In March, my husband’s best friend and fraternity brother passed away suddenly. Mac went to the doctor for a routine procedure, and they gave him a sedative. He had an allergic reaction to the sedative and suffered a heart attack. Mac was brought back to life by the medical team, but his brain was without oxygen for 30 minutes. He lay in a coma for 10 days before God made the ultimate decision to call him home.

Imagine the shock and devastation this created for his family and friends. We were all planning to fly to his first son’s destination wedding in May. Afterward, all of the couples were planning a cruise around Rome and the Greek Islands. The wives had been planning this once-in-a-lifetime trip with our spouses for over a year. The bride and groom were doctors, and no expense was spared to make this a memorable wedding in Portugal.

Apparently, God had other plans for Mac. We endured the funeral in late March, but the decision was made by the family to continue with the wedding plans. You see, Mac was a visionary who knew his time on this earth was short, so he maximized his journey by being a supportive spouse and father, a “ride-or-die” fraternity brother, and a friend to anyone who crossed his path.

Recently, I celebrated Mac and Terri’s 39^th wedding anniversary with Terri. We had dinner at her home and ate the foods they loved. We laughed, cried, and sang through the entire meal. Terri shared with me that Mac was the only boy raised by a single mother and three older sisters. She said that Mac’s family had some very strange traditions. One of them involved attending funerals. Mac and his family loved attending other people’s funerals (most of whom were distant friends, high school classmates, neighbors, and church members).

I sat across the table in mild shock but curiosity about this family ritual. Terri said that it was common practice that his mom and sisters would call Mac regularly with updates about deaths in their communities, as well as who would be attending the funeral. Mac said that everyone in his Indianapolis neighborhood did the same thing. Mac had stacks of funeral programs in his car and at home. Dried flowers on his car dashboard and pressed carnations from family members’ services in his dresser drawer. Mac often visited his family cemetery with flowers for all of his deceased relatives.

Terri said that Mac also enjoyed talking about his death and what he wanted for his funeral. Mac’s family had their pre-arranged plots ready in the family cemetery for decades. Mac shared his wishes with his children as well. They had three children who knew and felt comfortable with the idea of death and the afterlife. It struck me that Mac knew his assignment on this earth and was not afraid to meet and conquer it. Mac’s family was poor in wealth, but rich in legacy and community. Mac and Terri’s home life was quite different from what Mac grew up in. Still, Mac brought light to his survival strategies, resilience, and cultural memory to his own family.

Mac’s entire life was history that refused to stay buried. I noticed that after Mac’s burial in the family cemetery, his sisters removed the flowers from his grave and visited other family members’ plots to give them flowers as well. I questioned Terri about that practice, and she shared that it was common for their family to honor other deceased family members in that manner.

I am grateful that history refuses to stay buried. I often think about how African American lives would be without the scourge of slavery in our history. I think about how our lives differ from the lives of other immigrants who came to America. I dream about the rich cultural heritage that we could have infused into our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and how the truth could have changed the trajectory of our destiny.

The history of my family’s joys and pains is present in the faces that I see at our family reunion. We may have no firsthand knowledge of what our ancestors endured to arrive in America, but we feel it every time we visit the ocean. We mentally experience it each time our feet hit the water. We feel a sense of survival when we share our childhood stories with our nieces, nephews, and cousins. Chains cannot separate us. No, we used those chains to wrap our loved ones tight and pray for their resilience.

Sometimes I envy our Native Americans. Native Americans know that their roots run deep in America, and their inheritance is passed to their children and grandchildren, even when it is not awarded to them by White America. They wear their afterlives like a tattoo.