This week, we check-in about the sermon that is @solomonmissouri’s Twitter thread urging Dell Curry to stick to the rivers and the lakes that he's used to. Then, we travel back to the summer of 2001: a time that shifted our childhoods forever and had us confronting grief for the very first time. We share our reactions to pop superstar Aaliyah's passing, which was followed a few weeks later by the tragic events of 9/11. This episode gets into some heavy topics around grief and loss so please listen at your own comfort.
OKAY, 2001 CHANGED US FOREVER
Scottie Beam Let me tell y’all something. You don't want to be out here.
Sylvia Obell You think you want to be out here, because you're not out here. All they do is start podcasting, and talk about plate fixing.
Scottie Beam You think it's a game, ‘til you in the middle of 60k people in a panny and she's pointing her finger at you all hard rapping Flo Milli lyrics. They not eaten butter pecan no more. BlueBell ain't even out here.
Sylvia Obell You better go listen to Lemonade and pray about it, cuz you don't even have the cholesterol to be out here.
Scottie Beam Do you know what group chat is? You better learn because you finna to be the subject.
Sylvia Obell I'm not trying to scare you. I'm trying to prepare you. These people are children of Rihana, born in the fires of chaos. You ready to leave your wife of thirty years till you wake up and your body is surrounded by rose quartz and moon water?
Scottie Beam You're listening to OK, now listen, a biweekly show while we chat about what's on our minds, what we're binging and what's blowing up our timelines. I'm Scottie Beam, media personality, content creator, music enthusiast, and wing connoisseur.
Sylvia Obell And I'm Sylvia Obell, culture writer, host, producer, lover, Beyonce and a child of Rihana, born in the fires of chaos. Cuz that is officially a part of my bio after my now all time favorite Twitter thread. Yes, even more favorite than the Zola thread now, is this bud thread, shout out to @solomonmissouri for the Sermon on the Mount that we did not know we needed. I mean, Dell Curry needed it. That was the intended person. But the rest of us needed it as well.
Scottie Beam: That thread was very heartfelt. It felt very genuine, like that's why it was so funny to me. It tickled me so much because the man sound like he,
Sylvia Obell Fed up!
Scottie Beam was hurting, like he needs people to understand out here ain’t out here. What you remember out here as being, it ain't that out here.
Sylvia Obell He said last time he was out here, it wasn't like this. It's ghetto. It was an accurate description of the streets, like it was just such an accurate dissertation of outside. And I mean,
Scottie Beam It was great.
Sylvia Obell It was so accurate. We caught several bullets. Like, first of all, why do you have talk about podcasters? I feel like it's the most millennial stereotype thing about me is that like, I’m a podcaster so every time I get hit with that bullet, I just feel, I just take it, I took it personally.
Scottie Beam Yo, it was rapping. I don't rap Flo Milli lyrics hard, but I do be pointing hard as hell at parties like, pointing hard as hell, rapping. I was like, damn you calling me the fuck out.
Sylvia Obell There is many a club photo of Scottie’s fingernail on nigga’s forhead in the middle of some lyric telling them about themselves. And then also, I mean the Rhiana one with my absolute favorite. But to Tulum in all caps, with question marks was definitely a highlight. Tulum??? Because why do we love Tulum so much?
Scottie Beam I don’t even know.
Sylvia Obell Why is everybody always in Tulum?
Scottie Beam And how much of a subject these niggas be in our group chats is hilarious, it was like, yeah, like, you about to be the subject.
Sylvia Obell Do you know what a group chat is because you about to be the subject?
Scottie Beam It’s gonna happen and you don’t even know.
Sylvia Obell And do you know how to make a mimosa was also a very personal strike in my mimosa loving ass, cus you know I love a brunch. To know me is to know I don't play about my mimosas so, like, I caught several bullets. It's crazy out here, and I know you don't know your rising or moon sign so I don't even know what you goin do. I don’t know what you goin do, I don’t know what you’re gonna do out here. You don't even know your astrological chart. I don't, like.
Scottie Beam That's why love was in the air. That exactly why love was in the air. Well, first of all, my friend, she got engaged, my friends got engaged.
Sylvia Obell Yes!
Scottie Beam I went to Atlanta to see my friends, Ayana and Adam get engaged and it was so beautiful. But I'm seeing, like on Instagram, everybody getting engaged.
Sylvia Obell Weddings, engagements, like, Ayana and Adam got engaged the day after a wedding of another friend, literally.
Scottie Beam Right.
Sylvia Obell And then I have another pair of friends who got engaged this past weekend. I was at the little secret engagement surprise event. I just was like, something's in the air, love is in the air. I think everybody just is like, you know, we're especially fatigued after the panorama and really don't have it for the streets in a lot of ways. So everybody’s like, you know what? Imma settle down. Imma settle down before the next lock down and just, you know?
Scottie Beam Right. And they said that Libra is in the Mercury or something like that.
Sylvia Obell Oh yeah, shout out to Cindi, one of our producers.
