What Does All This Loss Mean?
51:45 Share

This episode is brought to you by The Hartford, a leading provider of employee benefits and income protection products that is dedicated to standing behind U.S. workers to help them pursue their goals and get through tough times. For more information about The Hartford, visit thehartford.com slash employee benefits.

We've also got a link in our show notes. My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend.

My friend's still laughing at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com slash results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. A quick warning that this episode contains references to death and some strong language. You know, I think of a quote by James Baldwin saying,

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. And I think really, like, situating myself inside of, you know, being bookish has allowed me an understanding to know that my, you know, my story is not particularly...

I mean, when you really think about it, like the suffering of the world and the amount of loss that so many of us endure, my story is not unique. I'm Nora McNerney, and this is Terrible. Thanks for asking. And that was Jamil Oluwole-Kasako. And what he's saying is terrible.

True. Something happens to us, something big, something monumental. A parent dies, your husband dies, a job is lost, a home burns to the ground, and we are suddenly different from everyone around us. Our suffering makes us special. And then we realize that it doesn't. Maybe we start a podcast for that very reason. Just to remind people that everyone goes through stuff differently.

And maybe still sometimes we lose sight of that fact, the one that reminds us that we aren't special. And then we get the kind of email that just makes us say, that's the email we got from Jamil, who actually went to college with our producer Hans. Right, Hans? That is right. So I got this email from Jamil. And so I thought this email was just going to be like a friendly note. Hey, man, how you doing? Glad to hear the podcast. Hi, Hans.

Greetings from Brussels. I hope this finds you well. And it was a friendly note, but, you know, it wasn't just a friendly note. So where to begin? I kind of feel overwhelmed thinking about how to even draft this email. And I was like, okay, I'm going to steal myself here because I feel like we're about to get some bad feedback. Which has never happened. Not once. Basically, I'm an orphan. I've always been.

Even when my parents were alive, they were never quite present. So early on I had to learn that if I were going to survive, I would have to learn to take care of myself. Oh, no, we're getting a story. And yeah, this is a big one. The basic story is that I lost most of the women of my life before I turned 16 years old. My sister died when I was 12. My grandmother died.

and great-grandmother died weeks of each other when I was 13, and then my mother died when I was 15. Years later, all the men died. My brother was murdered just two years ago in 2015 at the age of 22. Then a week later, my grandfather died. He was in his 70s. Most recently, just the night before the eclipse, I received word that my father had died in Lagos, Nigeria.

Okay. So were you surprised by the content of this email, Hans? Yes, because it was not like the Jamil that I felt like I knew. We were in college together and he was this accomplished and kind of intimidating, smart guy.

guy at this school where you just kind of assume everybody comes from amazing and is bound for amazing. And so to have this other part of him come out was incredibly surprising. Like even since we graduated, right? He has gone on and he's done things like he went to the American Dance Festival, the Monaco Dance Forum when he was just 21, which is incredible. He has studied at places like the University of Kent in Canterbury, England,

Wesleyan University. Some of the other names on his resume. Things like the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, Kennedy Center, New York Live Arts with none other than Mr. Bill T. Jones, who's a big deal in the dance world. And now he teaches at Princeton, which is Princeton University. I mean, it's fancy. He's done a lot. I haven't heard of Princeton, but I will.

look into it. I truly have not heard of any of these things. And I Googled them and was like, oh, wow. Yes, I am a hillbilly. They're amazing. They're amazing. Yeah, they're amazing. This is an amazing guy. So the point is that from the outside, he's amazing or he's doing amazing because that is the part you can see. That's the part we can all see, even of people who are our friends, people that we know or think we know.

Because there's not exactly a published grief resume to go along with Jamil's bio or his LinkedIn page. Like, he's not being endorsed for, this guy's been through a lot. So Hans, after you get this email... I called him. And we caught up. And then I called you and I said, yeah, this is an episode. And I said, yeah. Yeah.

