On Surviving: “A humble tribute to all the victims of fear and darkness”

Bea, Boston

Posted on April 22, 2013 (for original post, please visit Bea’s insightful and honest Spanish/English blog “Bea Usted”)

Annoyed by language complexity and feeling overwhelmed by a consuming feeling that goes beyond words, I dare to break the silence and I decided to write.

Please, my beloved reader, take it as a prerogative of this witness.
Take it please, as a humble tribute full of love and respect to all the victims of fear and darkness.
With my profound gratitude to all of those still looking for light in human nature.
With love to Boston.

Thunderous silence the one that precedes the sound of a bullet. Your sight gets lost in the face of such a spectacle, facing the immediate fact that your “EVERYTHING”-that everything that without any pondering you call life- is subjugated to the will of a trigger.

The powder has an acid thick fragrance, recalcitrant. The struggle that you feel is silent, eternal. The fear defeats the pain. The blood is a sign of life. Every breath you take is a struggle and consciousness makes you realize that you are wounded.

An internal voice controls yourself; there’s no more noise; there’s no more pain. You give up by the fragility of your body. Strength…

I woke up in a hospital. They showed me the bullet. I could not believe it, though I also couldn’t help but to feel that I deserve it. In those days, the odds to be wounded where pretty high in Mexico City, and by being out at 11:00 pm I made them even higher, we were not in a war; we didn’t have terrorist; our history was not made up of violent religious conflicts, but what we did have was the numbing violence. During that time –Friday December 5th, 2003 to be exact- the term of “War against organized crime” had not even been coined. Violence was just part of our reality.

What happened with my life after that event has been living. I have been extremely fortunate. I understand that I didn’t do anything to deserve to be a survivor. The projectile was weak. It couldn’t go through. Also I didn’t do anything to be there in that precise moment, the attack was absolutely random. As time went by, I learned how to justify it, saying that the main motivation that sparks violence, according to what people told me was money and power. It was a cultural thing people used to say.

I never sued. It is important to mention that my “assailant” was a cop who used to work for the peace of the citizens by day, but change his bet by night. I didn’t know where to go. I was afraid.

People said that humans have sensorial memories. Just with a stimulus we are able to instantly travel back to a moment that is already tattooed in your memory system.

Thursday April 18th, 2013. I was writing an essay about the impact of media in the last democratic elections in my country. I was alone in my apartment joined by my cat and my coffee maker. Procrastinating, I was reading about the MIT shooting, I thought that probably they were more terrorists in the city, or that perhaps a student victim of the collective psychosis decided to take action. I kept on reading. Sean Collier, 26, a cop from Somerville -the beautiful place where I live- was killed. He was there in the wrong moment.

Through social media, I realized that there was a chase on the streets. I thought immediately that it was related to the MIT shooting. I also thought that this might be a secondary effect of the terrorist attack on Patriots Day. Once fear and violence are released it is very difficult to control them. That’s what experience has taught me.

I heard a gun shot. I was in doubt, How far it was? Two more. I Tweeted about it. “I heard it too,” a Mexican friend from Harvard replies. “Bombs, sirens, gun-shots and murders. Cambridge or Ciudad Juarez” someone says on Twitter, receiving several RT’s. The joke was totally unnecessary yet sadly accurate.

I leave the comfort of my desk to close the window when I heard a loud noise. Later, I knew that it was a bomb. The wind that touched my face in that precise moment was polluted by that repugnant smell of powder.

Can you recognize it? You, that have lived something similar. Please tell me that I’m not alone. You veteran cop or formed soldier. You, journalist. You, that have been in a war zone. You, criminal that have pulled the trigger of a gun. You, that needs to hide in the middle of a gun-shot. Aggressor or victim. Can you recognize the kind of adrenaline that I’m talking about? You and I, and all the survivors, we know that what I am describing goes beyond any kind of language.

I couldn’t sleep that night. The helicopters, sirens and shoot fired penetrated my dreams. I was in Mexico, the streets where occupied by a terrorist cell. Somehow, I knew that they were looking for my aggressors.

