In eloquent rememberance of a young love
For those of you who do not know me well, I have no words to express what you would need to comprehend of me in order to truly understand where I am coming from here. I am so many things, and yet I am as simple as I am complex. Within me is a great capacity of emotion, yet at times it is incredibly difficult to put said emotions into words that do not overwhelm the people around me.
Today, after a year, I have finally found some words to share, and I attempt to give insight into my own thoughts as well as into life as we know it.
A year ago today, on April 16th, the world watched things unfold at Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA) and for most it was a distant horrible thing to see. So much death, such a horrifying idea that it could happen on a campus that appeared as safe and comfortable as VATech. Here in the Midwest it was extremely surreal and almost otherworldly. Everyone looked at it as if not only the television screen separated it from them personally, but the physical distance was an extraordinary barrier. Yet in the midst of all the people discussing the countries biggest news, I sat, struggling through a nasty bout of bronchitis, devastated to learn that someone dear to my youthful heart had died there. I remember watching the news, phone in hand but barely seeing the screen on the television as I listened to my mum tell me what she knew. I had no voice, because of being ill, so I could only listen, attempt a few words past laryngitis, and continue to start at the TV attempting to make some sense of things. All I could think was he was shot. Jamie was shot. He'd dead. They couldn't get his name right at first, and it angered me. Anger made sense, it's the first stage of grief I experience. Disbelief his much much later.
They don't teach you how to feel and manage grief when your growing up in the south. They don't always explain the subtleties in the emotion, the questions that might go through your mind, or even how to handle guilt if it applies. You're brought up to understand that it's always personal, always private, and more often than not, it is something you must hold close and keep it within in regal silence.
In other traditions, you mourn for a year and a day, or longer and shorter, but there is an acknowledgment of the rightness of grief-- it is appropriate, it is important and it is above all else healthy and natural. When we loose someone, even if they are part of the past we change. That loss could be that of a simple acquaintance, an old high school friend who was wasted away by disease and fear, a best girlfriend of over 20 years, a great aunt you only remember vaguely from family gatherings--but the one who always took the time to talk to you and make you smile-- or the mentor who helped fold you into a new environment and became in short months a good trusted friend... It could be the grandmother whom you admired, loved and truly liked even though she tended to irritate you far more often than not. Or the boy-man who was your first everything... first love, first time, first hate (though such a silly hate it might have been) first adult reconciliation, first love...
All of these I have experienced, and yet I can not pin down which was most painful because each experience was unique.
They can be taken from you in so many ways: car crash, blood clots, suicide, AIDS, troubled student on a shooting spree....Some imply that faster is easier, natural death is better, distanced friendship makes it easier. If you haven't talked to them in a long while, then it won't have hurt nearly as much. Time, however, as I have learned in my life thus far, holds no boundaries for friendship or grief, family or foe. You can know someone for a few months grieve for them as long or longer then you did for someone you'd known an entire lifetime. You could love someone as a young girl so intensely and with such complete naivety that you can still resurrect the echoes of that emotion 15 years later. There are no bounds on love, so how, tell me, could there be bounds on the grief of loosing them.
A year.... I found a center to myself this past year after the death of a man, who had once been a boy I'd desperately loved. Too young, I think, for either of us to understand what love could be, should be, or needed to be, we went our separate ways. He married a wonderful woman who is the sort of lady that everyone smiles at. Bright kind, gentle face and happy eyes whenever he walked into the room and for several moments after he's bounced back out to get something from the kitchen.
In the past year since his death, I have found my thoughts constantly turning back to her because I can not imagine her pain. I don't want to, and I am selfish in that, true.
Despite my perceived selfishness, I find my mind turning periodically back to him. I've started telling some of our stories, about trips to Germany, Asheville, Braves games and rambles through the woods near my parents home. Each memory tinged with a bit of bittersweet, because I know that they are more precious now that they have ever been.
Each moment is a small part of the early life that made me who I am, ill or will. I am grateful for those moments-- especially the difficult ones, for they taught me more about life, and how I am now, and who I could have been, than thousands of perfect blissful moments. There are so many pictures of this part of my life that even the sections of it that I can not recall with perfect detail are strong and flood back when my eyes fall upon them. I have letters... dozens of letters when he lived in Germany and I in the US. Pages filled with his adventures , thoughts, artwork, hopes and dreams. I do wonder often what I wrote to him, but knowing who I was then, am exceedingly glad I don't have further proof of how very young I must have seemed.
