Karen's Journey

Objectionable language alert. This post contains objectionable language. Because it has to. "Nigga." All but the most ignorant among us, more and more of whom are slithering out from under rocks these days, know that "nigger" is a word that needs to be erased from the English language. Its use has always been to dehumanize people of African descent so that horrendous things can be done to them. Things like slavery and all the evils that brought: living life as a possession, to be bought and sold; dying by the thousands on voyages across the Atlantic, bound together by chains, never to see their homes or their families again; whippings and beatings and all forms of torture; families torn apart -- mothers ripped from their children, husbands ripped from their wives, siblings ripped from each other; malnourishment and starvation; and hangings -- just to touch on the tip of everything that was wrong with slavery. And rape. What female slave was never raped by a

Eighteen years ago today, I woke up fatherless. My dad, age 64, had passed away the night before while I sat with him in the hospice room at the hospital, after a year-and-a-half battle with Merkle cell cancer. I don't know what drives this universe. I understand the physical forces, but there is more to it than that. I don't believe in an all-knowing and all-caring God. But there is something . There are so many unexplained events around his last week that I can't believe there isn't a force -- a something more than stardust and dark energy from a big bang a long, long time ago. I had planned my first vacation in more than a decade several months before he began the final decline -- a four day trek through the wilderness in New Hampshire with no access to the outside world once we started in. I was torn about going or canceling, but decided he would want me to go and enjoy being free in the mountains after spending so many years under the controlling fist of my e