Death & Family

Its amazing how death of a loved one can slow you down to make you think about your own short comings in life. This past Saturday we laid to rest my great Aunt Lucy the sister to the man that raised me, the late Jessie Davis. They were both the inspirations behind my latest production “Jessie & Lucy”

Jessie & Lucy

Lucy D "Big Ma"

I got a chance to spend some time with some family members that I had not seen in a while and really enjoyed sitting on Big Mam’s Porch with all the family that were in town for the funeral. At one point there were 3 to 4 generations of Davis’ all scattered around on the porch and in the yard playing. It was a good feeling. I thought to myself why does death have to bring on this sense of I need to spend more time to get to know my family?

We all get locked down on our personal journeys to make it to the place called “I made it” that we move so fast that we don’t see our cousins growing up, we don’t hear the funny voices of the babies or we miss that funny moment because our mind is so caught up in “I wished I had spent more time with them before they left us”.

I find myself thinking wow, how many people must leave from my family before I start to enjoy them while I can?

While spending time with family members I was introduced to a cousin who attends North Carolina Central University, a theater major. He told me that I was one of his inspirations to become a playwright. I have another cousin (Kim) in Washington DC who is taking part  in the first DC Theater Festival by presenting one of his productions. So there we were, Kim and I playing a game of chess, and talking about producing stage plays.

I guess since I was the eldest of the group there I was doing my best to give them advice as not to make the same mistakes that I did early in my career as a playwright.

At that moment I thought wow, its nice to have family that appreciates what you do to the point that they are inspired by your work as well as having a family member who is in the same industry and can work together.

As our conversation went on I began to look around the porch at the talent in our family. In addition to (2) established playwrights in myself and Kim and one up and coming playwright Bern the brother of Kim is an established producer.

Scott Savol

A couple of years ago I connected Scott Savol with cuzzo (Bern) and he produced Scott’s first single “Don’t Rush”, currently Bern has a musical track on the latest NBA Video Game.

At the funeral I found out that Aunt Lucy did poetry.  In all my years I never knew this at all. When a some of her work was read at the funeral it really caught my attention I was really impressed. It was a funny piece that dealt with church folks it had the congregation in stitches after it was cold read by Aunt Ernestine.

Even though my grandmother reared me, my mother and I are still close. Time passed for several years when I could not even go home after the death of my grandmother, grandfather and Uncle whom I was extremely close to, but I did learn during those times when I did return how important it is to be around family.

Sevearl years have passed and now my mother is one aunt away from being the matriarch of the Davis Family. I am her oldest child and the oldest grandchild. Time waits for no one and more than ever I feel that its important to be around family which is they key to being rooted and feeling as thought you have someone you can count on.

As I sat there listening to all of the Davis’ talk about what Big Mama (Aunt Lucy) ment to them and how they will miss her, I thought how selfish I was to stay away for so long from my family all because I could not cope with not having my grandmother and grandfather anymore.

What if these cousins that I have started to establish a relationship with just stopped coming around all because they missed Big Mama? So again, DEATH has placed a different perspective for me on family.

Punkin flexing the muscles

Recently I hired a general manager Walter Sturdivant; to run the day to day business of Gdavisplays.com so that I could spend more time with family as not ot work too much.

Now I appreciate the fact that I have family within Gdavisplays working with me not just for me.  My sisters Emily McCormick and Tonia Davis, my cuzzo Daniel (Punkin) my Aunt Ernestine and wife Monty.

It feels good to know that they are apart of what I love to do. The plan now is to establish and build something that the rest of my family can benefit from.

My sister Tonia with Ben

Yes, Death has made me look at family differently, shamley it should have never taken death to do it so as always as I write these blogs to give you another side of me, but also to learn not just from my mistakes as a playwright but from a my mistakes as a father, son, brother, uncle and cousin.

We are family and it should not take death to wake us up, but sometimes it does.