I am humbled. Because a part of me thinks Jamie was the better of us. He achieved so much, while I only recently found who I am.
I am honored because I was allowed the chance to give him something of my self once, and he to me.
I am angry because that small space in the back of my mind that always knew he was alive and happy somewhere has gone quiet.
I grieve, because I have the right to, and I stand by the right.
I learn from all of this, renew my compassion and calm within the face of it, for it is who I have become. That knowledge gives me a strength I had not realized still existed within me. Or that it needed continued nourishment even from memories so long ago.
For those of you who have lost someone at last years massacre, my heart fills with love and hope and relief for you. My thoughts are there, along the side of you in hope that some of the burden of grief will continue to lessen in your life as time moves forward. For other's who have lost in the past or future, I offer the same and again hope your burden lightens.
To everyone, I ask that you live. LIVE YOUR LIFE to its fullest.
Take chances. Embrace those close to you and accept the love you are offered because that love it what can get your through the darkest of times. Enjoy who you are, and if you can't, find a way to change so that you can be someone who does. Revel with your friends, for in laughter there is healing and an absolute truth within a joyous friendship that you won't find anywhere else.
Now that, for me, the time of mourning is past, it is my hope that I can take the things I've learned this year and carry them forward. I hope that I can bring from the experience some wisdom and use that which I have learned to better both myself and the relationships I am privileged to be part of.
Those friends who have supported me, helped me, loved me, made me laugh and sat with me when I cried, know who you are, and I am forever grateful for such friendships. We are all stronger for it, I have found, and knowing such trust within friendships staggers and humbles me. The friendships I have enjoyed this past year (both of old friends and new, southern and northern) has been more cherished than any I have known in decades. Those of you whom I have not talked to, or whom this is a surprise, take and know that even those closest to me had to pull it out of me, as I truly did not know how to speak of it. Take from this, the opportunity to learn something more of who I am, and what has shaped me.
Those that I call family and my closest of friends. Thank you. From the deepest wellspring of my heart, I could not have gotten around this without all of you. I am better for it, because I learned from it and also because I allowed myself to lean on you all and trust that you would hold me up if I needed it.
You are all the very threads that I weave into the fabric of my life and my tapestry is awash with intricate colour and designs because of your friendships.
Today, after a year, I have finally found some words to share, and I attempt to give insight into my own thoughts as well as into life as we know it.
A year ago today, on April 16th, the world watched things unfold at Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA) and for most it was a distant horrible thing to see. So much death, such a horrifying idea that it could happen on a campus that appeared as safe and comfortable as VATech. Here in the Midwest it was extremely surreal and almost otherworldly. Everyone looked at it as if not only the television screen separated it from them personally, but the physical distance was an extraordinary barrier. Yet in the midst of all the people discussing the countries biggest news, I sat, struggling through a nasty bout of bronchitis, devastated to learn that someone dear to my youthful heart had died there. I remember watching the news, phone in hand but barely seeing the screen on the television as I listened to my mum tell me what she knew. I had no voice, because of being ill, so I could only listen, attempt a few words past laryngitis, and continue to start at the TV attempting to make some sense of things. All I could think was he was shot. Jamie was shot. He'd dead. They couldn't get his name right at first, and it angered me. Anger made sense, it's the first stage of grief I experience. Disbelief his much much later.
They don't teach you how to feel and manage grief when your growing up in the south. They don't always explain the subtleties in the emotion, the questions that might go through your mind, or even how to handle guilt if it applies. You're brought up to understand that it's always personal, always private, and more often than not, it is something you must hold close and keep it within in regal silence.
In other traditions, you mourn for a year and a day, or longer and shorter, but there is an acknowledgment of the rightness of grief-- it is appropriate, it is important and it is above all else healthy and natural. When we loose someone, even if they are part of the past we change. That loss could be that of a simple acquaintance, an old high school friend who was wasted away by disease and fear, a best girlfriend of over 20 years, a great aunt you only remember vaguely from family gatherings--but the one who always took the time to talk to you and make you smile-- or the mentor who helped fold you into a new environment and became in short months a good trusted friend... It could be the grandmother whom you admired, loved and truly liked even though she tended to irritate you far more often than not. Or the boy-man who was your first everything... first love, first time, first hate (though such a silly hate it might have been) first adult reconciliation, first love...