I agree. But what kind of an episode? It's not an episode about loss or not just about loss. Everyone has loss. It's an episode about what grief can teach us. It's taught me to be relentless about my dreams and desires, to manifest my imagination into reality, to be bold and to lean into post-traumatic enlightenment. Okay, post-traumatic enlightenment. Remember that phrase. We're going to get back to that.

So this is an episode about achievement, about being, about success and grief. It is about suffering and beauty and poetry. It is about a mother who couldn't, a father who didn't, a brother who tried, and a man who just does and does and does and does. It is an episode about what it means to keep living and creating, even in a huge wake of loss.

So we'll start, and we'll start in Detroit in the early 1990s when Jameel is 11 years old. And at that point, wasn't really Jameel, or he was sometimes Jameel and sometimes Stephen, because that's what his mother named him. So she named me on my birth certificate, Stephen Mercedes Anderson.

So all the while, you know, my father's calling me Jamil. And, you know, of course, my father's family name is Cusaco. So my father knows me as Jamil Alavale Cusaco. My mother wants me to be the child of this man that she fell in love with as a teenager and never quite got over. And she also wanted me to be the Mercedes that she never would afford or be able to drive.

So I would go to school and I would answer to Stephen Anderson. And then at home, I would be Jamil. So I had been sort of stuck in this, I don't know, like between these two dimensions of myself. So Stephen came home from school every day and became Jamil, who took care of his dying uncle who had AIDS.

And then Jameel escaped every day into the refuge of school, of books, of words and possibility, and became Steven. They became this way of denying or just escaping my present reality, I think. So the academic world and literature and all of that really offered me a space to really fall into myself more.

That's right around the time I started writing poetry. I remember seeing Maya Angelou, seeing her on television, and I remember feeling this sense of promise really grow inside of me. And I thought maybe that's something I could do, just really using it as a way to try to go about healing. So outside of this world where I was at home, that was so infused with

mourning and grief and sickness and illness, just like all of this stuff. I was able to sort of escape in reading and literature. Jamil's mother was a paranoid schizophrenic who also suffered from this debilitating disease called scleroderma, which hardens and tightens your skin and the connective tissue. It's really painful.

And his father was in and out of the picture. Jameel actually called him by his first name, Rashid. Jameel and his little brother, Abdul Jamal, who's 10 years younger than him, were raised with what we'll call consistent inconsistency. And I use the word raised loosely because Jameel spent a lot of time acting as a parent for the woman who gave birth to him. I learned early on how to spot when she would start an episode.

And by episode, I mean on the verge of a breakdown. It was almost as if I sort of took on the role of friend, confidant, and child, and caregiver. But my mom, at the same time, as crazy as she was, I felt so much love from her. I know she loved me.

Somehow she managed to, as a lot of mothers and black mothers specifically, are able to sort of just make something out of nothing. I would come home and more often than not, she would find a way to have a warm meal there and greet me when she was in a more stable frame of mind.

That was Jamil's life. That was his normal. A mother who could sometimes make him dinner and then, out of nowhere, become convinced that one of Jamil's uncles was a demon and that she had to light him on fire. So that's what she did. One day, while her brother, the demon, was in the house, she set the basement on fire. Effigy.

Was it Tina or Peaches? One of my mother's vindictive personalities who set the house on fire with her brother still in it. When I went to visit him in the burned victims unit, the doctors had just finished ventilating his lungs. The hours hung long around his muscular melted frame like a bandage. Medical devices worked electric magic to keep him alive.

The past five nights he'd spent locked in an air chamber, finally out of danger. God was a reflection in the room, in the mirrors, the windows, anything that let light in. The day the gauze and layers of cotton were removed, he was unrecognizable cooked meat. His mother said he was such a beautiful man, had such nice feet.

The ten years after the blaze, Lucifer took the shape of a drink he could not put down.