Scottie Beam Shout out to Cindi, something about Libra. And, you know, Libras are the romance of it all. So. We're out here helping people get together, join.
Sylvia Obell Well, speaking of helping people get together, because I did enjoy, I was really sad. I wasn't able to make it out to Atlanta to see Ayana and Adam's engagement. But I love that you were able to be out there. But no, but then what I also loved about this Atlanta trip for you was that I peeped that you also got to go visit your grandfather, right, while you were in Georgia?
Scottie Beam I did. I did. I went to go visit my grandpa. It was my first time visiting my grandparents house without my grandmother. So that was a very different experience. He's not a man of many words, even before then, you know, they were the ying yang. Grandma talked so damn much. And Grandpa, you know, didn't have a lot of words. But, you know, when he said something, it was important and kept it moving. He wasn't a man of many words, but I know he loved, he loves us immensely, so… a very emotional man. I love him very much. So being in there was a very different experience. I miss her so much. I can't even, I don't even have the words yet. And it's been like, what, two years now? A year, some change, and I still don't have the words to explain how deep grieving is. How deep I miss her. Grief is a very complex process.
Sylvia Obell Yeah, and these past few weeks I feel have had a lot of us reflecting a lot more on grief because, especially, with the important anniversaries around Aaliyah at September 11. So it got me thinking, I think you and I were talking about like, the year 2001 and how 20 years ago and that summer was such a turning point in our childhoods.
Scottie Beam Absolutely. Changed a lot for us as kids.
Sylvia Obell Yeah,
Scottie Beam So, yes, we're going to take you guys on a little coming of age journey with us, and just want to let our listeners know that we know grief can be a very heavy topic. So please take care of yourselves, even if that means stopping the episode here.
Sylvia Obell Yes, it'll always be here for you to come back to when you're ready, or skip over at all. It's all good. But in the meantime, yes, let's get into it.
Scottie Beam So taking it back 20 years ago, in 2001, the theaters were showing things like Rush Hour 2, the Fast and the Furious, Save the Last Dance, that was my, that was my movie
Sylvia Obell Oh I love that movie.
Scottie Beam Spy Kids, Princess Diaries. Love that movie as well. Shout out to that lady. Childhood was in full swing. I was 10 years old. Sylvia, you were 11.
Sylvia Obell Yes.
Scottie Beam And that year was a very feel good time for hip hop and R&B. Some of the Billboard chart toppers were like, Destiny's Child, “Independent Woman, pt. I,” Shaggy's, “It wasn't me.” It wasn't me. That was my joint too, shout to Disney Channel too. It was very big 2001. J. Lo's, “Love Don't Cost a Thing.” And Janet Jackson's “All for you.” It's all for you, if you really love me. That was also my jam.
Sylvia Obell Yes, that's actually, man. I was listening to that album the other day. All for You was such a good, it was like a happy Janet album too. And Independent Woman, did that for the talent show. Ask about me, you were in New Jersey. But,
Scottie Beam Oh my gosh, please!
Sylvia Obell I feel like also we were just on the precipice of like really getting into music and having our own taste for it and not just, like, influence of like big sisters and cousins and parents, but like what do we like. Like we were old enough to start kind of taking that in. And especially that summer, that July, Aaliyah had just released her self-titled album. And she was definitely one of the first artists I remember, like liking for myself, like, you know, like not being put on to or like, you know, my cousins was listening to Mary J. Blige or like Lil Kim. And I loved all of that. But like, that was influence. You know, like Aaliyah was younger and, you know, in a lot of the same ways of like Destiny's Child and TLC felt like mine. You know what I mean, like mine in that sense. And I had loved, you know, “One in a Million,” which had come out before that, “Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number,” had come out before that. And now here she was with her self-titled album. She was on top of the world. Her career was, it was like a rocket ship and she would do movies like Romeo Must Die. I loved that movie when it came out. And we were like, “Oh, she can act, too?”
Scottie Beam Right.
Sylvia Obell And then it was just like, she was also just so sweet, like people talk a lot about, back then especially like, “America's Sweethearts” of sorts. And I feel like Aaliyah was definitely like the R&B version of that. And, you know, I remember watching her interviews on 106 and Park or like, MTV had a lot of documentary shows or like, making the video shows back then. I think she had a diary episode, and she was a favorite of mine. And I, 11-year-old Sylvia was just deeply in love with Aaliyah and just couldn't get enough of her.
Scottie Beam Same. I loved her music. Absolutely. But for me, it was the fashion choices this girl was making because at the time I was a tomboy and back then it kind of felt played out to still be a tomboy. Now, yes, we know Mary J. Blige had the tomboy on lock back then, but I was too young back then. So in 2001, you felt like it was a little, like, played out that you still wanted to wear baggy clothes and, you know, show some boxers or whatever it was. And Aaliyah was like, “Yeah no, I'm good. I want to do that.” And I used to just, anything that she wore, I would try to find a different type of piece. Shout out to Limited Too, shout out. We used to be in, you know, like we would be in them stores, being like, “Would Aaliyah wear this? This is an Aaliyah shirt. Ok so I'm gonna wear something like Aaliyah.” So that. Hairstyles. You ain't never seen my eye for a minute.
