Too Young, Too Old
A woman I knew, five years younger than me, died this weekend. I can’t really call her a friend, though I’ve known her since I moved here nine years ago—at her funeral, I realized she is one of the few people who has been a constant in my life for all nine of those years, someone who truly seems to me to embody this place, perhaps because I’ve known her in a number of different contexts.
During my first couple years here, she was an activity aide at the nursing home where I ran my service-learning project. She stood out because she was always joking with the elders, finding some way to both poke fun at them and with them-- she seemed to love her job. I was also a frequent patron at some of the bars in town around that time, and we would often run into each other, have a couple drinks—though for the life of me I can’t remember a single thing we actually said to each other. Later, she was a student involved in service-learning classes and in feminist work on campus, juggling a family life that included six kids, a recent cancer diagnosis, and her schoolwork. Always, she and her husband were connected to students I knew and loved; those students became alums, and moved away, but she and her family stayed. And now, four years after her battle with cancer started, she is gone.
I am not sure how to make sense of this loss. I can remember her out at the bar, dancing like crazy. I can remember her walking down the street, her children trailing her, the oldest daughter her spitting image, a baby in her arms—and how she walked so tall and confident, even in all of that chaos. I remember her interviewing me for a feminist project on campus, how she seemed, then, too, confident even though she was never the best student. I walked with her and two of her daughters two years ago at Relay for Life; she was strong then, her hair growing out, and she looked glowing and beautiful. I dropped off food for the family a couple times, which she received with a characteristic smile, but I never lingered. I never, ever dreamed she would die.
I have memories, too, that couldn’t actually have happened. I remember her pressing one of her children into my arms, but I’m fairly certain I never held any of them when they were babies. I remember her walking across the stage at graduation, wearing a pink bandana—but she didn’t finish her degree, so I know this couldn’t have really happened. It’s strange how the mind plays tricks on us, confuses us—perhaps wants to comfort us with knowledge or hope that wasn’t really there.
We went to some of the same parties, some of the same events, drank together occasionally over the years—but in short, I didn’t know her, not really. Still, some alumni who were helping to plan her memorial needed a place to work on the program and do some other planning for the memorial, and I ended up being available and spending the day with them. I felt honored to be able to play a role, however small.
The service was simply a time for people to share memories. There were so many stories. At one point, Her husband and an older relative got out their guitars, and then there was dancing—most poignant of all was her daughter, about the age I was when I lost my mother in my early teens, dancing with the same passion her mother used to show on the dance floor, a ribbon of bells around her ankle. I wondered if it was the same ribbon her mother had always worn.
When a young person dies and leaves children behind, or when somebody who seems to embody the town in which you live in a way that few others do passes away—it is impossible not to feel sad, confused. As one of my friends put it, “After this, how can you possibly believe in God?” But I do. Watching her daughter dance, I knew there was a Spirit among us who perhaps couldn’t have saved her, but could comfort everybody now.
I want to believe that things happen for a reason, to fall into a simplistic faith, but I can’t. Some things do seem to happen for a reason—S coming into my life, for instance, or her brother, who will soon be adopted, finding his father, or my ending up in the middle of nowhere in a state whose name I didn’t know, prior to moving here, how to spell, where I am clearly meant to be. But other things—this woman’s death, a student’s recent suicide—they don’t make sense, can’t possibly. And I am OK, now, with recognizing that I will never understand the mystery.
It is easy, too, after something like this happens, to wish there was more I could have done, to want to change the story. I wish, for instance, that I’d lingered a bit when taking the family food instead of rushing away out of a fear that I would be intruding. I wish that I’d taken them food more often. I wish I’d called when she wasn’t able to keep coming to classes to see if there was some way she could, despite her illness, finish her degree. I wish I’d gotten to know her children so that they would feel they could talk to me now—I know what they are going through because of my own mother-loss at their age, but there is no way to connect with them now because I didn’t earlier.