I woke up. I had run out of coffee. I wanted to go out but the city was locked in. The news was saying that the entire city had been shutdown. A man, a 19 year old kid, was the subject. I didn’t care. I was not afraid. I felt trust.

Everyone in the Greater Boston Area was at home. They agreed to stay inside as long as it took, because the police was using the power of the state legitimately.

At 8:00 pm the lock-in was lifted. I went out with my friends to have diner. In the streets you couldn’t yet feel joy, but strength. The small bars and restaurants of Davis Square were crowded. I needed to go out of my place. I needed to breathe! I understood that others shared my necessity.

All the inhabitants of this New England place, Bostonians or not, where responding with a subconscious yell of war. Terror is not going to take our streets! Freedom was ours.

Around 10:00 pm, it was official. The suspect was in custody. I couldn’t avoid making a standing ovation. The rest of the guests in the restaurant did the same thing.

I didn’t do anything to be here, to be able to witness this event. I just coincided, just as the marathon victims of last Monday. There’s no rational explanation that can give us certainty about why we are where we are. There is no explanation of our space-time allocation. It just is. We coincide.

But I want to see beyond evident truths and I’m writing this without any academic purpose. I voluntarily abstain myself from trying to find any kind of ideological or ethnic theories that might justify or explain the terror that the Tsarnaev brothers caused. In my country, I learned that what triggers violence is the desire of power and money. But so far, that doesn’t sound justifiable. I refuse to understand it.

Boston. I used to describe this city as a “cozy” place with echoes of British architecture. Bostonians, archaic-people that close bars at 2:00 am! Awful weather and that indecipherable accent!!!

Bostonians… Warriors! Thank you. Terror can be around, but not in these streets. No matter how much it takes –estimates between 250-333 million dollars worth of business lost that day – a life is priceless. Nothing would stop you to free the citizens from fear.

Sunday. The sixth day after the bombing on the Marathon the sun shines. The spring is here and I am not saying this as a metaphor; for the first time after an eternal winter I can see flowers in the trees.

I don’t know what will happen with my life. I’ve never been a long-term planner. I’m just about to finish grad school and I don t know yet if I will go back to Mexico or where my next stop will be. Reality has taught me its “creative” side and I know that there are a lot of things out of my control.

To the family and friends of the victims that perished during these 6 days, I can only wish strength and send you light.

If this can help in something, let me tell you that even when I don’t know where I’m going to be after Boston, this experience will join me. I understand that there is also a thunderous silence that precedes peace. There are some battles that must be lost to win a war that we can barely understand. There are awful images that for a moment might darken our vision, but can bring clarity. There are shared tragedies that can surpass historical, ideological, or ethnic differences. That after all we’re all survivors.

I bought coffee this morning. I walked peacefully and the kids were playing baseball.
There is no smell of powder. You know? Peace has a subtle sweet scent. I’m going to take that scent with me today, hopping to experience it tomorrow.

Can you see what I see?

“My Loss Story is a Love Story and I have Learned that Both are Holy”

Estefania, Boston

I’ve always believed in the power of storytelling. No matter how extraordinary, at their most powerful, stories reflect the universal. They bind us together this way.

I typically prefer to sit with them quietly, with a book or with my thoughts. But Tuesday night I went about it a different way.

Katherine Conway and Roxanne Krystalli – unsurprisingly two of the most extraordinary and simultaneously universally appealing women at Fletcher – run what they call the Storytelling Forum, a monthly, intimate gathering for students to share personal stories about a given topic. Tuesday’s theme was “Grief and Loss – Stories of Healing through Life’s Difficult Moments.”

Those few words are enough to make most tune out, myself included. And I was hesitant. I imagined a room full of sullen faces – or worse, saps. The only thing on heavy rotation, a Kleenex box.

Grievers Anonymous? Sign me up.

I have a story, or fragments of one, or many. If called upon, I could say a few things, maybe even cry. But this is not why I signed up. Healing is not quite what I am looking for. My Loss story is a Love story and I have learned that both are holy.

