilmington? Besides family, what did Wilmington have in store for me?
My niece and I strolled on the beach on July 20, 2024. She snapped a photo of me standing next to the shoreline. The Full Moon of Cancer occurred the very next morning at 6:17 AM.
On July 22, 2024, I turned 63. The year of The Moon was behind me. I transitioned into The Sun Year of the Tarot.