Here Upon the Vast Millennium

I wrote this poem in 1999 shortly after my step-father's death and before the New Year. I was melancholy because I felt that many of the goals I had set myself had gone unmet. This was just a glimmer of hope I had for the coming not only new year, new century but new millennium. I wonder if I've gotten any farther.

The Millennium approaches
and I feel pressure upon me
from empty hands that
idle and hurt.
The whispers of dry mouths
thirsting for fruit.

The Earth sits in ink
with amber shining upon it.
Yet her tears splash on dust
and not a drop to spare.

There are gods of many lands
but there a few faithful,
our brother's conscription at hand.
We sleep and it shows approval.

The Millennium is here
and those hands now must move.
Pitiful refugees, malleable charity.
Let us give forth fruit for our people.
Brothers and sisters are we all.
And a thousand years is not long.

And you thought Eric Northman was the hottest vampire in the south

It’s the story of Eric Peterson, a shy seventeen-year-old, very accomplished All-State clarinetist who falls madly in love with Marquis LeBlanc---a dashingly handsome stranger. They meet while taking a creative writing course at Loyola University. Selected as writing partners, Eric and Marquis exchange stories and poetry. Like most teenage boys, Eric has no control over his libido and wants nothing more than to lose his virginity to the man he’s fallen in love with. Marquis wants nothing more than to love and protect the young man he has become so enamoured with. He is shocked that after so many years of being alone he has developed such intense feelings for another person. He’s also keeping a dark and dangerous secret: Marquis is a 200-year-old vampire.

Image of Emeralds and Chocolate was a relatively nimble and enjoyable read. Eric is a circumspect youngster living in New Orleans whose tentative nature comes from his distinct hair (naturally red-colored dreadlocks) and from him being teased as a chubby child. “Look, it’s porky Ronald McDonald.” Children used to taunt him. He is, as most teenage boys are, overly horny with a “winky” that has a mind of its own. He takes college prep courses at Loyola University where he is also a campus tour guide. He is asked to give a special night time tour to Marquis, and, from that page to the last, he is smitten. Eric and Marquis also take part in a creative writing class where, as a part of their assignment, they have to exchange writings. Eric chooses poetry; Marquis chooses to write a short story.

We read both Eric's and Marquis’ work. Interestingly enough, Marquis’ short story--unbeknownst to Eric--is a chronology of Marquis' life. I actually found the short story-within-a-story much more interesting than the main plotline of the book. Told from Marquis’ first person perspective, we see him grow from a child (whose original name was Emanuel) born into slavery in 1800, into a hellishly handsome field hand sold from plantation to plantation. Johnson skillfully uses Louisiana to his greatest advantage creating a romanticized mythology of the region's great history and topography. When he describes Marquis and his lover Jeremiah bathing alongside the other male slaves in the muddy waters of the Mississippi River you can feel the humidity of their sensuality on your skin creating a breathless scene of taboo beauty. The tale of Mr. LeBlanc's life in a voodoo-laden pre-civil war landscape was lush and rich with legend.

I thought the use of modern colloquialism often hurt the prose since it was set in the 19th century, with some of the descriptions coming off as a bit puerile “…Jeremiah’s back was covered with scars from numerous beatings…while his buttocks looked like two giant chocolate melons.” I liked his version of what can easily be seen as retreaded vampire lore–as well as the ease of these characters with their sexual nature. We often don’t explore gay male sexuality contemporaneously let alone under the moon of the antebellum South. The author handled love and lovemaking between two men as well as the grotesqueries inflicted on slaves by the hands of both Massa and overseer with an unobtrusive matter-of-fact style. (We often see the result of female rape during this time period but male and child rape is rarely examined.)

This story-within-a-story was told with such depth and heartache; it truly is the heart of the book. Once Marquis is turned into a vampire by an evil plantation owner the story gets a bit dicey, however. There’s some contrived carnage and revenge while we find out that all vampires have unique super-powers (like being able to turn objects into gold, or becoming a human torch, or the ability to shoot ice out of one's hands). There’s also a subplot with messianic overtones that took something away from the angst of the characters. At times the author lost control of his story and it felt its most insincere when trying to be relevant historically, like, for example, when Marquis meets a young Barack Obama on the beach in Hawaii in 1968.