Sylvia Obell That thing had us in a Choke Hold.
Scottie Beam Every day! I'm not playing with y’all.
Sylvia Obell Running into doors. Because I couldn’t see people coming from my right.
Scottie Beam I had to turn my head to use my eye. Having to see for real.
Sylvia Obell No peripheral vision, thanks to Aaliyah, at all. Couldn’t see nothing coming.
Scottie Beam But a bitch was cute!
Sylvia Obell Yes. And I can so see that for you, too, Scottie because, like, you're like such a epitome of like, sporty but sexy at the same time.
Scottie Beam I was trying to be that.
Sylvia Obell And I completely feel like Aaliyah was like the first that I saw of that really, too.
Scottie Beam Yeah, So I was trying to be that, I loved what Aaliyah wore at all times. I just loved her. Everything. So that and then, you know, it was part of like, becoming diani. I think those looks have stuck with me forever. I continue to do and wear some of the things that she would have worn back then, because. that's me. So she's responsible for my style today as a 30 year old woman. So, yes, she's, talking about impact,
Sylvia Obell's Influence is strong.
Scottie Beam A sister's impactful. You know, I was actually in Belize when I found out that Aaliyah passed. It was my first time in Belize meeting family that I've never met before, also with family from New York City. And I was having a rough time there anyway, let me just say, Belize was not my favorite. It had a lot of exotic bugs there that I've never heard or seen. And I had mosquito bites everywhere. Mind you guys, I'm not in a resort. I'm in the hood, like we in, we in the streets of Belize. So we're watching South Park. And, you know, back then at the bottom of the screen, they would give you some news, right?
Sylvia Obell Yeah, like a ticker.
Scottie Beam And it would be like, yeah, a little ticker of just really important news. And on the bottom, it said, “Aaliyah dies, plane crash.” And I'm like, “Um… huh?” And also, guys, because I'm in Belize, the news is different. They're not showing the news on this. So I'm like, OK, what is happening? And there was no Twitter back then. There was no Instagram. There was just, let me call my mom to see what is happening, because my mom was in the States. So I had to call my mom to get the news. And I was very sad, but I didn't have time to do that, to grieve, because I too would have to get on a plane. And I've already had an issue with flying. I don't like it. Never liked it. Still to this day, do not like it. Have to do some type of Benadryl, some type of something to get me to ease my pain. Some wine, tequila, something. So I fought with my family about, I was like, y’all just going to have to fly my mother out here and get her to get me on this plane because I'm not getting on this plane with y’all. I cried so hard. And, you know, after a few threats and a few, you know,
Sylvia Obell From your grandmother.
Scottie Beam Calls from my mom.
Sylvia Obell Oh, the little American girl, go get her ass on this plane, don’t nobody got time for this.
Scottie Beam I was with all the OGs, like the great Aunts, my grandma.
Sylvia Obell No tolerance.
Scottie Beam So they really had no tolerance for tears. They were like, Sis, I hear what you're going through, bitch we getting on this plane. So I got on the plane. But, you know, I was more confused than I was sad because I'd never seen such a young spirit go yet.
Sylvia Obell Yeah.
Scottie Beam You know, where were you when Aaliyah passed?
Sylvia Obell It's so crazy. Our experiences were so similar, even though we were decades away from knowing each other. I wasn't Belize but I was in Kenya, which is where my family is from. And we were there for two weeks over the summer, before we, you know, before a school season started. And I remember so much about that trip just, I was talking about Aaliyah to anybody who would listen. I was like, “Y'all got it, ye heard, y’all got Aaliyah out here in these streets cause like, y’all heard of her? Cuz like, she's the thing!
Scottie Beam Aaliyah Witness. You was out here knocking on doors.
Sylvia Obell Knocking on doors in Nairobi. Like, “Have you heard the good news? Have you heard the good news? My brothers and sisters, there's this girl and everything is great, I swear.” Because you know, like, I think for me it was always such a culture shock, sometimes coming in and out, because, of course, they had, you know, music is international and it's everywhere. But like sometimes things were on a slight delay, like, I don't know if that was your case and Belize, but like, when I go to Kenya, like I realize, like the shows were sometimes like a season or two behind, like, all these things.
Scottie Beam Absolutely.
Sylvia Obell And so even on MTV, they were just playing, I remember being there and watching her diary episode with, like, my uncle and being like, “No, no, you gotta watch this. I love this episode. It came out like a few months ago back in the States. Like, you got to watch, just, She’s great, look at her dancing. Look at her dancing, she can dance too!” Like I just, so, so it was so crazy that I had no idea that while I was there and doing this that she was going to pass that week. And I remember, the day it happened, and I think your experience is probably why my uncle was afraid to tell me. We were going from Kisumu to Nairobi, um, which is the bigger city, which is then where you fly back to America from. But it took a small plane to get from Kisumu to Nairobi. So I guess everybody had made a group decision to not tell me until we got to Nairobi, probably so I wouldn't do what you did,
Scottie Beam Smart.
