Onika L. Dainty

I walked into my 7th floor apartment the evening of New Year’s Eve, my mother standing by the dining room table tears in her eyes, my aunt and uncle stood frozen in my living room and three of my girlfriends who had proceeded me to the apartment stood awkwardly with party supplies in hand and regret in their eyes. I looked at my mom and the next words out of her mouth shattered my world, made all thoughts in my head disappear because life or rather death had happened when I was out making plans.

“Gran Gran Alvira died yesterday in Guyana,” my mother could barely get the words out past her tears. 

My response to the devastating news is silly to me now, “Yesterday was my birthday.” 

Then I fell to the floor and screamed from my soul where she had always lived and collapsed. I was never going to see her alive again, I was never going to smell her neck as I snuggled in her strong lap, I was never going to feel her arms around me or hear her soft voice telling her baby girl how I gave the best hugs, She wasn’t going to be at my graduation or wedding or the birth of my first child and we were never going to dance to Ella Fitzgerald or sing Summertime again. Life had gotten in the way of my plans.

After flying back home for the funeral and saying goodbye to my soulmate I simply stopped living life, I stopped making plans, I stopped smiling and laughing and loving the way I did when my grandmother was alive. She was 82 years old when she died and as an adult I understood she couldn’t live forever but the child she helped raise, that she encouraged to dream big couldn’t comprehend a world where Alvira didn’t exist. I spiralled out of control, I made a lot of bad choices after she died and two years later I found myself in a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit being diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder. That was never the plan but life continued on around me, life continued to happen to me regardless of whether I had a plan or not. Sometimes choosing not to plan becomes the plan and life still happens whether you like it or not.

Fast forward 20 years, I recently went back home to Guyana following my spirit, my heart and my soul’s calling to be in the last place my grandmother was. I spent a month there including my 42nd birthday, I celebrated Alvira, I danced in the rain, I laughed until I hurt, I explored my birthplace and I remembered things forgotten long ago. I found what I thought I had lost so many years before: I found joy, happiness and the freedom to be me.  I had no real plans for this restorative and transformative adventure home, It's how I’ve learned to live my life, minute by minute, hour by hour and day by day because when you deal with a severe mental illness characterized by unexpected highs and lows you learn to enjoy life taking things as they come and feeling gratitude for every little moment of sanity I’m blessed with. 

Thank you Mr. Lennon, you taught me that living in the moment is better than making plans for an unknown and uncertain future because no matter which way the wind blows life is what happens when you are making other plans.