I signed up because I was curious. Who exactly are all the other grievers with their stories or their fragments of stories? Could I guess their identity by the way they carry themselves in daylight? Were we alike somehow? Did they also nurture an attachment to lone walks – the kind that stem from impulse, from a primal urge to roam?

If I tell them that my mother died when I was twenty-four, after a long and morbid battle with cancer, would I find pity or solace in their eyes? I hoped for solace. In solace lies the power of storytelling, and solace is what I found.

I shared my story. Unplanned, I said or wanted to say:

The summer my mother died I took leave from work and moved home to see her through. It was early June and the city was stiff, the dry Southern California sun hanging low like a heat lamp on my skin.

“It’s my sabbatical,” I told her.

“Maybe you will finally learn to cook,” she said; an apology, the best way she knew how.

By then we knew it was inevitable. The options had been spent. She had been diagnosed with stomach cancer two years earlier and, once that final summer burst, it took just two months for the cancer to eat her to the bone.

I did not learn how to cook; my father cooked. Up at four in the morning, he wore an apron all day. My stepfather kept his business open and sat by my mother’s bedside every night after it closed. My mother, two fathers, grandmother, brother, his wife, and I lived in the same home for months. We sat around that bed and read – out loud – stories about people and places that we might have known and loved. I felt joy.

There were terrible moments, too. Awful, seemingly unbearable and prolonged moments of pain. Of helplessness. I held my mother often and promised to keep her safe, to make things painless. We knew that I could not keep her safe, but I would try. And what a privilege it was to try.

She held on. My mother was brave. She knew that I was the child. She needed to know that I would be safe. She held on so long that the doctor, surprised, subtly advised that I speak to her, that I let her go. She mentioned that it might seem impossible for someone in her physical state to hear those around her, but some part of her would understand. Sometimes, she said, patients with younger children hold on just a little longer. So I lay next to my mother in bed. I told her a story. The narrative of a woman who would be safe. And happy. I let her go. We fell asleep and she died in my arms.

—

I often think of my mother as a little girl. I see her standing against a dark, brick building wearing a white and blue checkered dress. Her thick, black hair pinned back. She smiles curiously, her eyes soft yet fixed on mine. The late afternoon sun pours down on her tiny frame.

Her white socks droop unevenly. The elastic has worn off. She’s unaware of it now, but the fact upsets her in a way that she will not be able to express until years later, decades perhaps.

As a teenager, her concern over my appearance infuriated me. She did not complain about the holes in my jeans, but she always made sure I had nice socks. It seems inconsequential to think about it now.

But the little girl watches me with a steady gaze. I am now the keeper of her stories.

—

Love you, Fletcher

Dear Fletcher friends,

Rarely do I write to a specific community through this space, yet the past forty-eight hours have encouraged me to share. I know some of you are struggling with what happened on Monday. I know because we’ve talked or emailed about it. I want to send a soft reminder to be gentle with yourself and your community, a community that we saw in caring action on Monday.

Grief [shock, loss, confusion, etc.] is challenging. It surprises you, it moves you, and most importantly, it isn’t some linear process that you snap out of [even if it is sunny out]. It doesn’t take a break for class, sleep, paper writing, or group meetings. A Colbert notes, “And grief comes to you. You know what I mean? I’ve always liked that phrase He was visited by grief, because that’s really what it is. Grief is its own thing.” It might be as simple as “I don’t feel as great this week.”

It is okay if you feel off this week. It is okay that you can’t concentrate or don’t want to sit in the library, even though you have so much to do. It is okay if you feel grief, or emotions you can’t identify, even though you don’t know anyone who was physically hurt or weren’t even at the event. It is also okay if you don’t feel anything. It is okay if this tragedy reminds you of other losses in your life. It is okay to miss people or moments that have nothing [on the surface] to do with what happened on Monday.

It is okay to feel for a community you live in, whether you consider it home or not. It is okay to feel connected to the tragedy. It is okay to be affected by violence, even if you study it every day at school, and sometimes feel desensitized. It is okay to wonder why or how this happened? It is okay that you are happy it is spring, even if you want to stay curled up under the covers today.

