7 Days a Slave part 1

After I heard of my aunt's passing a deep sadness set in as there was no way I could afford a trip for $1000. I cried everyday dreading the thought of saying goodbye via a live-streamed video but there was nothing to be done. I cried and cried and then my brothers both found tickets for half the price and I was finally awarded funds that I had been waiting on for months. So on Saturday September 2nd I bought a ticket and everything felt right. Buh nothin in my life does go easy so Irma come n mash up errybody plans. Leh me tell yuh bout mah slaveship journey.

Hurricane Irma seemed harmless at first but by Wednesday my family on St. Thomas had decided to postpone Auntie's funeral as there was simply no way to get everyone safely there with not one but two hurricanes on the way. The rebooking process began and as I called the travel agents I would keep getting new and different stories. After two days and 13 hours of working on the tickets for my three siblings as well I was done. I felt as if I had just run a marathon. Could nothing good happen? The answer was a simple: no.

It turns out that St. Thomas was devastated by Irma and that everything would become more complicated. The airport having lost all contact with the outside world would not be open to commercial flights. So now we had tickets to a place we could not fly to. Yet American Airlines did not enlighten us about this fact. We were scheduled to leave Amsterdam in the afternoon, catch a flight from London to JFK, sleep there one night and then fly on to St. Thomas. As luck would have it the North Sea began to churn out its own storm, thus all Schiphol flights were delayed. When we finally arrived at London Heathrow our connecting flight was long gone and this is where the drama truly began.

By then I was positive that there were no flights to St. Thomas and that I needed to fly to Puerto Rico where my uncle would pick us up with his plane. When I told the British Airways agent this they insisted that their were flights available and was booked on a flight to Atlanta and from Atlanta I would travel to St. Thomas. Please note that this was an America Airline ticket and up to that point I had never spoken to an AA ground agent. So when we got to ATL we were put up in a nice hotel and I thought that everything would be fine, until I checked my flight before I went to bed. The flight that would be operated by Delta had been cancelled. The next morning Delta explained that American Airlines was still selling tickets knowing that there is no airport. If you have lost track of what day we are on it was day 3, Friday. Delta informed us that there were no flights to San Juan, Puerto Rico but after much, crying and begging they found us a seat for Saturday morning. Stuck in ATL for another day we met up with our mom's good friends and had a wonderful day.

We made it to Puerto Rico and my fabulous uncle picked us up and flew us over to St. Thomas but there is much more to this story. Stay tuned for part 2.

XOXO,

IslandGyal

My Aunt Shirley: A Glorious Death

I was returning to school when I got a call that my aunt had taken a turn for the worst. It had only been a week or two before that I learned of her illness, cancer. She had kept this a secret for a very long time, even from my mom whom she had seen months before at a camp. My aunt was 39 years old and dying. Having lost two aunts to breast cancer (2008, 2010) I could not imagine losing another, so I sank. My spirit seemed to ebb away at the news. How could God be so cruel to me? How could he do this to my family? My grandfather lost his brother in April and now this? Was he bound to lose the daughter he always hoped for? Should my grandmother bury her baby? In all my questioning and lamentations I never thought about her. I was selfish.

A GoFundMe page was started for my aunt and though I had previously sentenced her to death somewhere in my mind, hope began to blossom. As I looked at the page I kept thinking that she might just make it. God would listen and prolong her life. He would let not ignore so many people. Again, I thought only of myself and my feelings.

On August 22^nd I was returning to school when I got a call that my aunt had taken a turn for the worst. Auntie Shirley was dying. Daddy (grandfather) and Uncle Geoff were trying to get to her before she left this world. She left before they made and heartbroken I woke at 4am to hear that she was dead on August 23^rd. 

A lot happened after that but the most incredible thing was the outpouring of grief and love that I saw on social media. It was as if everyone on my timeline had lost her. That is when I was reminded of a movie called 300. It tells of the Spartans that fought against the tyranny of the Persian king who thought himself a god, Xerxes. The Greeks craved death that meant something and Xerxes sook to threaten that.  As he spoke to the Spartan king Leonidas he told that he would destroy them, no songs would be sung about Sparta, and no artist would sculpt or paint them. The historians would lose their tongues if they ever uttered the name.

The enemy tried to do that to my aunt, but here I am writing. Shirley touched and inspired so many lived that she will live forever. My aunt the go getter, lover of God and all of his creation closed her eyes and died the most glorious death. She died knowing that she was loved and that it was well with her soul. She died knowing that if she had stayed here longer she would have suffered too much. God gave her what she could bare and kept her smiling through it all. The best thing about her death is that one day she will have the most glorious event. God will tell his angels to go break the beautiful tomb in which she now lays. On that day He will say “Shirley Amorette Fleming you’ve had enough rest come be reunited with your family and live gloriously, forever.”

 

XOXO,

 

IslandGyal