“I don’t believe in therapy. I believe you gotta walk it out, you gotta live it out…And sometimes you have to cry it out…I don’t believe in medication or painkillers. And I don’t believe in religion and giving it all up to Jesus.” – Kanye West 
I work all the time. Non stop. On Christmas, I was locked in my house working. On New Years Eve, I was doing the same. People always say to me “Why don’t you just take a break, if only for a day. Just stop everything just for a day” and my response has been “I can’t explain but I feel sort’ve like Kanye West. I’m scared to stop because when i stop, I think about HER. I think about THEM”.
I remember the first time that I realized I was about to lose my mother. I was at school and my aunt called and said “If you are not doing anything this weekend, why don’t you come home and surprise your mother”. I hadn’t been home in a while because I was in school and me and my mother had been through it over the years with situations dealing with a controlling and abusive boyfriend that she had started dating when I was 13.  I told my aunt I would be there, but I ended up asking my friend Steffany to come along because something didn’t feel right.
When I walked into the house, I remember immediately being taken aback by my mother’s appearance. She looked very thin, fragile and her face was sort’ve sunken in. I remember my heart dropping but holding my composure because I didn’t want her to see my reaction. All the while I was thinking “what have I missed??”
The next day, my friend left the house to take my car to the carwash and my aunt came over because she wanted to sit down with me and my mother. I’m sitting on the edge of the bed and my mom hands me two sheets of paper. One was a photo of a powder blue coffin, the other was a photo of a tombstone, both she had picked out for her funeral.  I can’t even say how I felt right then because everything was surreal and I still wasn’t accepting exactly what was happening.
She starts to cry and she says “Necole I couldn’t leave you much but I want you to take that money and move to California. Follow your dreams”.
You see, I always had these dreams of being a female John Singleton. Back then I knew I was going to move to California one day and be some big time screenwriter and director. You couldn’t tell me otherwise and I told my mother this every day. I would always tell her how we were going to move away and I was going to buy her a huge house and we would one day live the good life.
I was silent on the whole ride back up to school and I didn’t tell my friend what had happened while she was gone. I still didn’t really believe it and it was hard to stomach everything.
That Monday I went back to work ( i was working full time and going to school full time) and I called her on my lunch break.  She was quieter than usual so I just had to ask “Mom, are you about to die???” and the phone went silent. And I started to cry “I thought we were gonna move to California!! What about that house I was going to buy you?” and she still said nothing but I could tell she was crying. So I hung up and left work and drove two hours to get back home with just the clothes on my back.
I never went to see my grandmother in the hospital because I believed she would get better…and she died. I never went to see my father in the hospital because I procrastinated…saying I would go see him on Wednesday. He died that Tuesday. I wasn’t about to let that happen again.
I’m glad I did go home that day because four days later, I sat at her bed side holding her hand while she gasped for air. Then she stopped breathing…and just like that she was gone.
As they carried her body out of the house, the nurse turned to me and said “Make sure you go to California! That’s what your mother wanted”. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to write a screenplay since then.
My mother was 41. My father was 42 when he died and ironically his inability to get over his mom’s death was a big contributor to his passing.
I look back at my life all the time and wonder “what did I do? what could I have done that was so bad. Did I take my life for granted and God came and snatched everything away from me? What was it??. ..and for the longest time I didn’t talk about it because I felt like a bad person. When I met new friends and they asked about my parents, I would lie because I was embarassed.
If I was supposed to learn a lesson from all this, I must certainly did because I will never ever take anything else for granted. I’ve tried many things and failed miserably but I just wish they could have lived to see me succeed at something.
As far as the memories, the last time I left Maryland, I left all of the photos and anything else that would be considered a “memory”…..well accept for her Daily Aspirations Book.   I wanted a fresh start. I wanted to forget and move on with my life.
but I’m still hurting… and it haunts me

and for that reason, I won’t go anywhere near California