Growing up, my father and mother had split-custody. They were never really “together,” if you understand what I’m saying. My mother worked a lot, and when I was with my father he always seemed to be anywhere but with me.

   But there was my grandmother, Michelle. She was my father’s mom, and somewhat stepped in to help raise me. She could be a mean Black lady, if she needed to. Other than that, she was a woman I looked up to. Strong, independent, raised all three of her kids by herself. And most of all, she didn’t let nobody mess with her babies, whether they were her grandchildren, kids of friends, or her own children. She stood up for her family, believed in them always, even when no one else would.

   I will admit, she wasn’t always the best influence. If someone was bullying me at school, she’d always tell me, “Well then, kick they ass if they touch you, maybe they’ll learn they lesson after that.” I typically listened to my anti-violence, “words resolve all conflicts” mother.

   As a recovering-addict herself, she worked a lot in the AA community, as well as volunteering wherever she saw fit. A child of God, it was set in her heart that all people, no matter what, can and will be forgiven.

   I learned my respect for those whom I did not necessarily appreciate as people from her, although it took me quite some time to realize and apply it. I can’t recall how old I was when I found out she had been diagnosed with ovarian-cancer. All that I can remember, is knowing that nothing, not even the cold hands of Death could take her from me.

   And so I prayed. I was, and still am a skeptic, but I always pray when it comes down to the health and safety of the people I love, as well as those I don’t, sometimes. I would go with her to her chemotherapy-appointments, occasionally. Wincing as I saw the needles, tubes, and such. But I kept my chin up. Stood tall, and brave for her. Everyone can use a little hope, sometimes. Something that I had a lot of then. An optimist, I was. Not so much anymore, since life seems to put people “on top of the world, or in the depths of despair” as Göthe once said. Back then, my attitude was always that of whom who is “on top of the world.”

   After several years of perseverance, and fighting the Hydra that is cancer, Michelle Hayden, remembered by her friends and family, and of all those whose hearts had been touched by her, passed from this life in mid-August, 2018. She was fifty-one.

   I cried. And I don’t mean a sniffle, sniffle, wipe a tear. I mean I absolutely lost it. My maternal-grandmother, whom I was staying with for the summer, had dropped the news. Right as she told me, two crows flew by.

   The last conversation I had with my grandmother was planning a visit. I had told her that I loved her, and that I would see her next week.

   That is what cancer does. It takes young, healthy people like my grandmother, or the oldest man alive. It shows no discrimination; cancer will consume whomever it pleases, to relieve its insatiable hunger.

   During her memorial, it took just about all the strength I had not to cry in front of all those people. Unfortunately, it was not enough. I was comforted by friends, family, and people I didn’t even know. People who had attended her memorial, perhaps because Michelle Hayden had been a friend to them, or possibly even a beacon of hope.

   The one thing I’ll never forget from that day, as tears well up in my eyes recalling it, was what her friend Cathy had said to me.

   She had said, “Your grandma wanted me to give this to you, and tell you that when crows fly by, grandma’s nearby.” Cathy had painted a beautiful picture of a crow, on a smooth, flat rock. I still can’t believe that coincidence, or perhaps the sign, of when those two crows flew overhead as I found out she had died.

   Now, as the crows fly by, or a dragonfly, which was her favorite insect, I remind myself that her cancer still hadn’t taken her from me; my grandmother will always be in my heart, and in the spirit of freedom that is in all living things that fly.

   For Michelle.

I know why the caged-bird sings, she longs for the freedom of the wind beneath her wings.