Wow, today is indeed a crazy day for me, and I really felt the need to share with y'all what the word really is for me. One of today's morals is indeed "Things move full circle in various ways"…let me show you how that's worked for me.

Right now, I'm writing this as I listen to the song "Veterans Memorial Pt. 2" from Prodigy's "HNIC pt 2" album. Now why people are sleeping on my man Pee's project is absurd, and I really can't call it…but that's a different blog for a different time. What strikes me most about this song is that a few years back, G3 (aka G.O.D. Pt 3 of Infamous Mobb) wrote a song called "Light a Candle for Your Death and Birthday" – the song spoke about people he lost and what he'd do in their memory. On the hook and second verse of "Veterans Memorial pt. 2", Pee says:


I miss the dead, I wish the dead/
would please come back, I need your help/
And er'ybody that's got somebody deceased/
I know you feel the same/
Spirit gon' live thru me

Listen/
I light a candle on your death and birthday/
Lord have mercy/ it seems You cursed me/
With a life of pain/ all I do is strain/
Every day's a struggle, everyday it rains/
Even when the sun shining/ they say that's when God crying/
Dark clouds hangin' over my head/ may lightning/
Strike me down if I'm lying


So rewind the tape from now to later this morning, when I went to my mailbox and found a nice-sized manila envelope from the Academy of American Poets. I opened it up to read the official word: "Dear Todd Craig – St. John's University has notified us that you have won the 2008 Academy of American Poets Prize…" I kinda had the drop on the situation (shout out to Poet Extraordinaire Lee Ann Brown for makin' sure I submitted my work), but I'm the type that won't spread the word til the word is officially set in stone aka dried ink on letter-headed stationary.

Now rewind to the crazy part of it all: when I woke up this morning to get ready to start another one of those super-hectic busy days, I picked up the Blackberry to see an event that had gone off on my calendar – "Uncle Dea Bday." It immediately sent me somewhere else…four days from today will be the one-year anniversary of his death. Now, understand a few things about my Uncle Dea…

First of all, my uncle passed away in a fire. His apartment building caught on fire, and he ran out the building – essentially, he was safe and secure. But when he heard the little kid screaming from inside, he ran in to save him. And after he got that kid out the building, he went back in; his thinking was, if there was a little boy in the building, who knows how many other people were in there. So before the Fire Department got to the scene, he ran back into the inferno, knocking on doors, pulling people out of the blazing building, then going back in to help as many people as he could. On the third or fourth trip, my uncle was severely burned. He had just turned 53 and was finally winning his battle with emphysema. After an ill fight in the intensive care burn unit, he passed away and went home…four days after his birthday. So first and foremost, if you can even say you know a better way to learn how to be selfless, post a comment and let me know – far as I'm concerned, Uncle Dea wins the prize, hands down!!!

But he was so much more than that to my family. Uncle Dea was my favorite uncle. He was the uncle that was crazy and just didn't care. Even in my youth, he treated me like the young man I was – and he treated all of us coming up in the younger generation of the family that way. He was also responsible for me touching my first pair of turntables. He put me onto all his record stores (even the secret spots) and helped me to understand the way music works. He showed me the legacy of soul music and how that was the foundation to this new thing I was listening to called hip-hop. Uncle Dea put me onto how music's supposed to sound when it's right – and how to take other peoples' music and make our own music out of it. My first childhood memories are of my Uncle Dea and Uncle Todd making mixtapes while me and my cousins were running around in between their legs; we were playing like all little kids do…they were blending records on reel-to-reel machines, using turntables with no pitch control. I remember how shiny the lights were on all the machines. The house might have been dark, but all that equipment lit up the night iller than the New York skyline from Queensbridge rooftops before they knocked down the towers…I can still see the lights in the caverns of my mental memories.

Uncle Dea was also the ill comedian. On any day, best believe you would pick up your phone and be talking to Silky the Pimp, the Black Lucky Charms Leprechaun, and various other characters he'd make up – just to put a smile on people's faces. He entertained us so much with his music but also his humor, and his genuine love for life. Even when things weren't going the way he had planned, he could still find the sunshine through the clouds of life. And on the real, I swear it feels like he's been gone forever – but time and the calendar don't lie. So to think it's only been a year in four more days. Add that science to the fact that Dea's birthday is August 13th – the same unlucky number 13 days that passed in between my birthday and the day my cousin Killer Black went home 10 and a half years ago…time moves in ways I'll never understand, but I don't even think I'm supposed to know that right now.

But the saying is really true: as someone leaves this world in death, someone enters it in life. So even as I take this day to remember Uncle Dea's life and it's influence on me, I need to acknowledge as someone leaves, another comes into existence – my man just called me yesterday to let me know he's gonna be a father, "so Uncle Todd, you got more responsibilities now." At the time, I was kinda speechless when he told me…now I understand why. But the illest part about it is that I get to serve for the youth my friends and family are bringing into the world in the same way Uncle Dea did it for me. Reflecting on that lets you know sometimes how much responsibility we actually hold in the world – and our uncanny ability to adjust the future for our youth one day at a time. Now, as my uncle looks down on me, hopefully he can see that I'm taking that responsibility willingly…after all, that's what he did for me!

But no achievement comes without struggle, perseverance, and loss. So this award from the Academy of American Poets really becomes one of the illest birthday presents I could ever share with my uncle. I never got a chance to bring him his book…and what hurts the most is I never got a chance to just sit down with him and let him hear the whole soundtrack…let him hear the music project that was really built on the strength of my ear for music – the same ear he trained and cultivated. Instead, I had to shout him out on the soundtrack in my interlude "Right Here With You" that I dedicated to those who were close to me that passed on to go home, to go to that next stratosphere of understanding. Dea woulda bugged out over me being on XM Radio, and 89.9 would made him wild out even crazier than I did when I got the call. And of course, I know that he's looking down on the whole situation beaming with that infectious glow his smile had – seeing and hearing him laugh FORCED you to put a smile on your face. And I'm sure he's wild proud of me – I know he's somewhere deejaying a party and stopped the music to shout out his nephew for doing big things…that's just the type of thing he'd do, for real…

So now, I'ma just take a second to chill out and bang to Pee's song on repeat in the CD player. I'll sit in front of the candle on the living room table right next to the picture of me and my uncle and try to remember all the good times we had together. I'll tell him to say what up to Killer for me…and I'll take the day to really reflect on how much of my life was changed by my uncle…if not for him, I wouldn't know music and I wouldn't know turntables, the art of DJing, and most importantly, the art of selflessness. And really, what better to think about than that…after all, I can't cry all day – and believe me when I tell you, the morning has been full of tears. But now, I choose to wipe the tears and celebrate his legacy – is there really any other way to do it?



"And er'ybody that's got somebody deceased/ I know you feel the same/ Spirit gon' live through me"



You absolutely right Pee – I feel the EXACT same way…

Rest in Power Uncle Dea.

In loving memory of James A. Miller, Jr.
August 13, 1954 - August 17, 2007