Uncle, is the fifty-year-old living definition of a burnt blessing, staggering in new skin, only a trace of physical heat is left, epidermal theft, crazy mother, you lift the man's clothes right off his back, scorched shirt singed while on the rack, ignite the black leather coat, some nights, some nights he wakes in the hot rooms of his body,

Jamil's uncle suffered severe burns and the house was still standing but very badly damaged. So Jamil's grandmother appeared from Mississippi to take Jamil and Abdul Jamal down south. And their mother... You know, that is a question for me. I don't know where she was exactly after that incident.

Besides maybe having gone to the hospital, being discharged, and then finding a room somewhere that was fairly cheap in Detroit. I was down south, so I didn't know where she was. Jamil's time in the South has consistency and stability. And their mother's life in Detroit is largely a mystery to them.

Sometimes she calls or occasionally she'll show up in their little town in Mississippi. My mom was, you know, she was a very eclectic woman. She wore very loud colors, demanded attention wherever she went. And so she stood out like a sore thumb in that town. And, you know, it did not take long for her to get this reputation of like, you know, that crazy African lady thing.

And yeah, I just, I remember and just, and thinking how, yeah, that's, you know, that's my, that's my mom right there. But she found us, whatever it took, whether she had to get on a bus, whatever she had to do to get close to her children, even though she was completely unable to be a parent, I knew that. And I think my brother, although he was quite younger, but I think he knew that as well.

One day, their mother calls from Detroit and says she's given birth. They have a little sister. And the next week, the baby is dead. Jamil never got to meet her. All of that loss and death Jamil wrote to us about, it happens in these rapid-fire clusters. After his baby sister dies, Jamil's great-grandmother dies. And the next time their mother comes down south, she takes little Abdul-Jamal with her back to Detroit.

Later, Jamil hears that the two of them are homeless, that they live in their car. Then he hears that his little brother is in foster care for a few months. And then his grandmother dies, the woman who was his guardian and one of the most stable figures in his young life. Oh, goodness. That sort of, that next chapter is really sad.

As if it hasn't already been. Literally when I was just like. Exactly. Unlike the rest of us, it's about to get sad. Exactly. Jamil's auntie Q shows up in Mississippi and she's going to take him back home to Detroit.

And Jamil's mom doesn't love this, you know, sister rivalry, mom guilt, all that wrapped up in one dramatic package. But Auntie Q's boyfriend is also not a fan of this situation. In a lot of ways, I attribute the demise of our sort of our family structure to him because it seemed as if he came first.

into this family, saw where the cracks were, and just sort of finished breaking it. Eventually, he would create a circumstance that would dislocate us all and would send my brother back down south with our grandfather. And then he forced me to go find my father. So up until that point, you know, my dad had only been this sort of, you know, character that was sort of in and out. So here I am, I think I'm like 14 at the time or something.

You know, I just started. I became like a detective. Like Encyclopedia Brown was one of my favorite, you know, like books growing up. And so this was kind of like, you know, the case. I was going to find my dad. And so, yeah, I basically went searching for him. I made calls and did visits and just whatever I had to do, I just did it. So yeah.

Here I am, I'm very scared, I'm like scared, but I'm walking over to meet this person and I knock on the door and my dad opens the door. And again, you know, he was not ready to be a parent, but, you know, I was like, I have nowhere else to go. And he let me in, the house was a mess. I got chicken pox, which, you know, at that age, you know, 14, 15 can be deadly.

And I'll never forget that my dad told me to, if I, if I bathe in Lysol, that that would like, I don't know, disinfect and like cure me or something. I don't know. And, and I don't know why I listened to that, but I did it. And the things like spread even more. Of course I didn't have healthcare, you know, it's winter. We don't have hot water. Like the refrigerator doesn't work.

You know, we barely have electricity. I almost died. Like, I literally almost died that year. Sometimes there are moments in a life where, looking back, you can clearly see when something changes. During that year, that moment happened for Jamil.

