Dear Atiim,
I miss you, big brother. Oh, how I miss you! It is both hard to remember you and hard to forget you. Your easy-going smile and constant encouragement live rent-free in my head, but the musk of your smell, and the tightness of your bear hugs, and the sloppiness of your raspberry kisses on my cheeks, and the warm sound of your voice persist as fading phantoms in my memory—recalled, but precisely just out of reach.
I remember our last moments together. They were perfect, or perhaps a tragic foreshadowing of what would never be again—moments for which I will long eternally. Portuguese taught me a word for that kind of nostalgia: saudade. It was Saturday, August 27, 2005, the penultimate day of my childhood. You came over to help Daddy cut the grass. The Louisiana sky was that perfect shade of cerulean that only comes into being before a tempest's arrival, and when I asked about your survival plans as you leaned against Daddy's van, you told me you would ride it out. Under the heat of the sun, Spirit urged me to push, to make you promise to come with us if we had to evacuate; I whined and begged, but what could a thirteen year old know that a thirty-two year old didn’t? Yet, you rode the winds of that storm straight into the ancestral realm, and I am still here, now older and wiser than you ever had the chance to become in this lifetime. Eu tenho muitos saudades de você, meu irmão. I assume, as an ancestral spirit that has walked with me for twenty-one years, you know everything I know; you know what that means…I miss you so much, my brother.
Atiim, I made it as far as you prophesized I would go when you gassed me up as a kid about the places my intelligence would take me. Like a sea turtle, I have returned home to nest, to build, to remember my roots before I make plans to return to the world. Only you—my Pisces brother, a pair of primordial fishes—would leave me in a deluge, but somehow never abandon me. I wrote so many pages about you in my doctoral dissertation, and honestly, your life and death have shaped my entire academic career. I've told strangers in the far flung corners of this planet about how much you believed in your oldest little sister, about how much I wished I could share my successes with you in the flesh. Instead, I send you prayers as missives, requesting your protection on my journeys. I know you’re always there, defending me from dangers I never have to see because I trust you to have my back—after all, that’s what good big brothers do, and you were always the best, big brother!
My grief from losing you is now old enough to drink a florescent green hand grenade in the Quarter, and drunkenly stumble down Bourbon in tears. But, you already know that's not my style, which is why I am writing you this letter: to publicly document my ongoing heartbreak, to give my love and longing for you somewhere to go, to remind the world that I am a middle child tragically forced to become the eldest because of an unnatural disaster. I miss you incessantly, Atiim…losing a home and all its contents to a flood is nothing compared to the untimely and unexpected death of a beloved sibling.
I don’t really have an uplifting way to end this letter, but I wanted you to know your little sisters love and miss you. We treasure your presence in our childhood memories, Atiim. You are often the inspiration for our creations born from remembrance. Last summer, before the twentieth Katrinaversary, we went to the cemetery in Baton Rouge where you are buried to try and visit your gravesite, but, like so many whose lives were stolen by the storm, we could not find your final resting place. Your grave remains unmarked. Thank you for existing so that we could preserve you in our hearts, big brother, even though every day we wish you were still here.
Take care of Pops and the patriline up there,
Dr. Jones
The image above is a digital rendering of THE RHYME OF PHARAOH'S DENIAL (2025) by Giani M. Jones, depicting our brother, Anthony Atiim Jones. Materials: Red Oak, Photo Canvas of a photo Giani took of a photograph our dad, Morris Jones,Jr., took of our brother Atiim, charcoal, cante, mars black and lamp black acrylic, sharpie, epoxy resin, black willow sawdust, Winnfield Funeral Home grounds keeping dirt, walnut stain, color pencil, spray paint, Atiim’s Outkast shirt. Dimensions: 44-1/2” X 64”. Listen to Giani tell the story behind this piece, which is my favorite artwork of hers thus far, using the SoundCloud link below.