We are human because we feel these things and because we strive for a world where people are secure. We worried about our friends and all the other people that we don’t know personally – just like we are worried about so many unsafe places all over the world, each day. Isn’t that what human security is, after all? We might not be here, at this school, if we didn’t care. Lean into the fact that you care and the fact that this affects you – see what it feels like, learn from it, and let it propel you.

Be gentle. Breathe into the emotions. Care for yourself and those around you. And, most importantly, try not to judge your reaction. After all, you are human.

With love and pride to be part of this community,

Katherine

Love you, Boston.

One of my best memories is crossing the finish line in the 2005 Boston Marathon. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and my parents had flown out to Boston from Colorado for the event. Although initially concerned about my well-being at the thought of running 26.2 miles, their smiles showed me how proud and excited they were to be there. I saw how much they enjoyed taking the Tufts family shuttle to different points on the course, catching us in the beginning and in the final stretch to the end. I can’t explain the emotion of turning the corner on mile 26, while in the heart of downtown, and finding your parents screaming your name among the crowd. I didn’t know at that time that a month later I would lose my father, and the joyful memories of that day would become seared in my brain as one of my last with him.

 

Yet, the day has persisted as “the best day of my life,” as I have encouraged friends to run the marathon, which proves to be a feat of mental and physical strength for anyone – even my most athletically inclined friends. The months of training for the marathon opened up the opportunity to explore Boston on long runs in the freezing February temperatures and understand friends in new ways as we struggled to finish runs. On a particularly difficult training run, a friend’s eye froze shut on a bridge crossing into Boston from Harvard. Yet, my only memory is our desire to finish the run, even if he could only see out of one eye. I have no doubt this is how runners felt yesterday.

 

Yesterday, throws this joyful day of celebration in this beloved city into a whole new category. For many running is in itself a community activity, especially within the Tufts community. Main people train with friends, run the marathon with friends, or cheer friends on. The Boston Marathon in particular is a community activity. The entire city buzzes with excitement on Marathon Monday, as everyone knows someone who is running and takes the day to celebrate the achievement. The reaction and response to Monday’s tragedy are also community oriented.

 

This is one of those times, to hold your friends and family close, pray, sit quietly and send thoughts to those directly affected by the blasts. There is no right way to respond to a tragedy, so close to home. Yet, be gentle with yourself and those around you. Remind yourself that shock may dislodge other feelings of grief and healing, bringing them to the surface. It is okay to miss people and it is okay to want to hold people closer this week. Do what you need to do.

 

This morning I put on my Red Sox shirt and running shoes, retraced my favorite marathon training run, enjoying the spring weather and this beautiful city that is home, at least for now. 

I learned the phrase “Community mapping” at age sixteen while volunteering in a small community in rural Paraguay. At the time, the notion of mapping the resources in a community seemed clear. Quickly drawn on a piece of paper – the community school, church, homes, the dirt roads connecting the dots, and the fields that spread in the spaces between houses. The stick-figure buildings my host family drew to mark the previously listed sites represented the physical locations of where community manifests. They leapt off the page as a visible sign of the strength and resources held within this community. At sixteen, I transferred this model to my life in Colorado – my school, my home, my family’s cabin, and the places where I spent time with my friends. My map made sense, I didn’t question my places of support and where my community came together.

The intervening twelve years of moving and creating new communities – including online – threw a wrench in my map. It no longer fits on one page or within a single community. I access much of the pieces of different communities in online spaces, including gchats from friends who still inhabit past homes on other continents, Facebook messages from childhood friends, and following twitter feeds of friends-I-haven’t-actually-met, who share a common journey.

Grief and loss often throw the individual into an unknown emotional space, where the “community map” becomes increasingly important. It creates a sense of one’s resources and places of support; showing the individual the strength of their community(ies). For many, the communities of support blend between in-person, phone, and online communication.

Admittedly, the online space trends towards the more positive aspects of life, as Jenna Wortham notes in her article, Talking about Death Online, “This is more than trying to decide how carefully polished you want your online image to be. . . . It’s about the way social software is slyly engineered to get us to participate– we are encouraged to brag about our lives, and present ourselves as living our best lives each day and year.” Between updates about babies, engagements, jobs, and school – loss becomes just another post that slides by not really resonating.