Back in the present, Eric is embroiled in a rivalry with another student named Amber over who should be picked to play as the first chair clarinet in the school’s holiday orchestral performance. When it was finally revealed why Amber kept getting the first prize, I was shocked---and not in a good way. This was definitely the weakest part of the story. I almost felt like Mr. Johnson was going for obvious melodrama instead of the solid storytelling that was evident in other parts of the book. Though Eric was the main character, I thought his story lacked completion and I was a bit unfulfilled at the end of the book's journey.

Mr. Johnson is a strong novelist. And when he writes with his heart's conviction I see greatness in his work. His descriptive powers are formidable when setting a scene although it sometimes appears he has an obsession with complexion. He makes sure we all know the many hues the African American characters come in by telling us this one is mocha-honey and that one is caramel-butterscotch. I think his depiction of the vampire Sophia is the most perfect in the book. “Sophia had long auburn hair, hazel eyes and a splash of freckles on both cheeks.” When his writing leaves room for the reader’s imagination it makes for a more delicious experience.

Image of Emeralds and Chocolate is a good work of fiction and I have recommended it to just about everyone. I see a bright future for Mr. Johnson who I think will soon join the ranks of great speculative fiction authors such as Brandon Massey, Nalo Hopkinson and LA Banks. Bravo.

Underwold Underwhelms

When Selene, played with sexy panache by Kate Beckinsale, uttered the words “The war had all but ground to a halt in the blink of an eye.” Whispered in her full-mouthed British pout she flung herself off the precipice of an indescribably tall tower and she dropped into a dark rainy night descending what seemed like hundreds of feet to the earth below. So began one of the most memorable opening scenes of movie making in the last decade-and-a-half. A sequence so startling it stays in your mind like the site of that massive Star Destroyer obliterating the screen chasing Princess Lea’s shuttle at the beginning of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

Under the helm of writer Kevin Grevioux and director Len Wisemen, Underworld transformed our imaginations and began a new zeitgeist for vampires and werewolves while turning Ms. Beckinsale into a slinking action star. In that original movie you had intrigue, scandal and sex constricted by violence into a serpentine plot. It was a bloody and glamorous melodrama funneled through the mind of Len Wiseman as if he were Douglas Sirk making a vampire movie. Seriously. Unfortunately that was 9-years and two movies ago and now the franchise has devolved into a derivative version of its former glory.

The movie starts off with Selene—Ms. Beckinsale reprising her role after missing the third installment, the vampire Death Dealer, as she and her beloved Michael, the only human-vampire-werewolf hybrid to ever exist, try to escape capture at the hands of humanity. The Vampire-Lycan (werewolf) war has been exposed and humans are out en masse searching for all non-humans and destroying them, erroneously thinking vampirism and werewolfism were some kind of disease or plague. Selene and Michael are captured. Fast forward a dozen years later and the first of many sci-fi staple rip-offs begins. Selene is in no better mood waking up confused than Sigourney Weaver's cloned Ripely in Aliens: Resurrection. In this future vampires and werewolves are all but extinct. Hidden in the bowels of a genetic laboratory run by Dr. Jacob Lane (Stephen Rea) is the secret to mankind’s salvation from monsters. Or so mankind has been told. Its seems that a mysterious young girl named Eve (India Eisely) --who by the way is this movie's Newt--holds the key to the Vampire’s salvation and Selene must protect her at all cost.

Directors Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein have created a reductive stew that blends the major uhs and ahs of special effect and wire-work wizardry with none of the original movie's excitement or innovation. They blow their wads in the first action sequence (actually the second sequence but the many in this movie are so tedious they start looking and feeling a like) when we see Selene breaking out of the genetic's lab. A well meaning Detective Sebastian has the case of finding the culprits who caused the destruction and subsequent murders of several people dropped into his lap. He knows that vampires still exist even though they remain hidden from view. A young vampire warrior named David comes to Selene's aid. He wants to return the vampiric covens to their former glories as masters of the world but his father is conflicted. Selene is tasked with protecting young Eve no matter what and soon the Lycans make a decidedly massive comeback and all sorts of ill-time gory shenanigans follow.