But these regrets are useless, and in some ways, they probably are based in ego rather than love. Who is to say that I could have helped them, or that what I didn’t do wasn’t done by someone else, maybe someone closer to them or someone better at doing whatever was needed than I would have been? Who is to say that the children don’t have plenty of people to talk to, people who truly knew their mother? And yet, as I write this, I wonder what is the bigger sin (for lack of a better word)—that I want now to excuse myself for what I didn’t do, that I didn’t do it in the first place, or that I think I could have been that necessary to the lives of people I don’t know well?
I have been thinking a lot about what it means to live in this community because of our community’s many recent tragedies. After nine years, I’m at least familiar with most of the family names, and can recognize many, if not most, faces. A little girl who needs a liver transplant is the daughter of a student I had in my first year of teaching. Since then, I have worked with her grandmother in two different capacities in my role as service-learning coordinator. The student who died recently was the brother of one of my former students and friends with many students I have now, though I didn’t know him. A woman who died because she was too drunk to get safely home on a cold winter night lived nearby; we saw each other frequently, and I could point out the house she’d lived in, but I’d never learned her name. It is impossible not to think that there must be more that could have been, or can be, done for suffering people, especially in a community this small.
My daughter has made a list of all the ways she plans to raise money for the little girl who needs a liver. Will she follow through on this list? I don’t know, but I do admire her willingness to help someone she doesn’t know, and I hope I will be able to help her do at least some of the things she’s planning.
“I get that from you, Mom,” she said when I praised her for wanting to help. I’d just gotten back from the funeral, and we were finishing supper.
I’d only been half-listening as she read the list to me—my mind was still on the teenage girl who had danced at her mother’s funeral, on the beauty of that simple decision--and immediately, I felt guilty for not paying more attention. “Sometimes, though, I don’t feel like I help enough,” I confessed to her.
“You do what you can, and when you don’t, you just have to forgive yourself,” she said.
“How old are you?” I asked her.
“Fifteen. Why?”
“Just checking.”
“Was that something too young or too old for me to say?” she asked, genuinely confused.
“Too old, you dufus.” I smiled at her, and she smiled back, and then we began to do the dishes without talking about it—me washing, her drying, the chore she hates the most and does least willingly.
“Did you notice anything, Mom?”
“Yeah, you’re not complaining about your chore.”
“That’s right. I’m not. That’s older than my age, too, isn’t it, mom?”
I nodded. It was going to be a good night.
During my first couple years here, she was an activity aide at the nursing home where I ran my service-learning project. She stood out because she was always joking with the elders, finding some way to both poke fun at them and with them-- she seemed to love her job. I was also a frequent patron at some of the bars in town around that time, and we would often run into each other, have a couple drinks—though for the life of me I can’t remember a single thing we actually said to each other. Later, she was a student involved in service-learning classes and in feminist work on campus, juggling a family life that included six kids, a recent cancer diagnosis, and her schoolwork. Always, she and her husband were connected to students I knew and loved; those students became alums, and moved away, but she and her family stayed. And now, four years after her battle with cancer started, she is gone.
I am not sure how to make sense of this loss. I can remember her out at the bar, dancing like crazy. I can remember her walking down the street, her children trailing her, the oldest daughter her spitting image, a baby in her arms—and how she walked so tall and confident, even in all of that chaos. I remember her interviewing me for a feminist project on campus, how she seemed, then, too, confident even though she was never the best student. I walked with her and two of her daughters two years ago at Relay for Life; she was strong then, her hair growing out, and she looked glowing and beautiful. I dropped off food for the family a couple times, which she received with a characteristic smile, but I never lingered. I never, ever dreamed she would die.
I have memories, too, that couldn’t actually have happened. I remember her pressing one of her children into my arms, but I’m fairly certain I never held any of them when they were babies. I remember her walking across the stage at graduation, wearing a pink bandana—but she didn’t finish her degree, so I know this couldn’t have really happened. It’s strange how the mind plays tricks on us, confuses us—perhaps wants to comfort us with knowledge or hope that wasn’t really there.
We went to some of the same parties, some of the same events, drank together occasionally over the years—but in short, I didn’t know her, not really. Still, some alumni who were helping to plan her memorial needed a place to work on the program and do some other planning for the memorial, and I ended up being available and spending the day with them. I felt honored to be able to play a role, however small.