Sylvia Obell Which was refuse to get on the plane.
Scottie Beam A scene, honey.
Sylvia Obell I, cuz they were like, we can't have no scene. And, you know, for the Gen Z-ers kids who are like, didn't you get a phone alert? Like this was before smartphones. This is before notifications, before social media. Like there was none of, there was only a few ways to find out news back then, especially if you were not in America.
Scottie Beam Radio, TV. That was it.
Sylvia Obell Especially if you weren't in America. Like was just whatever. So I think my uncle read about it in the paper, something I don't know. But he, when we landed in Nairobi and were back in my grandmother's house, he told me that, what happened and I... I just knew the information was incorrect. Somehow I was just like, no, no, no, no, no. This is just, there's just no way. She was just, as if I knew her personally, I’m like, she was just here. Like she wasn’t just there, but I felt like that, like, no, I was just hanging out with her yesterday. How? Like, what do you mean? Like, like she still had to do this and she's filming the “Rock the Boat” video. She just talked about that on 106 and Park, and she da da da da, no, like this can't be. And I remember I went up to my, what would have been my mom's old bedroom, I guess in my grandmother's house and cried, like I just cried and cried. I remember even like my grandmother being like, why is this girl crying over somebody who she doesn't even know? Who as a child, she can understand? And for me, this was the first celebrity death that hit me like that. Like for the first stranger that I did cry about, like I knew her. We were obviously alive when Biggie and Pop died. But I was young. I was like six when that happened, six, seven. And I think with those there was so much tension and build up and violence happening pre that, this was a plane accident from America's sweetheart, our baby girl. She was only twenty two. She was on the precipice of all of these things and we knew it. And I just didn't know that life could be that unfair. Like to me, I think I was stuck on that. This is absolutely criminally unfair. Like, God, I need you to come have a one on one with me to explain how something so bad and unfair could happen to somebody so good, somebody so sweet, somebody who nobody has ever had anything bad to say about to this day. It was a big awakening to me about how much we're on borrowed time and how life is not guaranteed. I think especially at eleven, you think death is for older folks.
Scottie Beam I used to think it was a older folks or it was a consequence.
Sylvia Obell A consequence to something.
Scottie Beam I never thought that it could just be unprovoked death.
Sylvia Obell I just couldn't get over how unfair it was. And that life can be that cruel, that like it could just be that unfinished. Couldn't get past that. And I remember being on the couch watching the remembrance episode on 106 and Park, before I started school. And just, back in America, you know, there was so many TV honorary things happening. And I, I just remember watching them all in a daze, almost, in a daze, just thinking like, wow, what? And then to, like, push it even further, double down on me at eleven, trying to figure out how life could be so unfair only for 9/11 then happened a few weeks later.
Scottie Beam Mm hmm.
Sylvia Obell I think sometimes people don't even realize how back to back those two things happened. It was only a couple of weeks apart. And for me at that age, to go from, from just one person who I couldn't believe had to die that way to thousands was just... Do you remember where you were with 9/11, like how it hit you a few weeks later after the Aaliyah thing?
Scottie Beam I mean, whoo, I was in... Even thinking about it makes me sweat.
Sylvia Obell Yeah,
Scottie Beam I was in New York. I was in New York. I was in school. I went to school on 93rd Street and Amsterdam, in Manhattan, and right now, thinking about it felt so detailed but so blurry at the same time, because it was just, it was chaotic, you know, it was chaos. And as a 10 year old at the time, it's like, yo, there's something happening.
Sylvia Obell Right.
Scottie Beam They’re telling us half the truth. Like my teachers were coming in crying. The older kids are crying. So the older kids, I'm like, what is, what is going on? Like what? So we knew that there was something going on downtown which started my anxiety, because y’all know that I am crazy about my mother. My mom works downtown.
Sylvia Obell Yeah.
Scottie Beam But then later on finding out that it was the Towers, I remember sitting there looking at one girl whose parent did work there. She just was in a daze. And I remember just watching her and wanting to take her home with us. Nobody we didn’t know what to do. If she was going to get picked up, nobody knew. And so, you know, luckily, I think fortunately my mother picked me up and then she was stressed because my aunt works there. And I didn't know that at 10. My mom told me and she's like, she's not answering the phone. And lines were crossed. There was no way for people to get in touch with other people. The phones were always busy.
Sylvia Obell We didn't have 4G back then.
Scottie Beam There was no way for anybody to get in touch. But when I got home, the news. We had to watch the news and watching the planes hit. Well, every 15 minutes they would play the same thing over and over again.
Sylvia Obell They just kept showing it.
Scottie Beam So we're just watching and watching and watching. And my mom is crying and she's stressing and she's yelling and she's like, it was so chaotic. And my mother said, I’ll share a story, my mom said that when I fell asleep, my mom was worried all day. Like, she couldn't sleep, and then finally when she fell asleep, I woke her up and told her that grandma was right there. Now her mother passed on.
