Be loving. That's it.
I think.
Benjamin Quaye smiles from a screen at the front of the room. Twenty or so snapshots selected from a brief lifetime. Some are of him as a baby, some in college, others as an adolescent, but in everyone he looks wildly happy, as though he'd just been told he won the lottery. Though I don't know him, I can see from the way his eyes and lips seem unable to hold anything but humor and goodwill that he couldn't help but live a passionate life.
As the photos in the slide show begin a new loop, I wonder how many times they will have to repeat before they lose their power to make me cry. I long for desensitization. I've never met this sweet-faced boy who called Oakes home, as I now do, but the grief in the room is a contagion I can't escape, and seeing his beautiful face quite literally hurts my heart and pushes a tennis ball into my throat.
I can't look at his mother, a large presence, though she is quiet and stoic as she sits in the row with bright yellow "reserved" signs hanging from the chair backs. The row set aside for those who loved a boy who has died. Her cropped, curly blond hair, the color of a happiness that seems impossible.
A professor of his talks of his commitment to social justice, and his dedication to his studies. His girlfriend speaks next, and at length. She is unprepared and silly and sweet and loses it at the end and so do I. I find myself without tissues, tears streaming down my face and snot beginning to gather in a drop at the tip of my nose. I motion to my co-worker for tissues, blow my nose and dab with futility at the flood threatening to breech the levees of my lids.
I'd disappointed a friend the morning of Ben's memorial and the conversation ended without resolution. I had been upset all day, sad that I let someone I adore down and hurt that my reasons didn't seem to matter. Sitting there, listening to this young man's friends pay him tribute and chuckling about his faults with affection and forgiveness, I got to thinking about how easy it can be to hurt the ones we love and how easy it is to forgive those who have hurt us, when we are sure of their love. The thought was a fleeting comfort.
I got to thinking about how he died. A fall. A head hit in the wrong place. Then death. It could happen to any of us. It could happen to me tonight, I thought, and my friend's last memory of me would have been of disappointment. I hated that thought not just for it's dramatic sweep, but the way it tore open every insecurity I have about loving and being loved.
I am so attached to loving and being loved that the idea or ideal of non-attachment holds little appeal for me. When I see or hear about people who can accept tragic, or even mildly disappointing, news with grace and ease I disbelieve it or find them cold and unfeeling, inauthentic. Recently, I read an account of a woman who's ten year old son had died ten days prior and she wrote that though she felt some sadness, mostly she felt ecstatic and happy, blessed to have had her son for as long as she had. Liar, I thought, You fucking liar. I cried then. I cried for him since his mother didn't seem to need to.
What bullshit.
I am the liar. The truth is that I didn't cry only for this boy, or his mother. That time, and at Ben's memorial yesterday, I cried also for myself, because crying at a memorial, crying for someone else's loss is acceptable and not self-indulgent. And, having stopped tears thousands of times for a hundred stupid reasons, like not wanting to appear weak or self-indulgent, I seem to need an excuse to feel pain.
Ben's friends and family knew him so well. They knew his faults and like any who love another, they allowed those faults to be redeemed by his true, shining self. There is that, I suppose, that in time or in death, if we are good, and we are loving, those who love us will forgive us for not being everything they hoped we'd be, and love us for who we are.
By the end of the service, I felt like I knew Ben, too, and I watched the slide show repeat the time line of his life once more, as unable to hold it together as when I walked in the room. So, so beautiful, this one. I cried for him, for the life he doesn't get to lead, and for all those he touched, for their lives will never, ever be the same. For them, it will always be before Ben and after, and for most, sadness will always salt the edges of their memories of him. And I cried for me, too.
I did get home before totally unraveling. In bed, I cried for over an hour, soaking through a half a roll of toilet paper. I wept for the life I didn't get to live that day by virtue of choice, for touching a loved one in a way that left her wanting, and for feeling misunderstood, for a life that sometimes feels like it will never be the way I want it to be, exactly, and for the doubt that my loving may not be enough. I thought about how torn I'd felt all morning, wanting to be in two places at once, and I'Asha, who ended our friendship about a year and a half ago, and John, whom I ended a relationship with last December. About how I missed three people that day, and longed for these things to be different. How many times must I release? How long will I cling to my idea about how things should be before accepting what is?
Thomas said I have experienced most of my personal growth and transformation as a result of traumatic events in my life, and though that is certainly fine and good, he wondered if I had ever been (or could allow myself to be) transformed by bliss or joy or love. It's a good question with an answer I don't like. Sure, I've had joyous, transcendent moments, and I don't think I could find anyone who knows me that would not use words like "happy" or "joyful" to describe me, but in the end, still (OH MY GOD, STILL!) I worry any possibility of transformative happiness to death.
I look at pictures of my friends who've recently married or had babies and swat away the thought of me someday being able to post pictures like these on my facebook profile. I knit the booties and make the first-days-at-home stew and I fight desiring a marriage of equals, and precious, soft-skinned infants. I smile and congratulate without entertaining too long my longing for such an elusive thing as my own family. I celebrate my freedom and feel genuine gratitude that I still get to go to late night concerts or get drunk once in a while or make last minute vacation plans. I have stopped standing in front of the mirror, pushing out my stomach and imagining how cute I'd look pregnant, or what it might feel like to have a baby nestling inside the home of my body. Because I haven't figured out how to walk the line of holding a robust vision for my life rather than of choking a vision to death with actionless longing.
I have all these tools. I know that singing makes me feel unconfused, alive, and tapped in. I know that I can call at least five different people who will pray with me, and at least five others who will listen to me and love me through and through. I know how to pray all by myself and make it feel good, too. I know that my life doesn't happen to me, but it does run it's course through my veins and I know that I can fight it or ride the wave with skill and enjoyment. I know that I am not me with spirituality layered on top, thrown on like a silly New Age costume for shits and giggles. I am a spiritual being having human experiences, and at the moment, these human experiences are having an out-of-control party in the temple of my spirit. But I'm willing to believe that this isn't the way it will remain. I know the key to all this is to be loving. To love it all -- the bad, the ugly, the wondrous, the mysterious, myself.
And, that's about it. I need some other folks to hold the rest of the vision for me until I can catch up.
I will catch up; I will be transformed by happiness, by love. I am leading a good life.
Rest in peace, young Ben. Your example of a life well-lived is deeply moving. Thank you for being born and using your time here so wisely and with so much love.
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