Underworld: Awakening is a beautiful movie to watch. Sweeping atmospheric eastern European landscapes, brooding rain, industrial and austere looking buildings give the movie a sense that it is about to implode and collapse in on you. The special effects are more CGI related in this one but all of it is a retread of the 3 previous movies. Ms. Beckinsale delivers on her sexy violence. She plays Selene straightforward. She tries to bring a certain freshness, urgency and emotional range to a character she's playing for the third time. I appreciate that but at the end of the day its still a hot girl with a milky completion, un-dialated colored contacts with fangs and an automatic weapon. There's only but so much that can be done that hasn't been in her 2 previous iterations of this character. Michael Ealy who plays the haunted detective (his wife died of the plague) looks equally as good given his flaccid character's dialogue. He's a by-the-numbers sidekick, torn between what's his duty and what's right. He goes through the movie with his signature frown-pout that is his all-purpose emotion when he's given nothing to work with. There are a few staid sub-plots between David (Theo James) and his father. Interestingly enough the only real emotion or fun I feel comes from the older actors: Stephen Rea and Charles Dance who plays Thomas, David's vampire father. Mr. Rea takes his character at face value. This gives his performance some heft but it doesn't come across as pretentious.

I was surprised at the dull and fallow script. Mr. Wiseman who wrote the story has been with this franchise since the first movie and should have been savvy enough to know what his legion of fans want to see. And if not the Hugo winning J. Michael Straczynski, the creator and writer behind Babylon 5, should have known how to produce strong character driven movies with powerful narratives. He did it for 5-years on one of Sci-Fi's greatest soap operas. What spoiled Underworld: Awakening was a lack of imagination. The filmmakers didn't think they needed to propel characters into new directions. They thought we lacked that imagination to follow them in new directions. Ultimately this made for an ending that begged for a sequel and that angered me. I must say this last instalement of Underworld indeed has awaken me and I won't be following this franchise into another darkened theater again.

Red Tails: This movie didn't fly

George Lucas’ controversial new movie Red Tails comes with a pretty impressive pedigree. Adapted from John B. Holway’s novel of the same name; Red Tails is the story of heroic African American pilots that battled discrimination and Nazis in a segregated all black unit during World War II. The movie sports an Oscar winner, 2 Oscar nominees, a relatively hefty budget for a January release with a predominantly black cast and George Lucas, the Godfather of the modern event movie (Star Wars, Indiana Jones) and the creator of Industrial Light and Magic, the go-to Gods of special effects. Putting aside the racial vitriol that ignited the blogosphere that rendered the necessity for an advertisement budget to zero; George Lucas, executive producer, famously accused the Hollywood machine of not wanting to fund a black movie. My fear at the time was that Lucas’ words were a ruse used to garnish a robust first weekend in ticket sales because the makers of the film knew they had produced a clunker. Unfortunately after seeing Red Tails my fears were borne out.

The plot revolves around a group of fighter pilots, trained at Tuskegee University to be brave sky-warriors at a time when blacks were seen as not only lacking the acumen, capacity, skill or courage for flying planes but were deemed more suited for kitchen or latrine duty. Flying low profile runs the Tuskegee Airmen are hungry to mix it up with the Germans but they are often grounded due to racism and faulty separate-but-certainly-not-equal equipment. When the Allied bombers suffer catastrophic casualties during bombing raids it is noted that the white pilots sent to protect their comrades are more interested in racking up kills than protecting the B-52s. Most missions end in failure and death. The Tuskegee men are finally allowed to fly a bombing run. Their sole objective is to protect the “heavies” at all costs. Even if it means forgoing attacking the Germans and missing out on the glory.

The movie is filled with stock, pedestrian characters that were so thinly defined and broadly written it was like watching an ABC Family Special Black History Month Presentation. Surprisingly John Ridley (Three Kings, U-Turn) penned the script and Aaron McGruder (The Bookdocks) did a final polish. The result of what should have been a dynamic collaboration turned out to be a tepid historical drama. All the tropes were thrown into the mix: the crusading Colonel valiantly trying to show the white brass inside the Pentagon that black men deserve to die for their country; the fatherly Major in charge of his eager troops, the troubled alchoholic squad leader who desperately seeks his father’s approval, the flashy philandering womanizer with the best flying skills but the worst discipline; the baby-faced recruit whose only passion is flying. There’s a folksy musician, comedy relief, a soulful Christian who loves Black Jesus and of course the hot love interest.