Sylvia Obell Yeah.
Scottie Beam So I woke up and tapped my mother and was like, “Ma,” we call her Ma, “Ma is over there.” And so my mom was like, “What girl? Whatever.” And she said I laid back down. And so she went back to sleep and I woke up again and mom said, I tapped her really hard, like hit her and was like, “Ma is over there.” So she was like, that was to let me know that my grandmother was watching over everyone and wanted my mom to really relax.
Sylvia Obell Oh, wow.
Scottie Beam She was like, “the fact that a spirit took over you, to tell me that Ma is there was enough for me to know that my sister was OK.” And thankfully, she, she was, she is. So, yeah, it was so blurry. It was just a lot. And then I was a mess crying for people I barely knew. But I know that they would be mourning forever, like they, their family members will be mourning forever.
Sylvia Obell Right.
Scottie Beam How can you get over this type of grief? Something that's so public and you can see over and over. It's just, it's heartbreaking. Huh, that, that was a little tough one.
Sylvia Obell It was very tough. I was in New Jersey, right over the bridge, and a lot of your experience felt very similar to mine that day. Like I was, I remember, I was in the sixth grade at this new school, too, this private school I didn't want to be at. And it was very like, they had separated by, like upper school, lower school. And so sixth grade was like the last, the oldest grade in the lower school. So I guess in my school, they had told the upperclassmen first what was going on and then they called, there was like an assembly, like early in the morning. Because It was early, it was pretty early in the day that this happened. Then like they called us all into the auditorium and we saw, I just saw a lot of the upper class high school girls crying. They were just coming in, crying, tearfully. You could tell people were afraid, and, but we didn't really know why. And I remember them telling us, “the World Trade Center has been hit,” and that, you know, there's an attack happening and that there may be some lateness with parents picking us up, because for people in the tristate area, you guys know, like New Jersey is where a lot of like, it's a commuter state in a lot of ways. A lot of our parents work in New York or Philly or wherever else, depending on where you live in New Jersey. So for me and my classmates, like there was a lot of our parents or neighbors or people who worked in the city. And so, New Jersey transit line was down. And I think that, like, for me, neither of my parents worked in New York City, so I had that peace of mind. But, but like so many of my friends, like literally one of my oldest friends who was in the school with me, like we had both transferred there together, her dad worked in New York. One of our close friends, family, friends and neighbors, like, he worked in New York, like there were just so many people we knew, but we didn't really know. I remember going back to class and our teacher turning on the TV and us seeing this plane hit the building, like because, like you said, it kept replaying on the news. And seeing it is when it became real to me in class, like in that moment, we were like, “oh, my goodness, what?” And then, you know, the footage was just so disturbing too because you could see people jumping instead, out of the building as it was coming down. I had never seen any, I mean, there was adults who had never seen anything like this. And here we were at like 11, 10 years old, trying to make sense of it, I think to me just took the innocence of, any false idea of safety, any false idea that our parent like, “oh, my parents can keep me safe from everything,” is what I think was kind of taken away. Because here our parents were not even sure if they were safe. I remember waiting, like, at the end of the school day, it was a matter of like, whose parents are going to be able to come pick them up. That's how you would figure out.
Scottie Beam Yeah. That’s what it was.
Sylvia Obell Who made it? I think that was a story for a lot of people.
Scottie Beam People walking in with soot on their bodies, soot on their feet, on their pants and coming to pick up their kids, like, and having to do this all while traumatized.
Sylvia Obell Because, themselves!
Scottie Beam Is what just happened. It introduced me to, like, traumatic death and things like, of course we've seen it. We see it on like, my mom will watch these mystery shows and all this stuff like that, um, shows about people missing and things like that. But it was never real to me because again, like Sylvia said, like, you know, we were ignorant, we were innocent and…
Sylvia Obell And mind you, so already there was a fear about the planes just off the Aaliyah thing. And here we are, a hijacking on planes. Airports were never the same. If you, if you wanted to tie that fear of planes up in the bow real tight, here you go. And it just, I think, because we were so young, it's not even till now when I'm thinking back or like when I think about it now as an adult, how adults had to be calm as they could for us when I know, full well now at thirty one, how freaking out they must have been inside, you know what I mean? And having to put on a strong face for us or answer our questions when they didn't have any answers themselves, or try to tell us it's going to be OK when they had no clue if it was going to be OK or not. You know? I think that like, thinking back, it's like, the bit I remember of my parents trying to kind of keep some shred of my innocence there when I'm like, no, bro, this is crazy. Like what's happening? It was really two back to back, on two very different scales of exposure of how we were never going to be the same, never going - the country. Everybody who had dealt with it, the world, even, we were never going to be the same after experiencing something like 9/11. To your point about grief on a national, or even international scale, like, especially at that point in my life, I hadn't lost anybody super close to me yet in that way. So I had not experienced grieving on a personal scale prior to this event happening. So I think it really introduced me to a lot of fear.