While all of this chaos was going on, Jamil had gotten a job. He was working at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, and he was bringing home some money. He could buy himself and his dad some food. And the museum also had this program, a collaboration with the Interlochen Arts Academy, which, if you can't tell from the name, very fancy, very prestigious boarding school in northern Michigan.

Anyways, the collaboration was a satellite summer camp program for inner-city youth that offered writing classes and other art classes. And one day, Jamil goes up to the teacher and asks about the school. And the teacher directs him to her assistant, who is a current student at Interlochen. And Jamil spots his opportunity, and he goes for it. I ran, and I was like, what's up, Z? And so I introduced myself.

And she was like, what? You know, you write, you know, you have good grades. Let me connect you to that admissions counselor. And so I did that application that summer. You know, by the fall, I was accepted and I had a full ride to Interlochen Arts Academy. And that would change the focus of my life.

We are going to take a break here, and when we get back, Jamil will be on his way to a new school and a new life. ♪

We get support from FOREA and the only people who can listen to this advertisement. I want everyone to listen to it unless you know me in real life, because I'm going to talk about intimacy products and I am a recovering prude. But I can tell you that I reached out to FOREA after using their products and I was like, I need you to be a sponsor on my podcast because I want to talk about this, even though it's hard for me to talk about, but I don't think that's just me. I think that's

A lot of us. Phoria has a cult following for a reason, because their products transform people's sex lives. It feels like magic. It feels like alchemy. I don't know how to describe it other than to say, if you think that you have had decent orgasms before, even good ones, if you feel like you've had good sex, you're about to

take it to a different level. You are about to have your mind blown. You are going to be just sailing through space on another planet and you will be amazed. You will be amazed. I am a huge fan of the Awaken Arousal Oil. The sex oil is also chef's kiss. They also have this thing called the Pleasure Set, which is their three best-selling products, which includes the Awaken Arousal Oil, the sex oil, and Intimacy Meltz.

The three of them together is like the ultimate sexual experience. Like you will be so connected to your partner or to yourself. Like honestly, you have to try this. I urge you to have the urge to use these products, which will give you more of the urge. Treat yourself, treat your partner, but especially yourself. Go get your juiciest, deepest, sensual experience ever.

Foria has a deal. There's always a deal. Get 20% off your first order by visiting foriawellness.com slash terrible or use code terrible at checkout. That's F-O-R-I-A wellness.com forward slash terrible. You'll get 20% off your first order. You can thank me later. Honestly, don't thank me. All I need from you is for you to have that experience. Okay? Don't thank me. Thank yourself afterwards.

This podcast is supported by FX's English Teacher, a new comedy from executive producers of What We Do in the Shadows and Baskets. English Teacher follows Evan, a teacher in Austin, Texas, who learns if it's really possible to be your full self at your job, while often finding himself at the intersection of the personal, professional, and political aspects of working at a high school. FX's English Teacher premieres September 2nd on FX. Stream on Hulu.

It's been seven years since I had my last baby. Seven years, which doesn't feel possible because it feels like I just had him. It goes really fast, except when you're in it, every decision you make feels like a huge one because it is. This is a whole human being and you're responsible for keeping them safe and loved and growing and thriving.

By Heart gets it. They're on a mission to make the best formula in the world using the latest in breast milk science to create a clinically proven, easy-to-digest infant formula that's made with organic, grass-fed whole milk, certified clean ingredients, and features a patented protein blend that gets closest to breast milk.

This blend includes the most abundant protein found in breast milk, alpha-lac and lactoferrin, the number one protein found in colostrum, along with broken down, partially hydrolyzed proteins. By Heart is an easy-to-digest formula that includes prebiotics at an 80-20 whey-to-casein ratio, like an early breast milk, which is tailor-made for a newborn's digestive system.