Terrence Howard tries his best to project gravitas and idealism in a thankless performance as Colonel A.J. Bullard who is nothing more than a pitchman trying to keep the pilots dreams alive. Cuba Gooding Jr. is completely unbelievable as the sage base commander complete with apple pie charm and a pipe; channelling Harry Morgan’s less grizzled Colonel Potter from M.A.S.H. If they could have put him in a cardigan they would have. Nate Parker, Tristan Wilds, Elijah Kelley, Ne-Yo, David Oyelowo and Marcus T. Paulk were all likable as the pilots but given “very little” to do. Anthony Hemingway in his feature film debut lost control of his film. He didn’t push the script or actors into new territories. I would have even taken some Roland Emmerich style melodrama over the sodden work here. From the opening credits that resembled an episode of the Black Sheep Squadron to the tacit punctuations of racism throughout gave the movie a tentative feel. Still photography with thought bubbles would have given off more heat and emotion than seen here. It was like the filmmakers didn’t want to commit anything too bloody or too garish. They kept everything soft and palatable. Like celluloid baby food. This is supposed to be a war movie dammit! I wanted to see the balls out bravado of The Dirty Dozen combined with the heart and soul of Platoon mixed with the style and depth of Full Metal Jacket. What I got was a loose primer on one of the greatest little known stories about World War II.

I must say the bulk of the budget was spent on the spectacular air skirmishes. They were moving and well crafted. The climax of the film served up our brave men in their propeller planes going up against the superior technology of the Nazis Messerschmitt jets was one of the better dogfights ever put on film. Clearly this part of the movie was influenced by George Lucas whose better working with CGI than real people. But ultimately these beautiful aerial battles were nothing more than pops of color in a drab room. Acrobatic chiaroscuro in an unstylish remarkably un-violent war movie. Leaving the theater my heart swelled with pride at these great Americans whose sacrifice and determination made all of us, not just African Americans proud as they fought adversity. Unfortunately this movie about them did not make my heart soar.

Pariah: Dee Rees a star just born

Sitting through Pariah, Dee Rees semi-autobiographical new movie is not one of those visceral theater experiences like Darren Aronofsky Requiem for a Dream or the highly controversial Italian film, Salo. You don't leave depressed or whimpering in dry heaves. You leave with the impression that something really important has been put on film. Quiet and introspective, Pariah explores the coming of age of Alike (pronounced A-lee-kay) a 17-year-old "butch" lesbian on the streets of Brooklyn. I must admit the movie itself is nowhere as violent or melodramatic as the premise may sound. It was a small muted slice of life as a young woman tries to make her way through the brambles of budding sexuality and a deteriorating home life all at once.

Alike is a masculine-leaning (or aggressive as they called themselves in the film) teenage lesbian. She is shy like many kids her age and all she wants is to have a girlfriend. She is guided by her best friend and mentor Laura. Not in denial but in hiding Alike changes clothes from the hyper-masculine affectation she presents at the local gay club to a sparkly, girly tee-shirt to hide that side of her life from her controlling mother and indifferent father. Kim Wayans, in a nice dramatic turn, reigns in her enormous presence to play the unhappy matriarch of the family who hides behind Jesus so she doesn't have to deal with her eldest daughters blossoming homosexuality. Charles Parnell plays her father whose DADT attitude is made up of less acceptance and tolerance for his daughter than his anger towards his wife in their decaying marriage. When the mother tries to circumvent further sapphic tendencies of developing she gets Alike to hang out with the daughter of a church member. The two girls embark on a sexual relationship that leads to heartbreak and betrayal. This was by far the most obvious plot device in what is a singular spectacular script. The words were written so truly it harkened back to the days of HBO's The Wire. Though you knew tragedy was afoot you were rooting for Alike to find her love. The film ended on a bittersweet note that you as the viewer had to pearl for Alike's and your inner joy.

Adepero Oduye as the main character is so fresh and vulnerable in her performance that often you want to look away to respect her privacy. Ms. Oduye captures teenage Weltschmerz with the power of a smoldering ember. The notion of heat is right below the surface. We see her toggle between despondence and euphoria and great weeping devastation just like any other red-blooded teen. Many times in the same scene. Her work on this film is so real I was transported back to those same emotions as I attended North Forsyth High School. This performance is definitely award worthy. Pernell Walker as Laura, struggling with her own mommy-issues gave an insightful, painful and solid performance. But to me the star of this movie is its director. Crafting and weaving a story that compels you in a direction that you didn't know you were going in until you arrived at it realizing that this was the only place you needed to be. She pushed her actors to give deep portrayals not just imitations of lives unknown. This movie may not be the glossy absurdity that black cinema has become mired in lately but its certainly an important new voice that I think we should hear from for years to come. Brava Ms. Rees. And like one of the teenage girls mentioned when discussing her bisexuality: "I like girls. But I love boys." And I love movies like this.

