Skip to content

Marcus Levi Washington I and Marcus Levi Washington II

Marcus Levi Washington I and Marcus Levi Washington II are father and son who lived in the multigenerational Washington home in West Baltimore. Both were autistic and communicated much of their care through proximity and attention. After Diana died in 2010, Marcus II developed alcohol use disorder and withdrew from active parenting. His father, known as Pop, recognized the depth of his grief but could not resolve it for him. Their shared quietness made Pop’s continued presence meaningful even when the two men could not discuss the loss directly.

Shared Communication

Pop recognized his own quiet, internal way of experiencing the world in Marcus II from infancy, although neither had diagnostic language for their shared autism. Marcus II was a quiet baby and child and remained a quiet adult, unlike his expansive mother, Denise. Denise sometimes worried about his social reserve; Pop understood it as a form of presence rather than absence. Father and son rarely spoke at length about themselves. They relied on nods, grunts, shared rooms, and attentive silence, through which Pop conveyed that Marcus II did not have to explain every feeling aloud to be understood.

When Diana entered the household in late 1987, Pop noticed changes in his twenty-one-year-old son. Marcus II became less guarded around her, smiled more often, and began to laugh in a way his parents had not heard before: a nearly silent breath through his nose, movement in his chest, and an eye crinkle. Denise noticed it too and exchanged a look with Pop across the kitchen. Pop associated Diana’s effect on his son with the ease Denise brought to his own life. Across the more than twenty-two years Diana shared their lives, he remembered that quiet sound alongside Denise’s voice, the creak of his chair, and the house settling at night. The laugh disappeared after Diana’s death.

Diana’s Death and Pop’s Understanding

Pop understood Marcus II’s dependence on Diana partly through his own life with Denise. Her voice in the morning, her presence in the kitchen, and the touch of her hand at night were integral to his daily routines. He could not construct an image of life without her. He tried to imagine mornings without the sound of her making coffee, evenings without her voice, and their bed without her hand reaching for the remote. The thought stopped at incomprehensibility. Watching Marcus II live after Diana’s death gave that private fear a concrete shape. Pop felt pride, terror, grief, and love as his son survived through drinking, double shifts, and distance from Marcus III, but he could not express all of it to him.

Pop’s quiet did not limit the depth of his thought or concern. He recognized that his son’s withdrawal was connected to grief and the loss of the person around whom his adult life had been organized, rather than a lack of love for Marcus III. He could neither restore Diana nor give Marcus II a replacement structure. Words were difficult for both men, and Pop doubted that a statement of understanding could repair the loss even if he could say it. He remained in the house: in his chair while his son drank Jameson down the hall, at the kitchen table when he returned from double shifts smelling of whiskey and warehouse work, and at games while Marcus II sat in the back rows.

Family and Cultural Context

Pop and Marcus II’s shared reserve belonged to both their autistic experience and their lives as Black men in West Baltimore. Pop’s constancy and provision were recognizable forms of care in their family, even without a shared vocabulary for autism. His neighbors could understand him as a quiet man who showed up, while the reasons for his way of communicating remained largely unnamed. The family also lived with expectations that men should keep working and contain public grief. For Marcus II, double shifts and withdrawal could appear to satisfy those expectations even as Jameson and isolation deepened his difficulties.

Pop understood the pressure to remain strong and the historical reasons a Black family might distrust medical or mental health systems that had failed or pathologized Black men. He could see that his son’s existing ways of containing grief were insufficient, yet he did not reduce the difficulty of seeking clinical help to stubbornness. His continued presence in the family home, especially in the chair where everyone knew to find him, was an expression of fatherhood and commitment. He understood that the disappearance of Black fathers from some families could reflect incarceration, economic deprivation, or premature death rather than indifference; in that context, he valued staying. He did not claim that staying alone could treat Marcus II’s alcohol use disorder.

The quiet laugh Diana drew from Marcus II also mattered to Pop and Denise as an expression of Black family joy. They had known his smaller quarter-smile and recognized the laughter as something new and particular to him, heard nowhere else in the house. Its disappearance after Diana’s death made the change in their son audible as well as visible to them.

Presence During Marcus II’s Withdrawal

Marcus II knew he could find Pop in his chair when he returned from double shifts or drank Jameson in the kitchen. Pop remained nearby without demanding conversation. He did not compare his son’s grief to losses he had survived or shame him for needing Denise and Pop to take on more of Marcus III’s care. He nevertheless worried about his grandson, especially when Marcus III laughed in the kitchen while his father’s bedroom door remained closed. Pop understood that Marcus II loved his son even when grief and drinking kept him from parenting consistently. He offered availability without treating it as a complete answer to either problem.

Denise and Pop grieved Diana, whom they regarded as a daughter. Her noise, warmth, and basketball arguments had been part of the household for more than twenty-two years. They also grieved their son’s withdrawal. They remembered the quieter man who had sat beside the couch with a hand on Diana’s pregnant belly and laughed with her. After her death, even his earlier quarter-smile became rare. The change was painful precisely because Marcus II remained in the home, down the hall, while the ease they had seen in him seemed absent.

Private Awareness of the Loss

Denise regularly turned off the television after Pop fell asleep in his chair and brushed his arm as she passed. The touch was so familiar that intention and habit were difficult to separate. In the quiet afterward, he held on to its memory and thought about Marcus II down the hall. His son still slept in the room he had shared with Diana, beside the empty half of their bed. Sometimes Marcus II fell asleep with the television on and nobody turned it off. For Pop, the difference between the two rooms made the daily absence of Diana tangible. He grieved his son’s loneliness while recognizing how impossible his own life without Denise felt to him.

Gradual Reconnection

At the December 2014 scout game, Pop saw Marcus II move three rows closer to the family and leave his flask untouched. The changes interrupted a four-year pattern of sitting where Marcus III was unlikely to see him. During the March 2015 University of Maryland home visit, Pop watched his son reassure Marcus III and speak about Diana’s role in building their son’s game. Marcus II’s voice shook when he repeated that she had built him. Pop folded his newspaper when the coaches presented the scholarship and set it down entirely as Marcus II spoke. For a man who often communicated with gestures, the movement registered his attention and approval.

Pop understood that reconnection would take time. He had waited through the routines of family life—Denise’s stories, Marcus III’s returns from practice, and the newspaper delivery—and remained willing to make room for his son’s gradual return to games and family dinners. He did not expect Marcus II to become the man he had been before Diana’s death. Marcus II eventually entered recovery and became more present as a father and, after Rochelle’s 2020 birth, a grandfather. Pop’s availability remained constant during that change.

Relationships Family Relationships Marcus Washington I Marcus Washington II Washington Family