And by heart is made with certified clean ingredients. Plus it has no soy corn syrup, GMOs or palm oil. If you're curious about by heart, redeem your welcome offer at by heart.com slash thanks with code. Thanks for a limited time. Additional terms and conditions apply. That's by heart.com slash. Thanks code. Thanks.

The Terrible Club is our secret. It's not a secret. I've already told you guys about it. It's a Facebook group for our supporters and mega fans for people who support our show with a donation of $6 a month or more. And it is a life-giving source. I believe that the internet truly in my life has kind of been a net negative. Many days I want to just find the internet and unplug it.

But the Terrible Club gives me life. It gives me hope. Also, I've met a lot of friends there. One was at my house on Saturday night. You can support our show and join the Terrible Club at ttfa.org slash donate. We're back. And Jamil is finally getting a break. He's 15 and he's off to boarding school. Who brought you to Interlochen? My dad.

the most parental thing he's ever done. But he managed to get a car, however, you know, black dad magic, we'll call it. But he managed to actually get a car and drive me to school.

Do you remember him like saying goodbye to you or like settling you in at all? I do. And I was surprised because I thought he might stay the night or something, but he dropped me off. I think he saw, he saw my future or something. He saw that I would be okay. He saw possibility and I think he just felt comfortable to leave me there. Yeah.

He just basically said goodbye, you know, I love you, you know, call me. And that was it. That was it. Jamil had woken up in Detroit and would go to sleep that night in a whole new world. Wow. It was like Narnia or something. It was like a whole other, like, reality. It was a world I'd never even thought could be possible for me.

And so here I am, like, immersed in this immense amount of privilege and whiteness and beauty and art and possibility. I mean, it was a lot. Thinking about the world that I was—that I had come up in, it was my only choice. So I knew other students from Detroit who failed out or who couldn't make it work for whatever reason. I think it just was too much for them.

For me, I was like, I can't go back. Like, I have no other options. This is, it's either this, I have to make this work or, or nothing. So, of course, of course, we are so sorry to say it, but the other shoe has got to drop. Or in this case, the other, other, many shoes. Pretend you're at Nordstrom Rack and you knocked over an entire display. That's how many shoes are about to drop.

It's November of his first year, and Jamil has gone through the wardrobe and into a magical land of whiteness and privilege, and he's been there for a few months. And one afternoon, out of nowhere, his house mom, Debbie, tells him that he has a phone call. It was my aunt who, like, never really calls me, but, um, and that's the sad part, but it's like whenever I get a call from any family member, I'm always like, oh, God, what's happening?

And just, you know, the heart sinks. And it's like, oh, God. No one's calling just to talk. No. There's always something devastating. Like, it's just, yeah, it's so intense. But yes, it was my aunt. It was basically like, you know, I'm sorry, there's no easy way to say this, but your mom is gone. And I just remember saying no. She was like, I'm sorry. And then my dad called me.

And I was like, "Dad, I know already." I know. You don't have to. He was trying to make small talk. I was like, "I know my mom is dead. It's fine. I'm making plans to come back." We never know the last time we're going to see someone we love. And when we look back, it's usually something really normal.

The last time Jamil had seen his mother, it was the week before he left for school, and things were good. They were fine. He had no idea that was going to be the last time. And now, he's three months into his new life, and that wardrobe door to his past that was closing behind him is open again. The rest of his peers are off to go skiing or their cottages or whatever really rich kids do, and Jamil has to sneak back through into his old life, where he'll play the role of funeral director again.

for his mother's memorial. I'm like shopping for her garb and I'm finding like an imam to do the burial. I'm telling family, you know, where the funeral home is and just all of these logistics, you know, at 16. Jamil described the arc of his life as post-traumatic enlightenment.