Sweden Calling

Stylish and grotesque David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a straightforward (though not entirely faithful) adaptation of Stieg Larsson's massive worldwide bestselling book by the same name. Daniel Craig, getting back to serious acting after fighting Bond villains and aliens, plays disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist. After loosing a very public court case that costs him his life's saving and freedom Blomkvist is man without a plan. He is contacted by a lawyer on behalf of aging industrialist Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to write his memoirs. After being summoned the Vanger family compound on a remote island 4-hours from his posh digs in Stockholm, Blomkvist learns the real reason he's there. Henrik wants him to solve the 40 year-old disappearance of his favorite niece Harriet. This embroils Blomkvist into the dark, nefarious and often depraved entrails of the Vanger family empire. A group of "Thieves, misers and bullies. A detestable collection of people. My family." as Henrik describes his own kin.

Meanwhile back in the capital we met Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), the girl with said dragon tattoo. A glass fragile waif who is a super-genius but super violent and super introverted by equal measure, who is driven mad by years of emotional and institutional abuse; works as a researcher for a security firm. She has a photographic memory and can break into any computer system. She has been forced into adult supervision as a ward of the state and after the kind man she has known as her guardian has a stroke she is forced into the hands of a rapist who brutally sexually assaults her time and time again. The most talked about scene of the movie will be when she takes her revenge on the molester that includes a taser, metal dildo and a tattoo gun. Extrapolate from there. It is both satisfyiing and disturbing to watch. Eventually Salander and Blomkvist meet and the hunt for a killer of women begins.

Fincher (The Social Network & Fight Club) is a director that can break down complicated story lines into interesting, if not easy to follow narratives. This was very much the case in this film. I would even say too much so. The movie follows the book in a linear and somewhat boring fashion. The violence and brazenness of his other works are somewhat muted here. There are many dark and brooding elements as well as the Fincher whimsy with his choice of score and the opening credits, which look more like a 007 movie sequence than a drama. He usually has a hands-off approach to his actors which can sometimes lead to melodrama as in Aliens 3, but in this case it worked. Robin Wright and Stellan Skarsgård gave heft to their supporting performances. The movie didn't feel so much like an Americanized version of Niels Arden Oplev's Swedish original. It felt more like a companion. This version still had very scandinavian touches with its spartan bleached woods, pristine snow covered forests and fluid ideals on bed-hopping and religion. I do think this version lacks some of the heat and perversion of the Swedish film and can come across as somewhat of a cold procedural rather than the flagrant roller coaster it was advertised to be. Once we realize that Bllomkvist and Salander are not just trying to solve a decades old mystery but track a serial killer that has been at work all across Sweden for over 60 years the movie revs up to a high paced gallop. The finish is totally not expected and extremely unsettling.

Daniel Craig is grizzled and sexy and Rooney Mara is both vulnerable and monstrous and they have great (not explosive) chemistry. Fans of the book or the earlier adaptation may take offense to Fincher and writer Steven Zallian's (Schlindler's List and American Gangster) very liberal choices especially post climax but we warm blooded Americans need some emotional payoff. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a solid film and a must see if you liked the books. Like a tattoo this movie will stay with you for sometime.

The long good-bye

Dealing with my mother's dementia/ Alzheimer's is like being at the bottom of a well on a dark night. I look up and only see an oval of velvety sky. But instead of stars I see swirling faces. Angry ungrateful faces. Pointing fingers at me telling me how bad of a son I am. Telling me that I am selfish for not wanting to take this monumental task of giving care to a terminally ill person, especially my mother, with nothing but exhausting pain and deterioration to come. These imaginary faces mix with the real ones of people I know, giving me advice on how to handle "the situation." They console me by telling me they know how I feel. But, really, they do not.

For many people, terminal illness is an abstract concept. It's frightening and inexplicable but ultimately detachable. They see the illness from a far, akin to watching a remote disaster on television. Your heart goes out to the victims of 9/11 and 7/7, or the survivors of the tsunami, an earthquake, a mudslide or Katrina. But, ultimately, you can turn off your TV. You can leave those visceral images of decaying bodies and bloodied children behind. They will become the fodder of our lunch time discussions at work or our missionary meetings at church. We'll email digital sympathy cards signed by the thousands. We'll text relief aid to a five-digit number after witnessing planes crash into buildings and giant waves wash over unsuspecting tourists on YouTube. But it's still not your pain. You can log-off and sign-out, call the kids to dinner or hit up your friends to come over and play cards. However, you will never know the hurt locker certain of us must go through everyday.