Scottie Beam Fear about what?
Sylvia Obell Fear about how nothing is guaranteed. Fear about how, like, there is such evil in the world that people would want to do this, something like this, to people who did nothing to them. Like in the sense of like consequence, like, yes, country to country, government to government, sure there was a lot of shit going on that we clearly didn't know about. But like the father, or the mother, or the aunt, the cousin that you killed who had nothing to do with it, having to pay the consequence? It just felt so like, oh, my safety is not just in the hands of my parents or God. Also these crazy people running the country?
Scottie Beam Right.
Syliva Obell It was just so much to take in and so much that I feel like maybe we would have learned in increments as we got older and learned more about how the world works and how government works, and history works. Because at this point, I hadn't even gotten into a lot of the wars in the history class yet, like I was in the sixth grade. So it was just very, I realized that like, oh, like I'm told if I do my homework and work hard, I can go to college and have the life I want. But there is all these other things that could get in the way of that that nobody has told me about. How are we supposed to ever feel safe again? I'd never reclaimed whatever shred of, however false it was. It felt real at the time. I didn't know. But the bubble, I think that sometimes, of your childhood, the people who love you try to keep you in was popped for sure.
Scottie Beam Right. It left me with questions with like, how do people keep going after this?
Sylvia Obell Yeah.
Scottie Beam How does the grieving process start and end?
Sylvia Obell How do we even, yeah, process this?
Scottie Beam When do you think you were first introduced to the grieving process? Do you know?
Sylvia Obell Yeah. Yeah, I do. I think, you know. Well, I said, Aaliyah was probably the first, like, non-person-I-knew that I felt that about, like, my grandfather died when I was 20. And I guess part of me feels like, maybe it's weird, I go, Maybe I should consider myself lucky that I made it to 20 before having the feel it, or whatever. But like, I, I, my grandfather, whoof, I think, like, he had been sick for a while. So I think, you know, he had diabetes that had really crippled his lifestyle and then had cancer and actually came and lived with us for a year while he did cancer treatments here in America. So it had been like a drawn out process of like, which I think is why I made it feel like I was introduced to it early. I think I was pre-grieving, like I'm always like three steps ahead. And there was a part of me that's like, I don't know when it's going to happen, when that happens, I know I'm not going to be OK, kind of thing. And it's just kind of almost like always half holding your breath, like, OK, we got another year, OK, we got another year, OK, we got another year. But that also in itself was a sense of torture. And I'll never forget, I was in college when it happened. It was my sophomore year, A&T, and I'll never forget, like my best friend Kelsey at the time, who's still a close friend of mine to this day. My mom called her and was like, “Keep Sylvia off Facebook until I can get her on the phone,” because my mom knew that people were going to be posting about it. There's an eight hour time difference from here and Nairobi, whatever, like that. And Kelsey would not leave my side. I was so confused about, I was like, “Girl”, but I was like, “oh, the girl, why are you on me? Like, I'm fine,” like in the dorm, like, “hey, girl, would you want to go get a scarf?” And so, like, my mom calls me and tells me and it just, it was like my whole world shattered because for me, my grandfather was the best example of a man I knew. My grandfather came to live with us right when my parents got divorced, like not so far after my parents got divorced. And I think during a lot of that confusion, he was the anchor for me of, like, still having faith and good people, good men, my grandparents marriage. Their example was everything to me. And I, he was my, like he was just the best man I knew. And I want, and I was, he was the one who wanted me to, he wanted to see me graduate from college. He was so about my academics. He was like, “You're going to be the one.” He knew all the things about me before they happened that they were going to happen and he would speak them into me. And I'd be like, “Grandpa, why do you think it's going to be?” And he you know, he's like, “No, you are so smart. You are going to bring home this degree. Are you going to make us proud, just stay in school.” Like he was just very, all of those things, like, I did for him. And so I felt like that same unfairness when he died two year short of me getting my degree and him being able to see that, because I knew he wanted it so bad and all of those things. But, so that was my first experience with grief. And I think it was just so crippling because it just, grief is like an eight step process that doesn't always go in order and is just so complicated that like, it's weird that like on anniversary number two, like, one and two can feel as hard and then four and five suddenly feel as hard, but then six, like, it's like you have years where it's like a bit more of a numb feeling and then years it will feel just as sharp as if it happened yesterday. And I think for me, realizing that there is no chronological order, you're going to reverse steps, come back, circle around, Loop de Lu. Some days you'll be OK, some days you won't. And not being too hard on yourself for that was, I think, part of the core lessons about grief for me and watching my mother. My mother was a daddy's girl, you know. And so for her, this shut her down for years and I think even seeing through the lens of how much it impacted my mother taught me a lot about grief. I'm so proud of her for being strong enough to use that, her experience to go get a license in grief counseling, because that's why my mom is a grief counselor now, because she wants to be the kind of person she didn't have when she was going through it, because there's so much misunderstanding. There's so much sometimes. Are you still sad? Are you still crying? You got to get back to life. You got to do this. You got to do that. And it's just so much more complicated than that. I think for me, the grief thing, it's always the overarching feeling of like, this is not fair. This is not fair. This is not fair. Is always, like, the echoing in my head. And like my grandmother, when I finally saw my grandmother, when I got to Nairobi for the funeral and she was like, “We lost our best friend.” Like because she always joked that she shared him with me. He did not joke about, he did not try to hide about me being his favorite. So like, it was just, it was like, oh, “we lost our friend,” you know, and she even jokes with me now, like, “when are you gonna find our next husband?” Because she's like “I shared, yours with, mine with you, you're going to share yours with me.” Have you figured out a way to describe grief? It's just so complicated.