That's where he operates now, this state of creation inspired and illuminated by these traumatic events. But at the time, this was just life, and he needed to get through it. So he does. He goes back to school, back to Narnia, and he does everything he can to make it. But while Jamil is taking on this new world of privilege and opportunity in leaps and bounds, his little brother Abdul-Jamal, who's 10 years younger...

is back in Detroit, living with Auntie Q. At this point, her awful boyfriend is gone, but Abdul-Jamal is still stuck in the place and the life that Jameel had escaped from. When Jameel graduates Interlochen, he ends up at Bennington College, a real fancy East Coast place where he met Hans, our senior producer. Bennington takes him further from Abdul-Jamal in many ways, but Jameel still wants to be there for his baby brother as best he can.

All I could do was, when I had breaks and things like that, I would go back and take him to the movies, try to insert a bit of levity in the situation and try to talk to him. But he did not know how to communicate his emotional life and what was happening. That was clear at an early age. And then his bipolarism would start revealing itself

I think pretty early on as well. And he would sort of, you know, he would have like almost these panic attacks. And I remember like just thinking like, what is happening with this kid? Like, what is he going through? And it would only come much later that he would be diagnosed with bipolarism. There's this thing that every commercial airline flight attendant tells you before you get in metal tube that's filled with other people's germs and farts.

They tell you that in the event of a crash, when the mask descends from the ceiling, you should secure your own mask before helping anyone else. And you think to yourself, I mean, really? Can't I just put one on my child first or this old lady who's hogging the armrest or just my little brother? Someone before I do it for me? But no, they are correct.

You are useless to everyone if you're dead. No offense to dead people. But you do have to secure your own mask first, and this is what Jamil is doing. All this travel, all these accomplishments, he's securing his own mask. He's saving his own life. And even though he can't be there physically with his brother, he tries to be a guide for Abdul-Jamal while still forging ahead with his own life. I tried to encourage him to apply to Interlochen.

You know, he was a good student. He had, you know, the grades. He could have done it. I think I took for granted that the same kind of prowess and tenacity that I had, that he had. But he did not have that support. He did not have that same sort of, I don't know, mojo or something. He needed more help. He needed more. Abdul-Jamal goes to school in Detroit instead of Interlochen.

He tries to go to college, but freedom is too much for him and he leans hard into alcohol. So he joins the army and eventually he is other than honorably discharged due to his drinking. So he ends up in Denver as a veteran with a small pension, which brings us to 2015. The sun was shining in nicely in the window.

apartment window. I was on the couch. I think I was watching some show, I don't know, some Netflix or something. And then I just, you know, pick up my phone just to like check

There is actually a series of text messages from Jamil's cousin. Call me, call me. Jamil had missed them while he was sitting on the couch, watching Netflix, enjoying his day. Call me back if you can when you get this. They came in all at once, and he read them in reverse order, which means that this is the first thing he saw when he unlocked his phone. Jamal is dead. Jamal is dead.

I remember I dropped the phone and I felt incredibly ill and sick and ran to the toilet and just, I don't know, whatever I had eaten, which wasn't much, just was coming out of me. I was crushed. I had become undone. And that was when I felt a deep, I don't know, just a cutting.

It was a rupture in my whole life, really. "Wake" for my brother. I suppose if I've learned anything, it's all been tethered to loss. My 16-year-old self, lowering my mother's body down into the black earth. And now, exactly 16 years later, I'm back at the same place, same broken body, same face. But this time it's not my mother.

It's her son, and he is just as fragile as he is strong. His 22 year old self, long and muscular, dark and bruised, punished and weathered. I lay him down like a question to God. I ask, Lord, if I am still here, why can I not obey? He was murdered outside of a 7-Eleven. He was stabbed to death. These guys coming out of a bar.

I think they approached him thinking that he could sell them some drugs. And he basically, from what I understand, you know, was like, no, I don't know what you want. I can't help you. And basically an altercation started and he fought them off. But then one of the guys pulled out a knife and there he was just bleeding out. Once again, Jamil takes over the role of funeral director, this time for his baby brother.

