David S. Kemnitzer, 1950-2015
This is the difficult thing I have been putting off posting about. In August my brother called me to tell me he had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. I did see him in his home twice after that. He looked like the time was really near. He was optimistic, though, and signed on for aggressive treatment, and made plans for the future when he would be well again. The doctors were realistic, and told him the average survival after diagnosis was 10-14 months. My sister in law was bargaining for him to beat the average: two years, maybe. The thing Stephanie kept saying was "Not David, not now," but it was David, and it was now.
David started smoking in his really early teens. My parents were chain smokers, as were my grandmothers. My father quit in his early sixties and was generally more fit, so his diagnosis came in his seventies and he made it to 77. His mother: 44. My mother, 60, her mother,64.
So that thing where everybody kn ows some spry old fellow who live to be 98 and smoked like a chimney, just doesn't happen in my family. It's not all lung cancer, of course. My mother's mother died of a heart attack, and my mother died of pancreatic cancer. My husband was the youngest of all, dying of an embolism at the age of 58. I am really glad my children doin't smoke (neither do I: never did).
But let me talk about my big brother for a bit. He was a lot like me, and a lot not like me. He shared my sketchy self-esteem, difficulty to grab hold of and hold on to a career, love of food and dogs and children and books. Politically, we were both definitely children of our parents and our communities and out times, but we ended up in different spots. David was a Berkely radical and later an Oakland anarchist. At times in his life he was a hard-working, dedicated grassroots guy-- Seeds of Peace, and I was going to list other organizations but I'm having noun disease and maybe I will edit this after I talk to Stephanie. He was in the streets during the 1968 and ongoing strikes in Berkeley, spending the summer of 1968 in the county farm because he threw a rock at a cop--which he did after days of watching that same cop abuse people and hurt children. But most of what he did was community work, really notably around the time of the Pretty Big Earthquake which was also the runup to the Firstg Gulf War and the time in which our mother was dying of pancreatic cancer. He worked hard with local churches and radical groups to provide food, shelter, and clothing to people whose homes were made useless by the earthquake (that would be people on the Flats, mostly), and did the support work for the constant anti-war demonstrations, and also came down to Santa Cruz to support me where I was the front person with my mother.
He was damaged, both in reputation and in his own confidence, I think, by the events around the bombing of Judi Bari. He had been working closely with her and the movement to save trees up north,and was convoying with her in another car when the bomb went off. Some people implicated him in this--without reason, it was a botched FBI maneuver to try to frame her as a violent, murderous saboteur, and he ended up alienated from Judi Bari for most of the rest of her life.
He spent the last fifteen? more? years as a teacher, first substitute and then with his own classroom, in the Oakland Public School District. He taught mostly social studies/history in the high schools. This last year he couldn't keep up. He finally went to the doctor this summer, and so on.
His family was complex. I mean, there was me and our parents and the weird fictive tangle from my father's connections, and then there was his wife, Stephanie Massey, and his (step)daughter, Alyesia Massey, and her daughter Julianna. And then there were tens, scores, of young people who came into his life and were supported and housed and educated by him. Waifs of every description that washed up into his circle, raised up some from childhood and others from early adulthood by David and Stephanie. I know over time Stephanie will be hearing from a lot of them.
I also want to just put right here that our friend Rosemary Prem has been a hero to our family in this as well as all those other times. she brought me back to Santa Cruz last night because I wasn't supposed to drive yet and Emma, who brought me, was in the throes of moving.
I miss my big brother, but the full weight of grief hasn't hit yet. I might be shielded from it by the task of healing from the second knee surgery, but I don't know.
Some other time I'll reminisce about me and David when we were kids.
David started smoking in his really early teens. My parents were chain smokers, as were my grandmothers. My father quit in his early sixties and was generally more fit, so his diagnosis came in his seventies and he made it to 77. His mother: 44. My mother, 60, her mother,64.
So that thing where everybody kn ows some spry old fellow who live to be 98 and smoked like a chimney, just doesn't happen in my family. It's not all lung cancer, of course. My mother's mother died of a heart attack, and my mother died of pancreatic cancer. My husband was the youngest of all, dying of an embolism at the age of 58. I am really glad my children doin't smoke (neither do I: never did).
But let me talk about my big brother for a bit. He was a lot like me, and a lot not like me. He shared my sketchy self-esteem, difficulty to grab hold of and hold on to a career, love of food and dogs and children and books. Politically, we were both definitely children of our parents and our communities and out times, but we ended up in different spots. David was a Berkely radical and later an Oakland anarchist. At times in his life he was a hard-working, dedicated grassroots guy-- Seeds of Peace, and I was going to list other organizations but I'm having noun disease and maybe I will edit this after I talk to Stephanie. He was in the streets during the 1968 and ongoing strikes in Berkeley, spending the summer of 1968 in the county farm because he threw a rock at a cop--which he did after days of watching that same cop abuse people and hurt children. But most of what he did was community work, really notably around the time of the Pretty Big Earthquake which was also the runup to the Firstg Gulf War and the time in which our mother was dying of pancreatic cancer. He worked hard with local churches and radical groups to provide food, shelter, and clothing to people whose homes were made useless by the earthquake (that would be people on the Flats, mostly), and did the support work for the constant anti-war demonstrations, and also came down to Santa Cruz to support me where I was the front person with my mother.
He was damaged, both in reputation and in his own confidence, I think, by the events around the bombing of Judi Bari. He had been working closely with her and the movement to save trees up north,and was convoying with her in another car when the bomb went off. Some people implicated him in this--without reason, it was a botched FBI maneuver to try to frame her as a violent, murderous saboteur, and he ended up alienated from Judi Bari for most of the rest of her life.
He spent the last fifteen? more? years as a teacher, first substitute and then with his own classroom, in the Oakland Public School District. He taught mostly social studies/history in the high schools. This last year he couldn't keep up. He finally went to the doctor this summer, and so on.
His family was complex. I mean, there was me and our parents and the weird fictive tangle from my father's connections, and then there was his wife, Stephanie Massey, and his (step)daughter, Alyesia Massey, and her daughter Julianna. And then there were tens, scores, of young people who came into his life and were supported and housed and educated by him. Waifs of every description that washed up into his circle, raised up some from childhood and others from early adulthood by David and Stephanie. I know over time Stephanie will be hearing from a lot of them.
I also want to just put right here that our friend Rosemary Prem has been a hero to our family in this as well as all those other times. she brought me back to Santa Cruz last night because I wasn't supposed to drive yet and Emma, who brought me, was in the throes of moving.
I miss my big brother, but the full weight of grief hasn't hit yet. I might be shielded from it by the task of healing from the second knee surgery, but I don't know.
Some other time I'll reminisce about me and David when we were kids.