Change happens. This we all know. For me, my absence from this blog is directly related to the changes happening in my life. Since I last wrote, I have stopped teaching in Myanmar, returned to volunteering in Thailand, had extended visits with both my and Todd’s families, swam in cold mountain lakes, stared down deep glacial crevasses, sang “Pink Houses” (more than once), swung a toddler around while she screamed with excitement, cried, laughed, and lost my aunt Ellen to cancer and my desire to write in this blog, among many many other things.
Losing Esme still looms large in my life. It’s hard to accept that my 13-year-old sister is dead, and that all the fun things, conversations, and experiences I hoped to share with her as she grew up have had their final chapter. Although I continue to think of her, and speak to her, the interaction is gone, the conversation is now always one-sided. On top of that is the difficulty accepting the way of her passing, the brutality, the senselessness, the horror that such an experience happened to a beloved sister, and seeing my father and his wife, my brother and other sister, and all of our great family so hurt by this searing loss.
Of course, laughter can come even amidst tears. Lightness and sorrow intermingle, taking turns in the heart. On a moment-to-moment level, the heart and mind does not dwell unrelentingly on one thing all the time, and at times even our sadness can become the object of gentle reflective humor. I remember laughing at Esme’s memorial service at the absurdity of all the tissues we were consuming. It was funny, even though the tears were still there. How relieved I was to be with my family, even as my heart was breaking with the reason for our being together, and the gaping hole caused by Esme’s absence. Often this capability for laughter in the midst of heavy sadness surprises me, yet perhaps it is an indication of that “indomitable” nature of the Kenneys, that our spirits can not be permanently kept down. Indeed we have Esme as an example, for I never saw her get upset for very long, and her spirit was not made to be depressed. Still, the heavy thoughts persist, the hole is still there, and it takes more than just humor and forgetfulness to work with them.
The platitudes thrown about at times like these: “This too shall pass,” “Life goes on,” and “Time heals all wounds,” have their basic truth about them, and yet to simply wait numbly, allowing mere distance from the event to dull the sting, is too disengaged for me. On the other hand, to cling to the pain, indulge in misery, and refuse to recover out of the fear that to recover would somehow mean I didn’t value or love Esme, that I also see is not the answer. Another platitude, “Esme wouldn’t want us to suffer and be unhappy,” is one that I see the basic truth to, yet I also know my sister, and I know that she would want to be thought about, remembered, and kept fresh in our hearts. In addition, there is the fact that our family is not alone; indeed it seems like frequently there is another story in the news about another family shattered by murder. So I try to honor Esme by remembering her in as many ways as possible, and also to spread out my awareness and love to all the other people in the world who are hurt by the loss of a loved one. I try to take up the challenge spoken in the memorial service, to see the darkness in the world, and respond not with more darkness, but by making the effort to create and spread as much light as possible, in memory of my sister, and all those lost to violence. Indeed what other response is possible?
The poem read at Esme’s memorial service, “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye, really speaks to this. And so I put it here in full, for inspiration to any others who read it, and I’ll try to practice it, spreading kindness as I can, even if it’s just by giving someone a caring, Esme-inspired smile.
Kindness
by Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
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