And he finds himself not just honoring Jamal, but learning about him too. Days later, I would see some of his friends would post YouTube videos and stuff outside of the 7-Eleven with candles and just like the way Black folk kind of mourn people in the public domain with teddy bears and candles and just all this sort of stuff.

And it's all sort of a testament to the kind of lives that my brother touched. You know, he wanted a family and he wanted community. He wanted to belong. He wanted not to feel othered. He wanted not to feel sick. He wanted to just be normal. He wanted to have fun. You know, he wanted to be young. I think he wanted a mother.

And a father, like he wanted these examples, these people. Hi, it's Nora with a little bit of an update. Terrible Things for Asking is on an indefinite hiatus, which means that for the foreseeable future, you won't see new episodes in the main feed. But if you want to support the work that we've done, get access to our entire back catalog with no ads,

You can join us on Patreon at patreon.com slash ttfa or on Apple Plus. We are still making two episodes a month.

for subscribers, which is a sustainable workload for us emotionally and financially. There are still plenty of episodes here for free on the main feed, so no pressure. But if you want to join a community of Terribles, come over to Patreon. And if you just want more Terrible, join on Apple+.

Jamil goes back to work a few days after his brother's funeral, which is very common because in America we have a thing at our jobs called a bereavement policy, two words that do not belong in the same sentence. And basically we get maybe 48 to 72 hours to get out all our sads and then get back to work, which Jamil does. And he realizes sitting in that cubicle that he can't do it.

He has to do something, something that isn't just sitting in a cube pretending like his entire family isn't dead, pretending like his world hasn't fallen apart for the umpteenth time. So he asked for a month off from work and he went to the Virgin Islands. I remember walking along the beach and sort of just feeling like this overwhelming need to step into life.

fullest self, you know, my, like really to understand what the future held for me. And so I remember going back to my hotel room, emailing my letter of resignation and not really knowing, you know, what that meant, but just knowing that I would be okay. Like I'd made it this far. I would be cared for and I would be able to situate myself in a way that would make sense.

Jamil has had a lot of success in the arts, but always supporting and performing and working in other people's projects. And that post-traumatic enlightenment we talked about before, it is starting. It's a flicker that's ready to burst into flame. After Jamil quits his job, he takes a huge step, launching his own performance art show, Hashtag Negrophobia, a way of bringing his past and his present together in a new way.

Hashtag Negrophobia is part art installation, part dance, part poetry reading. It's a performance and an investigation into the, quote, "...tangle of subcutaneous racism, violence, stereotyping, and secret fascination with regard to Black people in the Western culture. It is a gripping tale of loss and escape from a hopeless situation."

This show makes room for the grief and for his family. There are portraits of his father, of his brother. At one point in the performance, Jamil even puts on and wears the shoes that his brother was killed in. It's a cathartic gesture inside the work, something to help him heal. In grief work, you may know that in order to help someone move beyond a hard moment,

there's this idea of of a transitional object and that's really what my creative work is doing for me and in that process uh this this way of connecting with people connecting with myself I mean the truth is yeah my my biological family you know they're gone but then there's

a lot of found family. There's the family that we create that continue to love us, the friendships, the relationships that we build. All of that is a part of that larger map, you know, that we're all, you know, trying to figure out and to develop our cosmology. And so that was, I mean, that's where, that's where the enlightenment really came from is just that, oh, like,

Yeah, I'm not special. Exactly. What is special is not what happened to Jamil or that he survived, but the enlightenment he found in the survival. Hashtag Negrophobia started to get traction. Jamil's now been touring it around the world for two years, and he's found other elements to this post-traumatic enlightenment. He's traveling and curating events around the world, filling up his passport, buying a house,

That flicker has burst into flame. He's found his place in the order of things. And I've just, I've stepped into my power, you know? I've just, I've stepped into my power. And I think other people are finally, like, seeing it, recognizing that I'm, you know, I'm somebody. But in the event you thought we could wrap this up with a bow, no. No.