When I was a small child my older cousin, Wilma, was the victim of a stalker (long before stalking became such a widespread term). I remember the tragedy as if it were yesterday: The perpetrator was her ex-boyfriend whom she left due to his being abusive. She was smart, gorgeous and tall with a demure sexy nature--similar to Audrey Hepburn and Pam Grier rolled into one. At the time she was studying cosmetology and had ambitions of modeling or acting. She lived in Rock Hill, South Carolina and wanted to eventually go north to New York or D.C. She had a nice, new beau and a new job at a mall in Charlotte. This new boyfriend came to pick her up at the end of her shift in his fine 1976 Buick. Stalking nearby was the abusive ex. A barrage of shots suddenly rang out, shattering the windshield. The new boyfriend dived to protect my cousin but was hit in the leg in the process. Wilma was hit too; a single bullet cleaved her spine and, in an instant, my beautiful 19 year-old cousin became a quadriplegic for the rest of her life.

I remember going to South Carolina with my parents to visit my father's family. Sitting in the room was Wilma as her machines wheezed and bleeped and hissed. To my young eyes as a child, she seemed alien, bizarre, freakish. She was mostly jovial, however. I remember her mother shooing us out of the room so she could be changed. Wilma eventually was unhooked from the machines and was allowed to leave the house. Her older brother Everett would lift her up out of the car and place her lovingly in her wheelchair. My mother used to say that the strain of carrying her around would kill him and that Everett should be afforded a "normal" life. He shouldn't have to totally give up his life to help his sister. My father would say it could've been God's retribution because Wilma was vain, spoiled and had too-often argued with her parents. The images of my cousin would haunt me. They would remain on my mind like a funky treasure--something I wanted to hide, yet something I needed to share. Of course, like most youth, when dealing with the incomprehensible such as paralysis, those feelings were fleeting. They would last just until we passed that famous Red Dot Liquor Store on the way out of town. By the time we crossed the Catawba River Bridge my mind would return to Legos or my Rock-em-Sock-em Robots--completely oblivious to Wilma's and her care-taking brother's reality.

Life is a brutal thing. It can mete out great and wonderful fortune to some while cascading untold horrors to others. As I now begin that long good-bye with my mother I find that I am being consumed by the disease as well. Everyday more and more of my time is devoted to my mother's caretaking. No decision can be made without weighing the consequences that could either positively or negatively affect her well-being. My life too has been snatched from me just as surely as hers has. And in those dark and secret moments I feel anger and pity for myself because I have been caught in the melee of this disease. Each step, closer to pain and loss. Each decision made, more challenging than the next. But this time I cannot go away. I cannot turn off her dementia. I can't grab Legos with the sweet bliss of knowing "somebody else" is there taking care of her.

About a month ago my mother told me that she wanted her favorite bible verse inscribed on her headstone: "Be still, and know that I am God" -- Psalms 46:10.

Admittedly, I'm not usually a religiously minded person. But when she said this a peace came over me that was so sublime I cannot adequately describe it in words. So I just became still. For the first time in my life I actually listened. Listened for those little whispers that everybody hears (except for me, usually). At that moment I did absolutely nothing. And by doing nothing the waters became still and I was clear in my thinking. Maybe now I could see in those crystal waters what I could not before.

Wilma went on to actually become a model and win a beauty contest. She was crowned Miss South Carolina Wheelchair 1981. She even moved out on her own and had her own apartment. She finished college and even got another boyfriend, all without the use of any of her limbs. Everett married. His wife was even a home care attendant for Wilma once and they now have several grandchildren. This stillness brought into perspective that which is truly important in life: your family, your friends and each of the ones you love. Realizing this, the choice becomes more palatable--just as I'm sure it did with Everett who devoted so many years of his life lifting his sister in and out of that wheelchair. Maybe this illness, this brain-eating, soul-sucking illness is, in some odd way, a blessing; that this diagnosis doesn't have to define my mother or me. That we should make this long good-bye as wonderful and as rich as it can possibly be because, in reality, it's not about how you die---it's about how you live.