Light. Last Sunday afternoon. The brief, brilliant sun bedazzling through the high window in the town hall auditorium. The audience arriving, shedding coats, searching for friends; the musicians warming up on stage. Henry in his tux, a quick smile (just for me) as he files past to take his place on the risers, preparing to sing. My neighbor Debbie sitting beside me, sharing her chocolate chip cookies. Familiar faces in the crowd. Christmas trees festooned with white lights, men in holiday sweaters and red neckties, the lady selling homemade baked goods at the table in the back, the rustle of programs, the golden light, the expectant hush that hovers just before the first note of song bursts through the silence and takes flight. My son, who will turn twenty-three this week, standing onstage before a packed house in our home town; his deep, sure tenor filling the room, filling my heart till it pushes against my chest and overflows and I am brushing away happy, astonished tears. All these years, and I’ve never once heard this most private child of mine sing out loud — till now, here, this deeply felt solo performed in a room packed with people who have paid money to come.
Dark. The night before, crowding into the small room at the funeral home, surrounded by family from near and far. The photograph of my uncle as a young man himself, crew-cut earnest and just out of school, gazing toward an unknown future that would hold more than its share of heartbreak. The small urn full of ashes, a fishing scene etched onto the side, and above it that photo I’ve known all my life, the same photo that hung on the parlor wall of my grandmother’s house alongside two more, a triptych of brothers framed in gold and presiding silently there through the long quiet afternoons of my childhood, when I would study every ancestral image, every picture in the crowded gallery of family likenesses.
Reassembling those memories to meet the present: the dear, familiar faces of aunts and uncles and cousins, each one softened and creased by age and time; it has been too long since I last saw them. My cousin’s children, suddenly grown and confronting a new truth: even larger-than-life grandfathers die. (Wasn’t it just yesterday that they were children running wild with my own boys through the frozen November field behind my parents’ house?)
Anecdotes gathered up and shared haltingly. The unaccustomed effort of giving voice to what’s hard and sad and lost. The three brothers who have suddenly become two, oldest and youngest, the one in between gone at seventy-one. An image in my mind from years ago: my brawny uncle with his sideburns and beard and aviator glasses, his inexhaustible supply of stories, holding forth at Thanksgiving dinner, spinning tales from events he remembered that everyone else had long since forgotten. And then, later, the long trip home, fighting to stay awake as my father drives down the empty highway. The odd sensation of being both a fifty-four year old mother of two grown sons and, at the same time, a child again myself, sitting alone in the back seat of my parents car, the backs of their heads as familiar to me as my own two hands.
Light. It is dusk. The only lamp on in the dark, silent house is here, beside the sofa where I sit surrounded by evening shadows. I type these words slowly, from within a small, golden patch of brightness.
Dark. The paragraphs above, written early yesterday morning, so trivial today, as the news from Connecticut settles upon our shoulders like a heavy, black cloak of brutal knowing. Innocent children dead, families ripped apart, the nation shaken once again by tragedy beyond reason or comprehension. Grief and anger, the deep sense of failure and helplessness. Gratitude for a life that is intact intermingled with mourning for lives lost and for lives ruined.
Sun and shadow. Joy and heartache. Life and death. To be human is to become intimate with both darkness and light. It has always been so. Yet on this somber December day, we are asked to do even more: somehow we must carry on with our lives as they are and, too, we must stop in our tracks, and look with clear gaze into the ruins.
How to respond to such a random, meaningless act of violence? How to open ourselves to the grief caused by this rampage of mindless destruction? How to accommodate and embrace both the darkness and the light of today?
Perhaps there is no good answer, other than to honor the sanctity of life by loving more and loving better, whatever that means for each of us. Compassion is the thread that binds us to one another. Compassion is the balm that heals the soul. Compassion is the offering we carry to the altar of regret and anger and grief. Compassion is what clears our vision, so we may begin to see, even in the midst of the darkest and most unspeakable horror, the light of something larger than our own understanding at work. Compassion is what allows us to seek redemption in the midst of tragedy — to reach out a hand and step toward rather than away from, to act rather than to wait for others to act in our stead. Compassion is, perhaps, the point of the journey, both our purpose and our calling, the place where healing and hope for tomorrow resides. A reminder that in all its shadow and its light, this fragile, fleeting life is full of beauty and meaning nonetheless.
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I know you are right, and even in the darkest moment I can see that beauty. I can’t imagine that those parents can, though, those people for whom the shadow rose up to occlude the light, enormous, fierce, forever. I hope they can. We could so easily be they.
Thank you.