Just this past summer, Jamil gets a new interruption. He gets a WhatsApp call from a relative in Nigeria. He opens his phone, and he is plunged into a live stream of his father's deathbed. And I'm sort of, I can't quite understand what I'm seeing. Why am I seeing this? Why are they just telling me this now? Jamil's dad dies, and the memory of it haunts him in the modern way, in his phone.

Because my WhatsApp is directly linked to my images, I can't open up my images and take photographs without seeing photos of my dead father. I don't want to erase them. But every time I open my phone, I don't want to be greeted by my dad's face and his mouth hanging open.

Yeah, the dying version of your dad and your dad are not the same thing. And it's also, they start to occlude the vision that you have of the people you love or the people that you knew as people. They're just basically like a carcass. And you're like, that can't be the only thing I remember. That cannot be the only thing I remember. Yes. Yes.

I do not believe that you need to make anything from the lemons that life hands you, but we all make something anyway. Some of us just make more lemons. Some of us do make lemonade. Some of us make podcasts. Some of us make beautiful performance art and poetry, not as a way of moving on, but as a way of moving forward, a way of carrying these people and experiences along with us. Your family...

is moving around you, they are so incredibly present and they're protecting you, they're with you, however you want to acknowledge it. But they're there. And I do believe that. I believe that they're with me, they see me, they protect me, they guide me, they help me. And yeah, the relationship has just, it's transitioned, it's taken a new form.

but it still is very present, it's very active. I feel so incredibly close to my brother. I keep them with me. They travel with me. They literally travel with me. They're there and I feel them. Death's Child Father, your 60-year-old weight stacks before me like brick, thick with soot and pieces of cobweb stuck in your throat.

Your evasive tongue speaks dust. Asbestos and lint floats like fumes, like smoke. The words choke. I tried to say it now as I tried to say it when you were still alive. Your lousy half-truths, so cliche, so repetitious. Such sloppy lineage runs fugitive through my blood.

Slave spat into the flood. I do not want to do it. Not another black boy forced to build his own father, his own mother, already 20 years in her grave, stops picking at death's lot, rolls over, shakes her head. Boy, did I just hear what I thought you said? Her fingers unfed and corroded.

Chipped down to their bones. Forgets how they once felt and bled. How they once traced little man's face before bed. Immaculate thread held mother's son stitched. So now son of a bitch cannot escape her. Trapped in her black box as father is trapped in his black box. So full of past and memories. Too shady Houdini's. Your disappearing acts fuck me up.

This has been Terrible Thanks for Asking from American Public Media. I'm Nora McInerney. Hans Butow is our senior producer.

Our interns are Jacob Maldonado Medina, Emily Allen, and Marcus Arsvold. Hannah Mekock-Ross is our project manager and one of my reasons for being. Tracey Mumford is such a help to us. We adore her. Jameel is on Twitter @JameelKosako. That's J-A-A-M-I-L-K-O-S-O-K-O. His website is Jameel.com, J-A-A-M-I-L.com.

Jamil has a new show premiering in New York City. It runs December 6th through the 9th at the Abrams Art Center. Tickets are on sale now at abramsartcenter.org. Jamil's new book of poetry, which you heard some of in this episode, will happen in the spring or summer of 2018. You can request a copy of the work by emailing studio at philadiction.org. Spelling is very difficult.

TTFA is on the internet at TTFAPodcast on Twitter and Instagram and TTFA.org on our website. Our music is by Joffrey Wilson. Terrible Thanks for Asking is a production of American Public Media, APM.

When's the last time you thought about your employee benefits? I know you probably don't want to think about that right now, but they're important because you are important. Because people matter and so does technology, which is why The Hartford is so committed to providing a benefits experience like no other. Putting care and compassion into the technology behind benefits to create a better benefits experience for everyone. Learn more at thehartford.com slash benefits.