OPINION: ‘Alone’: Memorializing moments of despair and hope during COVID-19 | Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service
Brenda Marie Banks
April 29, 2020
Artist Mauricio Ramirez created this mural on the corner of South Sixth Street and West Lincoln Avenue to honor frontline workers and medical professionals. (Photo by Adam Carr)
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Brenda Marie Banks, affectionately known as Mama Banks or Evangelist Banks, is a mother, grandmother, ordained minister, prayer warrior and spoken word artist. Here, she shares her poem “Alone,” as well as how she channeled the experiences of Judge Derek Mosley and her adopted brother during COVID-19 to create the piece.
I, along with others, recently noticed that my friend, the Honorable Derek Mosley, a City of Milwaukee municipal court judge, had not been posting on Facebook, which is unusual for him.
After expressing concern, I was relieved to see a post appear, but the content of Derek’s post struck my heart hard. Derek had been diagnosed with COVID-19 and was still in the hospital, feeling better, but not out of the woods.
His next post, posted from his home on Easter morning, captured the memory of a night spent in quarantined isolation without the benefit of visible support from family and friends. I understood the heaviness of not being able to see your loved ones because I have not been able to personally see my adopted brother, who is currently receiving hospice care in a nursing home since the government’s “Safer at Home” order was put in place.
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I praise God, and the nursing home staff, for the sporadic video calls with my brother. However, I knows that he, who is fully aware of what is going on around him, does not have the capacity to understand why I, who has been his only daily visitor, suddenly dropped off the face of the Earth.
I have ministered to those who have lost loved ones without the ability to hold and comfort them and have read numerous posts of those who are fighting this COVID-19 pandemic while in necessary solitude.
I wanted to capture and memorialize each of their moments, and after several days of frustrated rewrites, the words to the poem titled “Alone” entered my heart on March 22, 2020.
ALONE
Darkness swirled throughout my room
Filled with blackness
Dark thoughts swirling
Through the cesspool of loneliness
Filled my mind to the rim with sadness
As one lone green dot
Infiltrated the darkness
Accompanied by that one lone beep
That beeped out its message consistently
Keep hope alive
And I struggled as I sank deeper
Down the rabbit hole filled with despair
Felt like Alice In Wonderland
As I wondered
Is this how it’s going to end
Wondered if my life made a difference
Wondered if I was missing
That one thing
That would have made a difference
If procrastination had not been
My companion in life
Wondered if I would ever
See my wife, my husband, my children
Or would I soon become
A figment of their imagination
As time marched on
Would my legacy be that I died of isolation
Surrounding my broken heart
That was filled with frustration
And loneliness
And the pangs of involuntary solitude
And as I sank deeper
Down into the next level
Waiting to drown me
I felt the soft breeze of hope surround me
As soft steps infiltrated
The darkness of night
As the lone soft scrape of a chair
Introduced itself into the abyss
Where I was spiraling into nowhere
As a soft hand reached out for my hand
As a soft voice whispered
Into the atmosphere
Reaching into the blackness
Of my situation
Sending waves of reassurance to cover me
As that lone tear made its great escape
Rolling down my face
Like a snowball completely out of control
As my heart dared to hope
That soft whisper
Reached down deep into my soul
Pulled me back from the brink
Assured me that I was not alone
In spite of the danger
Staring daggers at them
In spite of the danger
Daring them to intercede
Daring them to interfere with the process
I was not alone
For God had allowed that earth angel
To penetrate my hopelessness and despair
So that we could fight my fight together
And keep hope alive