Engaging with more difficult, heart-wrenching topics, such as grief and loss via social media opens the individual up to vulnerability. For many, loss creates moments of intense need to reach out to one’s community. The online platform is not necessarily designed for in depth sharing or support, as posts and tweets have character limits. The feeds stream by, not allowing the adequate time or ability to respond to a friend’s post. As Jena Wortham writes, “However, when it comes to talking about death and grief in a non-abstract way — that is, when dealing with the loss of a family member, a partner or close friend — it gets much, much trickier. It doesn’t have an appropriate reaction face, a photo that you can reblog, a hashtag.” I often wonder as I see friends hesitantly posting memories of their lost parent how our ability to comfort each other spills into this medium? How much of our ability to empathize in person actively translates with each “like” we give to their posts?

As a firm believer in allowing each individual to chart their own path for grieving and healing, online spaces may become mechanisms for both. In my own process, I try to push the boundaries of what feels comfortable to share on Facebook, twitter, etc. I don’t shy away from posting pictures of my father, marking what would-have-been his sixtieth birthday, the sixth year since his death, or my travels to places he would have loved. However, the accompanying text is often positive, such as “missing your adventures” rather than engaging with the harder, empty feelings of loss. While I can’t express my “full self” in this online space, I trend towards sharing what I can with this online world. As my community is spread throughout many places, online becomes the place that I receive (and provide) support from so many communities at once. Online, I am reminded of the people beyond the Facebook photos who love and care about me – through likes, comments, and quick emails after they see the post.

Beyond our individual experiences with grief and healing – Facebook has become a community in itself, creating a way to memorialize those who have died. Two of my “current” Facebook friends are people who have passed away. Their profiles remain places where friends and family leave notes – sharing life updates, memories, or simply typing “I miss you.” In a world where visiting gravesites may not be practical, the online memorial space may bring us closer together. In her blog post, The Unexpected Refuge of Facebook, Cheri Lucas discusses her experience with a friend’s death;

“A few hours after receiving the news, I wrote something and shared it as a Facebook note. I posted scanned photos from college—precious moments of youth, debauchery, and experiences I had never shared publicly—from nearly 15 years ago: onto his profile, our friends’ profiles, and my timeline. I sat in front of my computer, clicking on photos people tagged of him: images that conjured memories, that stunned and confused me, that made me feel grateful for knowing him, that devastated me because I realized I didn’t know the man he had become.

Alone, I sobbed. Yet I sobbed with Facebook open—his life revealed and exposed in bits on my screen, his friends spilling tears on his profile. I sobbed at home, by myself, but also with everyone else.
I had never given in to the community of Facebook until that moment. For the first time, its communal space had comforted me.”

The possibilities of online spaces to bring us together are endless, we can share memories of those who have died, sharing our own healing processes, and of course, share our joys. Yet, as Wortham also notes, we don’t yet know the outcomes of creating online communities that don’t support the whole breadth of human emotions. However, we should trend towards sharing our authentic selves, our whole journeys – and in return, we should support others who do just that – comment on posts people share about those they have lost, about their difficult moments – engaging with the full spectrum of emotions, will only make the blissful moments stronger.

Much of my community is online, thus my grieving and healing cannot be completely separate. However, as with all pieces of grieving, this is personal – and we will each have to carve out how we interact with our online spaces. Yet, striving to make these spaces open to deeper human interaction, will only bring us closer to each other, and as a community – closer to healing.

New Column: Of Memories and Loss

What are the pieces that make your mosaic? Your memories? Your loss? 

http://equals.youplusme.com/the-pieces-of-the-mosaic/

New Beginnings: Writing about loss through The Equals Project

Each week, The Equals Project runs a column entitled, “What are you reading offline?”.  This past week, I reflected on books that guide us in the grieving and healing processes.