All of these I have experienced, and yet I can not pin down which was most painful because each experience was unique.
They can be taken from you in so many ways: car crash, blood clots, suicide, AIDS, troubled student on a shooting spree....Some imply that faster is easier, natural death is better, distanced friendship makes it easier. If you haven't talked to them in a long while, then it won't have hurt nearly as much. Time, however, as I have learned in my life thus far, holds no boundaries for friendship or grief, family or foe. You can know someone for a few months grieve for them as long or longer then you did for someone you'd known an entire lifetime. You could love someone as a young girl so intensely and with such complete naivety that you can still resurrect the echoes of that emotion 15 years later. There are no bounds on love, so how, tell me, could there be bounds on the grief of loosing them.
A year.... I found a center to myself this past year after the death of a man, who had once been a boy I'd desperately loved. Too young, I think, for either of us to understand what love could be, should be, or needed to be, we went our separate ways. He married a wonderful woman who is the sort of lady that everyone smiles at. Bright kind, gentle face and happy eyes whenever he walked into the room and for several moments after he's bounced back out to get something from the kitchen.
In the past year since his death, I have found my thoughts constantly turning back to her because I can not imagine her pain. I don't want to, and I am selfish in that, true.
Despite my perceived selfishness, I find my mind turning periodically back to him. I've started telling some of our stories, about trips to Germany, Asheville, Braves games and rambles through the woods near my parents home. Each memory tinged with a bit of bittersweet, because I know that they are more precious now that they have ever been.
Each moment is a small part of the early life that made me who I am, ill or will. I am grateful for those moments-- especially the difficult ones, for they taught me more about life, and how I am now, and who I could have been, than thousands of perfect blissful moments. There are so many pictures of this part of my life that even the sections of it that I can not recall with perfect detail are strong and flood back when my eyes fall upon them. I have letters... dozens of letters when he lived in Germany and I in the US. Pages filled with his adventures , thoughts, artwork, hopes and dreams. I do wonder often what I wrote to him, but knowing who I was then, am exceedingly glad I don't have further proof of how very young I must have seemed.
I am humbled. Because a part of me thinks Jamie was the better of us. He achieved so much, while I only recently found who I am.
I am honored because I was allowed the chance to give him something of my self once, and he to me.
I am angry because that small space in the back of my mind that always knew he was alive and happy somewhere has gone quiet.
I grieve, because I have the right to, and I stand by the right.
I learn from all of this, renew my compassion and calm within the face of it, for it is who I have become. That knowledge gives me a strength I had not realized still existed within me. Or that it needed continued nourishment even from memories so long ago.
For those of you who have lost someone at last years massacre, my heart fills with love and hope and relief for you. My thoughts are there, along the side of you in hope that some of the burden of grief will continue to lessen in your life as time moves forward. For other's who have lost in the past or future, I offer the same and again hope your burden lightens.
To everyone, I ask that you live. LIVE YOUR LIFE to its fullest.
Take chances. Embrace those close to you and accept the love you are offered because that love it what can get your through the darkest of times. Enjoy who you are, and if you can't, find a way to change so that you can be someone who does. Revel with your friends, for in laughter there is healing and an absolute truth within a joyous friendship that you won't find anywhere else.
Now that, for me, the time of mourning is past, it is my hope that I can take the things I've learned this year and carry them forward. I hope that I can bring from the experience some wisdom and use that which I have learned to better both myself and the relationships I am privileged to be part of.
Those friends who have supported me, helped me, loved me, made me laugh and sat with me when I cried, know who you are, and I am forever grateful for such friendships. We are all stronger for it, I have found, and knowing such trust within friendships staggers and humbles me. The friendships I have enjoyed this past year (both of old friends and new, southern and northern) has been more cherished than any I have known in decades. Those of you whom I have not talked to, or whom this is a surprise, take and know that even those closest to me had to pull it out of me, as I truly did not know how to speak of it. Take from this, the opportunity to learn something more of who I am, and what has shaped me.
Those that I call family and my closest of friends. Thank you. From the deepest wellspring of my heart, I could not have gotten around this without all of you. I am better for it, because I learned from it and also because I allowed myself to lean on you all and trust that you would hold me up if I needed it.
You are all the very threads that I weave into the fabric of my life and my tapestry is awash with intricate colour and designs because of your friendships.