I just watched a woman on the news, one of the survivors of the recent tornadoes in Arkansas, standing among the rubble that was once her home. She broke down in tears as she picked up a damaged, but intact jewelry box, a gift from her mother. The drawers were gone, along with all the jewelry inside. Only the box remained, a touchstone of the link she has with someone she loves. I could see in her grateful expression that if it were the other way around – had the jewelry been found, and the box been destroyed – it would have all been an even more painful loss. In times of horrible tragedy, we look for these little things that comfort us, connect us to each other. As I’ve grown older, I hold most material things in little regard, unless they help tell a story about someone I love. In recent years, I have given away furniture and other material things, some of it quite expensive, because I saw no intrinsic value in them, or because I simply didn’t have room. The recipient probably thought I had meant “no room in my house,” but I actually meant, “no room in my life.” While I am enjoying this phase of my life, I must say I have been miserly – even obsessive – with other things: pictures and father’s day cards made by my children, love notes from my wife, books given to me by friends with meaningful inscriptions. And other things: wads of cardboard, rocks, pieces of metal or wood that would be completely meaningless to anyone but me. But like the “Odorama” from the 1971 film, Harold and Maude, the rickety machine that emits various odors to remind Maude of her past, these objects spark a memory, and allow me to travel in time for a moment and connect me to the people I love. Living in “tornado alley” as we do, we have seen the raw and bitter aftermath of loss all too close. We have stood shoulder to shoulder with victims whose homes – which simply stood in the arbitrary path of tragic winds, were decimated – while our home, just a hundred yards away, merely needed a new roof and a few pieces of siding. I have showed up at clean-up sites with my wife and children, all of us feeling helpless, but doing whatever needed to be done. I choke up with tribal pride as I see the abundance of charitable action after these disasters. Relief centers routinely announce that they have more than they need, and no way of accommodating the thousands of people on their way to help. This is frustrating to us who feel helpless, but heartening to anyone who might have thought, even moments before, that the world is too dark a place, that humanity is lost and falling. I have come to despise tornadoes. I’ve cursed the night skies in impotent rage, worried about my sleeping family. I’ve wrung my hands while watching the weather channel. I’ve raced home from work, taking back roads around the congested freeway, to get to my family as they huddled together in the bathroom with a mattress over their heads. But I have watched in awe at what these monsters leave behind: humanity at it’s best, grieving people embracing each other in comfort and support, strangers helping strangers with only the desire to end suffering. It’s one of the most miraculous things I have ever seen. And it reminds us that there is light in this dark world. There is hope for a tribe divided as we are by so many meaningless and silly things. And I realize that we are not lost, we are not falling, but we are getting up, we are forever getting up, and in the act of doing so, we find ourselves in ways that only disaster and loss can reveal.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 15:21:13 +0000
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