I always feel a sense of vulnerability in sharing the experience of loss and grief; however, bringing it into the light will help us learn to heal as individuals and a larger community.  And, I truly, do believe that sharing and processing is a part of my own healing process.

Check out the post/book recommendations:  http://equals.youplusme.com/what-are-you-reading-offline-that-is-24/

 

 

 

 

“…grief would have no hold over us if it could not surprise us ….”

Roxanne, is a new and wonderful addition to my in-person and blog life.  I am lucky to be able to sip tea, discuss grief (and so much more) with a kindred spirit I feel like I have always known.

Her latest post, Surprise Grief, on her blog, Stories of Love and Conflict, shows us the “lens” of grief that sometimes colors our world.

“Or maybe it was my least favorite outfit of loss: surprise grief — the kind that visits unannounced and will stubbornly linger if you try, with all the deliberation in your heart, to chase it away.”

“Children say the most wonderful things”

Thinking and talking about death need not be morbid; they may be quite the opposite. Ignorance and fear of death overshadow life, while knowing and accepting death erases this shadow.  ~Lily Pincus

In this beautiful story, Angela Cohan shares her experience with her seven year old daughter and approaching the subject of death.  Her daughter’s reflections and ability to understand death are simply beautiful.

The understanding and processing of children can be very moving.  A few years ago I hosted a dinner, which was attended by a friend who had recently lost her mother and a friend and her 3 year old daughter.  At one point with no prompting, my friend’s daughter turned to the friend who had recently lost her mother and simply said, “your mom isn’t coming to dinner.” It was to the point and brought every one in the room to the same moment of mourning and healing.

 

 

 

The solace of community: Dia de los Muertos

My life, inseparably intertwined with my grieving process, took me on a journey of experiential healing through in Mexico. A few months after my move to Mexico City in 2009, I experienced Dia de los Muertos (In English: The Day of the Dead or All Saints Day). Hypnotized by the colors, smells, and excitement of the celebration, I watched families cry, dance, sing, and indulge in food and drink. I sat on the side lines and reflected on the beautiful outward expressions of grief, remembrance, and love taking place.

 

Although honoring the dead for Dia de los Muertos occurs in many parts of the world, the tradition was not a part of my upbringing or healing process until my life collided with it. However, the ability of family members to come together to dance, eat, play music, and share stories of the deceased with younger family members resonated deeply.  As we weave our stories, we pick up moments and experiences that resonate deeply and carry them with us. Dia de los Muertos is a reminder of the profound joys in healing and celebrating as a community. In 2009, I tentatively created my first altar, hesitant to display my father’s photo, buy the traditional orange flowers in the outdoor Mercado Medellin in Mexico City, and nervously adapt the celebration to my life.

 

 

As a revisit emails from the first few days of November 2009, I can still feel my excitement at finding a celebration that resonated so deeply and my near desperate attempts to relay this to my friends and family. Exclamation marks punctuate every sentence. My first experience witnessing the celebration confirmed my desire to grieve and remember out loud. Here, in San Miguel de Allende, four hours north of Mexico City, the celebration was a natural part of the process of life and death.

 

I attempted to send photos of my timidly constructed altar, grave yards brimming with flowers and candy shaped to look like skulls, traditional dancers, children laughing, family members hugging through tearful smiles, and everything else I could capture through my camera lens. As if saying, “I moved, I am healing, look – other people are healing and remembering. This is me healing out loud.” I realize most of my healing has been done verbally, while sharing moments and experiences on this most basic human level across Mexico, Honduras, Peru, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda…a list that will hopefully grow as my quest to understand how healing and life are braided together continues.

 

This year, as I have for the past three years, I created my altar with joy, remembering my father and grandmother and smiling as I remember my father’s cat who left us to join him earlier this year. While my roommate and I strung up colored paper, placed candles, and organized the Katrinas and photographs, I shared stories about my dad’s love of Mexican food. I’m not sure I actually believe that spirits of the dead return to indulge in the food left by their loved ones; however, the holiday brings my father to the front of mind and helps me take another step forward.

Photos of my first Dia de los Muertos experiences in San Miguel de Allende and Mexico City, Mexico.