The service was simply a time for people to share memories. There were so many stories. At one point, Her husband and an older relative got out their guitars, and then there was dancing—most poignant of all was her daughter, about the age I was when I lost my mother in my early teens, dancing with the same passion her mother used to show on the dance floor, a ribbon of bells around her ankle. I wondered if it was the same ribbon her mother had always worn.
When a young person dies and leaves children behind, or when somebody who seems to embody the town in which you live in a way that few others do passes away—it is impossible not to feel sad, confused. As one of my friends put it, “After this, how can you possibly believe in God?” But I do. Watching her daughter dance, I knew there was a Spirit among us who perhaps couldn’t have saved her, but could comfort everybody now.
I want to believe that things happen for a reason, to fall into a simplistic faith, but I can’t. Some things do seem to happen for a reason—S coming into my life, for instance, or her brother, who will soon be adopted, finding his father, or my ending up in the middle of nowhere in a state whose name I didn’t know, prior to moving here, how to spell, where I am clearly meant to be. But other things—this woman’s death, a student’s recent suicide—they don’t make sense, can’t possibly. And I am OK, now, with recognizing that I will never understand the mystery.
It is easy, too, after something like this happens, to wish there was more I could have done, to want to change the story. I wish, for instance, that I’d lingered a bit when taking the family food instead of rushing away out of a fear that I would be intruding. I wish that I’d taken them food more often. I wish I’d called when she wasn’t able to keep coming to classes to see if there was some way she could, despite her illness, finish her degree. I wish I’d gotten to know her children so that they would feel they could talk to me now—I know what they are going through because of my own mother-loss at their age, but there is no way to connect with them now because I didn’t earlier.
But these regrets are useless, and in some ways, they probably are based in ego rather than love. Who is to say that I could have helped them, or that what I didn’t do wasn’t done by someone else, maybe someone closer to them or someone better at doing whatever was needed than I would have been? Who is to say that the children don’t have plenty of people to talk to, people who truly knew their mother? And yet, as I write this, I wonder what is the bigger sin (for lack of a better word)—that I want now to excuse myself for what I didn’t do, that I didn’t do it in the first place, or that I think I could have been that necessary to the lives of people I don’t know well?
I have been thinking a lot about what it means to live in this community because of our community’s many recent tragedies. After nine years, I’m at least familiar with most of the family names, and can recognize many, if not most, faces. A little girl who needs a liver transplant is the daughter of a student I had in my first year of teaching. Since then, I have worked with her grandmother in two different capacities in my role as service-learning coordinator. The student who died recently was the brother of one of my former students and friends with many students I have now, though I didn’t know him. A woman who died because she was too drunk to get safely home on a cold winter night lived nearby; we saw each other frequently, and I could point out the house she’d lived in, but I’d never learned her name. It is impossible not to think that there must be more that could have been, or can be, done for suffering people, especially in a community this small.
My daughter has made a list of all the ways she plans to raise money for the little girl who needs a liver. Will she follow through on this list? I don’t know, but I do admire her willingness to help someone she doesn’t know, and I hope I will be able to help her do at least some of the things she’s planning.
“I get that from you, Mom,” she said when I praised her for wanting to help. I’d just gotten back from the funeral, and we were finishing supper.
I’d only been half-listening as she read the list to me—my mind was still on the teenage girl who had danced at her mother’s funeral, on the beauty of that simple decision--and immediately, I felt guilty for not paying more attention. “Sometimes, though, I don’t feel like I help enough,” I confessed to her.
“You do what you can, and when you don’t, you just have to forgive yourself,” she said.
“How old are you?” I asked her.
“Fifteen. Why?”
“Just checking.”
“Was that something too young or too old for me to say?” she asked, genuinely confused.
“Too old, you dufus.” I smiled at her, and she smiled back, and then we began to do the dishes without talking about it—me washing, her drying, the chore she hates the most and does least willingly.
“Did you notice anything, Mom?”
“Yeah, you’re not complaining about your chore.”
“That’s right. I’m not. That’s older than my age, too, isn’t it, mom?”
I nodded. It was going to be a good night.
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