Scottie Beam I really haven't. I think about it very often, because I want to be prepared, but knowing that I'll never be prepared, you know, with the death of my grandmother, I thought I had prepared for it, and it ended up looking a lot different than what I planned, because energy is a real thing. And like my grandma and I have very similar attitudes. We're both very energetic and we will not hesitate to tell anyone about themselves. That was my favorite quality about my grandmother, so just her presence was very loud and I think I underestimated how loud and felt her presence is like, so, you know, yes, she had cancer and she still had hope. And I think that's what was really killing me, was that she had hope that she would make it through this. But she knew that even if she didn't make it, make it through this, she was going to go see her Lord and that, listen, she was happy with that and she was good with that.
Sylvia Obell And faith, man. Faith is the only way I think I get through it.
Scottie Beam Yes. Her faith, her faith was untouchable. It was no way that she was getting close to her faith. But when it happened, I thought I was doing, like you said, like there were the steps. Yeah. You know, I thought I was doing the correct steps…
Sylvia Obell Working the steps, I got it.
Scottie Beam It took, for grief. Right. Denial, you know, I'm like I'm past that. I'm all right.
Sylvia Obell Anger, alright, that won’t last always!
Scottie Beam That won't last long. You know, I'm moving. And so, I didn't know about the ebbs and flows.
Sylvia Obell Yes.
Scottie Beam That it'll come. It'll go. It'll come. It'll go. And when I say it will come, child.
Sylvia Obell It's like a wave, like a literal wave.
Scottie Beam It's waves. It comes in waves. I literally just was hard on myself when I went to Georgia to see my grandpa and I went to go see my grandmother's grave. And that was the first time too. And the amount of tears that I shed. And I thought I was like, I'm supposed to be, you know, a little bit better than before. And I'm sure I am. But I was like, why do I still cry so very hard, like, cry so hard? And, you know, still it's like, yeah, she was older. It was going to happen eventually. It's going to happen for all of us eventually. I felt her presence spiritually. I felt it. It still was there. But to not have it physically…
Sylvia Obell It's hard.
Scottie Beam It’s a hard, it is a tough pill to swallow, and I think I spent a lot of time, I know people do this too, I avoid. I try to avoid.
Sylvia Obell I will suppress and avoid just to get through, because it's like, how am I supposed to go to work if I don't?
Scottie Beam Right. So my grandfather, I try to call his cell phone and when I can't get his cell because, you know, he done thrown the cell phone across the room. He don't know where the cell phone at, bla bla bla. But I have the biggest issue with calling the house because, her voice, and I just, I can't, I can’t. Having Grandpa pick up is still something that's very new to me. Because, Grandpa ain’t never pick up the phone, Grandma pick up the phone.
Sylvia Obell Right.
Scottie Beam So, you know, even if he did pick up it’s like, “Want to speak to your grandmama?” And then that’s it. Go to my grandma. But it did strengthen the connection with me and my grandfather, I think it will with all his grandkids, because I think we spent a lot of time with Grandma every summer, every summer and every summer. We were there with Grandma. We were hanging out with Grandma. Grandpa worked a lot. And he actually this time was the first time that he spoke to me about traumas.
Sylvia Obell Oh.
Scottie Beam And I was like, Grandpa, you said trauma. He said, yeah, I've had some traumatic experiences. But it was the first time that I heard him tell me that he is proud of me. And that was the greatest gift. I said, I said I was going to cry this episode and I'm not. But that was a great gift because it's very tough to get my Grandpa's approval for anything, because he expects greatness from all of us. He was very emotional and he was very proud. And that was a great gift. And I'm sure my grandmother was very proud of that moment because it takes a lot for my grandpa to even say that. And it takes a lot for him to tell me that he was wrong about my dropping out of school. And for him, I totally understood his disappointment because back then, it was a privilege, it’s still a privilege.
Sylvia Obell That's what they fought for.
Scottie Beam Yes, right. Right. And so he just was like, you know, your grandmother wanted to go to high school so bad, she didn’t even get to go to high school because she had to take care of her siblings. But to say that he was proud was, was a great gift. And it was very helpful, I guess, to my grieving process, because I know that she's happy with the work that Grandpa is doing now. He's a journalist now. He's in the papers. He's writing articles.
