Love, Loss, and the Party Line: My Story

HAKEYM News – From Dr. Hakeem Ali-Bocas Alexander

I find it fascinating how certain things come together. Take my wife, Flor—which means flower from Spanish—I met her in Culver City. She was getting on a bus moving into her new place, had a giant suitcase and a bicycle, and it was a little bit of an ordeal. I don’t even know how she would have gotten that suitcase up the hill by herself—she stood at 4’11” and that bag was almost as big as she was. By the time I got it up there, I was shaking from the strain. California has a lot of steep inclines, which made riding bicycles together one of the things I really enjoyed with her. She had a fixed-gear street bike; I always preferred mountain or hybrid commuter bikes.

We first went to China because she found a certificate course for TESOL—Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. I bought the course for both of us, we studied together, got our visas, and through a recruiter we were in China by August of 2016. I remember when we arrived it was my mother’s birthday—July 23rd—and Flor’s birthday was coming up on August 23rd. We stayed four months, came back to the States, stayed with my sister in Virginia Beach for a while, then went down to Florida to stay with my dad. In 2017, I bought my first brand new car—a 2017 Hyundai Elantra. We did Disney World, Universal Studios, stayed at the Premier Hotel and Cafe across from Fort Lauderdale Beach for a month, became friends with the owner Mario and his family from Argentina. Then we got on that plane and went back to China.

I met her in 2015, after two months we started seeing each other, then started living together, and a year later got married and went to China. After a couple years there, she wanted to go home and show off her ring and talk to her family about us being together. While she was there, unfortunately, she died in New York on October 24th, 2019.

Very soon after that, the whole COVID-19 debacle happened. Flights were cut off, and every time I booked a flight it got canceled. I finally got out of China on September 4th, 2021—took me that long. I made the most of it, but it was becoming really difficult to stay, especially with the work visa situation. I got back to California, but a bunch of strange incidents happened on the bus. I turned around, went to the airport, spent most of the last money I had on a ticket to Virginia Beach. My sister had been in the Navy for 20 years, retired a few years earlier, has a house, raising her kids—it was just a better idea. I think it was actually better that I did it.

Within a week, because my sister knew the general manager really well of the gym she trained at, I got a job on September 11th, 2021. That very same day I started hitting the heavy bag. I was 221 pounds at the time—drinking myself into a coma for seven months after she died, just eating whatever. Then I came to my senses, stopped drinking altogether, and moved into being completely straight edge—no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes, rarely caffeine, no over-the-counter drugs. I worked really hard and got certifications to be a group fitness instructor and a personal trainer. I don’t work there anymore, but I still work out there.

Right now I’m testing out this whole Party Line integration and plugin. I’m publishing this on hakeym.com for HAKEYM News, just keeping the buzz going. Speaking of buzz, check out MonarchCityBuzz.com—I’m getting the scoop on all things Norfolk, Virginia Beach, and the Hampton Roads area, connecting with all those great hidden spots people may not know about or have forgotten. That’s my business-to-consumer site. I also have MyCityBuzz.com for recruiting businesses that want to get promoted through my network, and they both have a podcast as well. So that’s the buzz.

You can apply to be a Party Liner for HAKEYM News, MyCityBuzz.com, and Monarch City Buzz. If you’ve got news and current events and you want people to know about, sign up and submit them—they get published instantly. I have editorial say, of course—I’m the Editor-in-Chief of all these sites—but it’s a really great way to stay in the know and get things out there. We’ve got the podcast, the news sites, social media—multi-channel communications. It’s simple and fun, exciting to have these tools to get the word out, help small businesses, build communities, and connect people with what they want to stay connected with every day.

I’m Hakeem Ali-Bocas Alexander for HAKEYM News on hakeym.com.

Submitted by HAKEYM