Good grief

I’ve had a struggle convincing myself to post anything to the blog this week.  I wrote half a post about John Edwards and then I wrote a post about Kim Kardashian and then I just left them both in my files without posting them. 

I have nothing to complain about.  Overall, I have a pretty good life.  But this week I’ve been thinking of my close friend who lost someone so important to her.  The person she lost isn’t someone that it hurts me to lose, except that it hurts my friend so deeply that her pain makes my heart ache with hers.  There’s nothing I can say to fix this for her, and I’m desperate to just fix it.  There’s not much that I can do to make it better.  I wish more than anything that I could erase this last week for her and her family and the person that was lost to all of us. 

Recently I experienced a similar writing block.  My cousin’s fiancé lost someone important to her too.  Again, this isn’t a person that it hurt me to lose but it hurt them so much.  My cousin and his fiancé are at a crucial point in their young lives and a loss like the one they experienced hurts worse now than maybe it could have at any other time.  Then again, maybe it would hurt them exactly the same no matter what.  But the circumstances just crushed me as I stood back at a safe distance. 

I guess the real trouble for me is that when I try to put myself in the shoes of my loved ones, I can’t bear it.  I don’t know how they get out of bed in the morning, how they don’t ask themselves the most crippling existential questions over and over again, how they don’t doubt every single thing they were ever promised in life. 

But now I realize how they did it: FAITH.  I’m not trying to get religious; I don’t necessarily mean faith in God.  I mean, simply, faith in life, faith in the act of living and breathing.  Faith that tomorrow isn’t promised but if we don’t have the strength to get through today, we’ll never see tomorrow.  Just one more breath, in and out, leads to the next breath, in and out, and it’s not okay but it’s bearable.  Livable. 

And despite the excruciating fact that these two are lost to all of us, I truly believe that it’s enough for each of them to have existed and to have touched the lives of my friend, cousin and future cousin.  Sharing even one fleeting moment with someone else is enough because it’s another lesson learned, another breath of life, no matter whether it ends in heartbreak or happiness. 

I wish I knew something more to say than, “I’m sorry.”  I am sorry, truly sorry, to see anyone suffer the pain of loss, to see anyone taken from us too soon.  I want to say so much more in that moment when I hold my friend in my arms.  Hopefully my loved ones feel my love surrounding them, hopefully they can let go of what they feel for those few seconds and hold onto me and allow me to absorb their pain.  I would take it all if I could. 

The beauty of all of this loss, for me, is that the ones that I love are still here.  For now.  It’s enough for me to breathe and breathe again and with each breath reassure myself that soon I’ll see each of them again.  It’s enough for me to selfishly take tomorrow for granted because we’re all here today.  As long as I hold onto faith, basic human faith, I can put off tomorrow and whatever it may hold in store. 

The biggest lesson I’ve learned from all of this is that there’s nothing that can show you the effect of community than when you support a friend in their grief.  I showed up at the first visitation and ran into my friend’s dad.  Then I saw my friend’s dad at his son’s visitation.  In all of this, the most important thing that’s come to light is that you never know how far you’ve reached until you can walk into something sad and heavy like that and come out feeling that there’s still light for all of us to share.  There’s still clean air, there’s still hope. 

I’ll never give up this faith, so long as I live and breathe. 

WAYT: Walk a mile in those shoes

I’m going to give you a scenario.  You are a police officer.  You receive a call in your squad car stating that gunshots were fired, you are needed on the scene.  When you arrive, you see with your two eyes that a young man is lying immobile on the ground and an older man is standing by, waiting for you to take action. 

What do you think the police should do in this situation? 

Should you, the police officer, stand with the shooter by the side of the road, get his account, and then let him walk away?  Or should you ask the man to please come back with you to the station so that you can fully hear his version of events? 

By now I’m sure you know that I’m talking about the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.  The man who shot him, George Zimmerman, as far as I can tell, has not been inside his local police precinct to discuss the night that he shot Trayvon Martin. 

Why wasn’t he at least been brought in for questioning?

It is not okay with me, as a citizen of the United States, to know that someone could walk up to me, shoot me, claim self-defense and then be allowed to walk away.  It is not okay with me for George Zimmerman to fatally shoot Trayvon Martin and have not undergone a rigorous police questioning. 

Maybe I watch too much Law and Order.  And I have different rights and laws surrounding me as a citizen of Illinois than does George Zimmerman as a citizen of Florida.  He was licensed to carry a handgun and he is afforded the right to “stand his ground” under Florida law.  I may disagree with every single part of that last sentence but that is completely beside the point because the law is the law. 

But I beg you, please, set these particulars aside.  Allow yourself one minute to fully picture the scene on that street in that Florida neighborhood that night.  George Zimmerman stands his ground and as a result a young man bleeds to death, killed by George’s actions.  George Zimmerman answers a few questions from police and walks away into the night while Trayvon Martin's body is taken away to the morgue. 

Maybe George Zimmerman did the right thing to intervene that night.  But did he do the right thing to shoot Trayvon?  If he had somehow detained Trayvon, would we have found out that Trayvon got the Skittles and iced tea but then was going to break into someone’s house?  Would we have never heard the name Trayvon Martin, if George Zimmerman had listened to the 911 dispatcher who told him not to follow Trayvon?

Whether Trayvon was a future statistic in the well-worn tales of good boys gone bad, we’ll never know.  I do know that Trayvon’s mother will never have a “normal” life again.  Her baby, her son who was precious to her no matter how he could have turned out, is gone forever.  Everything about Trayvon, her past marriage, her current life – all of it now belongs to us.  She is in the spotlight and we may never forget her.  I pray that we never forget Trayvon. 

But more than anything, I pray that we let the race debate fall to the side here.  Maybe the shooting was racially motivated.  Maybe George Zimmerman profiled Trayvon as up to no good because he had his hood up – as he walked home in the rain.  But maybe George was just calling it how he saw it, because maybe George also watched too much Law and Order.  Maybe George was hyper-concerned about his community and couldn’t allow anyone to look suspicious on the streets where he kept his home – the one place in the world where he felt entitled to safety and security. 

All I want everyone to do is put themselves on that street in Florida, that sad night.  Tell me what you think is right.  What should have happened between George and Trayvon, George and the police, the community and George and Trayvon and the police? 

Looking back on it, it sure seems like it was ALL WRONG to me.  My heart aches over all of this.