Sylvia Obell He’s what?
Scottie Beam Yes, my grandpa is writing articles, y’all! If you read the Jackson Herald, please.
Sylvia Obell What? Let me point out I’ve got to get your grandpa that NABJ membership. We gonna have Grandpa at the next NABJ convention.
Scottie Beam And so him getting back to doing the things that he's always wanted to do, he was like I was a writer before, you know, I began working and I wanted to write and so did my father. You know, they're really good. And my brother is now writing a book. So this is a family thing. They're really into this writing thing. But for him to get back to it and get back into the swing of things,
Sylvia Obell That's beautiful.
Scottie Beam Helped me moved forward because I worried for my grandfather.
Sylvia Obell Yeah.
Scottie Beam So it's something I didn't have to do as much. I'm still going worry, because that's what I do. It's my job. But it helped me with knowing that grandma is in her glory right now because she knows that her man,
Sylvia Obell Her man!
Scottie Beam Her Scottie, that’s the first Scottie. Scottie is good and she knows that I'm good.
Sylvia Obell Both of her Scotties, both of her Scotties are good.
Scottie Beam Yes, both her Scotties are good. So that was, that was good. But it's still a very…
Sylvia Obell It’s rough! I think what I tell myself in the times that grief is, feels so overwhelming and just dark is that I remind myself that it is evidence of the love I felt just in a different form. And I try to remind myself that I am grieving this hard because I was loved this hard. And that is a beautiful thing.
Scottie Beam That's it.
Sylvia Obell It is a beautiful thing to have been loved so hard that you experience grief, because somebody was that good to you and in your heart and stays in your soul in that way. And that is kind of the thing I try to tell myself when I, when it feels so overwhelming like that foot on your chest that you can't breathe kind of, you know, in those moments I remind myself like, this is because he loved you that much and it's a beautiful thing. Don't make it an ugly thing. It is a beautiful thing. And that is, if I can give anybody anything about grief, or just even a single tool to put in your toolbox, cus it takes a tool box, you got to go in, depends on the day, you got to go in, pull out different tools. But for me, it's just that reminder that grief is love just after the fact. And so, yeah, us being happy. That's the other thing I try to tell myself is what I know that what we have to remind ourselves that it’s what the ones who are gone want, they don't want us to spend the rest of our days just a mess because they're gone. They want to see us happy and healthy and moving forward. And in the moments when I feel especially stuck or when maybe you feel whoever's listening feels especially stuck, remind yourself what that person really wanted. And it's not to see your life end because theirs did.
Scottie Beam Right.
Sylvia Obell That's not what anybody, that's not what they want for us. And even to bring it back around to even how we started this out with Aaliyah, with her being able to now look down and see a whole new generation of people who weren't even alive when she was in her peak, love and appreciate and be able to stream her music and all of these things now, even her influence in other artists who are now so young and just trying to find their ways are just felt inspired by her work and any kind of way, her influence on the culture, even all the battling like, it's all in evidence of how much she was loved, right at the end of the day. And I think it's beautiful to be loved that much, if nothing else. Like, I can't imagine having such a big impact in only 20-odd years. I mean, now being thirty one the age, it's even harder how young she was. But to do that much.
Scottie Beam Yeah,
Sylvia Obell At that young, that is a life well lived, even if it does still feel unfair to me in a lot of ways. You can't say it wasn't a life well lived in that sense.
Scottie Beam Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree.
Sylvia Obell Yeah, so much love to everybody who is experiencing grief, working their way through grief, you know, much love to all the other fans of Aaliyah, the family of Aaliyah, the fam, anybody who's lost somebody in 9/11, those families, you know much love and light to all of you.
Scottie Beam I would say if you have any tips on how you move through this grief process and you think that it could help somebody else. Tweet it. Hashtag. #OKNowListen, because I'm sure that people are still looking for tips or things that they should do.
Sylvia Obell And especially, I mean, with the pandemic and all of the things happening right now, I can only imagine how exasperated that is for all of us in so many ways, too. So it's not fun, but. We’ll all try to navigate it through together and this is our piece of that. So I think that's our show for today. Thank you all for tuning in.
Scottie Beam Yes. Our show is a production of Pineapple Street Studios in partnership with Netflix and Strong Black Lead shout out to our teams, our editor is Jess Jupiter and our producer is Taylor Hosking. Our music is by Amanda Jones. Special thanks to Max Linsky and Jenna Weiss-Berman.
Sylvia Obell Make sure you share your thoughts with us on the episode using the hashtag, #OKNowListen, truly, and like Scottie said, tips too. And you know, if anybody even in need of somebody to talk to, my mother is one person. I don't have a lot of her to offer to, but she is a grief counselor and, you know, feel free to reach into my DMs if you are desperately in need of somebody to help you navigate through and follow Strong Black Lead lead on the sociales, @StrongBlackLead and follow us to I'm @SylviaObell.
Scottie Beam and I'm @ScottieBeam.
Sylvia Obell until next time, folks, stay blessed.