I wish your calming words could be read by every American as we try to sort out the enormity of yesterday’s heart wrenching events. And to realize that Henry will be 23 this week seems like only yesterday….your Mom and I coming to see you when he was just a few weeks old….the pride I saw in the face of a new mother…I have pictures of that visit to cherish always! Much love, Carolyn
Beautiful.
Thank you Katrina, as always, for your compassionate and astute words. We so often hear about these tragic events and secretly whisper the prayer we don’t dare say aloud: “At least it didn’t happen here.”
But this time, I was touched. My niece attended Sandy Hook Elementary. She is fine, and through the heroic efforts of the library staff, she was spared the trauma of seeing or hearing much.
But she lost a playmate, who kept her company during their brothers’ boring baseball games. A first-grade neighbor is gone. The community is, quite simply, shattered.
I hardly know what to say to my brother and his family. When we spoke Friday night after a day of frantic texts, he said, “We couldn’t decide if we wanted to put on the Christmas lights.” But they did, refusing to let such darkness overtake them. The entire town did likewise.
I know this school – went to baseball games there this summer (you can see the field from aerial photos) – watched a parade in Newtown. This is an idyllic place to raise families.
In these early days of dealing with this, I can only hold in my heart one thought: It is time to act. I don’t know what this means, but the time for hand-wringing and then slowly forgetting is past. Enough is enough. We all have something we can do, and we must take action.
I urge anyone reading this to search their hearts and find a way to contribute – by sharing a skill or talent, talking to a troubled teen, advocating for gun reform, getting to know that isolated neighbor, sitting down to dinner more often with your family.
We pray to God, as we should, for help. But the time has come for us to help ourselves and one another.
Blessing to you all in these difficult days.
Joy I am so sorry to hear that this horrible tragedy touched you and your family directly. My thoughts and prayers and love are with you.
Yes, your post made the tears from Katrina’s post fall fresh. I can’t even imagine having a tie to that school. The only way I am coping, emotionally, is to remind myself that I can be sad for those families, I can pray for those families, but I did not personally know those families…as much as my heart begs to differ.
Hug your relatives, and your niece, for me. I will be thinking of them all in the months to come, hoping and praying for healing and peace.
Judy
justonefoot.com
Thanks to all of the kind strangers who left such kind words. You are the salve for our wounds, and it is a blessing that you stepped forward with generous hearts.
Beautiful Katrina. xo
Thank you, Katrina. I especially loved reading about the concert. I know that sometimes I cry at school presentations, even when my child is not involved. Just tears for the magic of childhood and the wonder of a performance on a stage. But to hear your son sing for the first time in a public venue…how did you not full out weep? I think I would have. 🙂
As for the CT tragedy, like I said in the reply to Joy’s reply, I can only cope by reminding myself I did not know those families. I remind myself that it’s a blessing, in a sick sense, that I dont know of every family who loses a child in a month, or a year, because I would tie myself to each of them. I fight the guilt of purposefully not watching the coverage, telling myself that sitting in tears every day does nothing to help those families and only tears up my own. It’s such a fine line.
Tell your boy we are all proud of him. For finding his way, and reminding us that ours too, will find their way.
Hugs, my other coast mountain friend!
Judy
justonefoot.blogspot.com
justonefoot.com
Thank you both, Katrina and Joy, for your heartfelt words. As I looked out at my congregation from the choir loft this morning, I could see the sadness of all people’s faces and many were crying – none of these people knew anyone in Newtown. It illustrates how far, wide and deep the country will mourn this incredible and incomprehensible loss. You are right that this is a time for action and I know I will do my small part in whatever it takes; whether it’s gun control, school safety or better care of the mentally ill, I vow to not lose this opportunity to make the world a safer place for children and those who care for them.
In trying to process the possibility of such evil existing in our world, its so comforting to read the thoughts and prayers of all you kind souls…
These comments, so thoughtful and heartfelt; the prayers and conversations of this weekend; the quiet determination of so many to take some sort of action as we join our president in his determination to effect change — all this unites us in a common cause for our collective children. May we move forward together, and may we continue to be touched anew by the ripples moving outward from Sandy Hook. Ripples that remind us that we are all connected, that we are indeed a village, and that peace and healing and a safer world for our children is our country’s work now.
I am not certain what to say. Your words resonated.
Thank you.
Grateful for your humble and eloquent words during a time when there is, really, so little to say, or so little that seems even adequate. I am still reeling here. Far away in Nebraska, but so close in my heart. My youngest is 7, the same age as so many of the children who died. I look at him and simply cannot imagine.