Oh Kathryn, Our Kathryn

One week ago this afternoon, the world became a little more shadowed as a brilliant soul passed through the veil.

Kathryn Ann Fernquist Hinds.

She was a shiny person.  I never had a moment with her that wasn't brilliant.  Her smile, laugh, wit, intelligence, and vision made life a finer thing.

I didn't get to know her for very long, and we met because her husband Arthur is a musician (a damned fine one) and we used to play some of the same gigs.  Honestly, I can't remember when I met either of them.  They've just...always been there.  Arthur and Kathryn.  Kathryn and Arthur.  

For the last few years we've been neighbors at PSG, one of the events I regularly attend.  I liked listening to their banter and they tolerated my occasional interjections.  They shared space, let me feed them, Kathryn let me fuss over her and we shared water.  Seeing her in the audience when we played together for Bardapalooza was a treat.  She truly shared in the music in a way that was rare and beautiful.

Some relationships defy the odds, defy  definition or explanation.  Some relationships are just so...perfectly imperfect?  Imperfectly perfect?  So damned marvelous that when we see them, we can't help saying "There.  That's what is could be, what it should be, what I want it to be..." 

Those relationships are rare.  Arthur and Kathryn had what I aspire to.  Oh the laughter, the love...how it enveloped them, and everyone nearby.  They shared unstintingly.

I always told her that I adore her, that she is one of my favorite people.  She was.  Is.  Will likely always be.

Her heart, her magnificent, wise, kind, compassionate, fragile, dysfunctional heart, it couldn't survive the surgery she needed to keep it ticking.

One less drumming, thrumming beat echoing in the ether.  One less laugh reverberating in the circle.

I find myself wondering why, in a world full of horrid people, full of cruel, selfish, ugly-souled assholes, why did we have to lose one of the best people I have ever known?

It isn't right.  

Oh, Arthur.

If I who didn't know her nearly enough can hurt so...oh...I can't even touch imagining how those who knew her long and well must feel.

Me, I feel robbed of something precious.  

She belonged to a community vast and varied, and the hole she leaves is immeasurable.
I posted this on Facebook when I found out:

Hail Kathryn.

Your light will long linger.
I will carry you with me always, and when I shine I will shine with you, sending your light outward. You are one of the best people I’ve known in my lifetime, and I’m better for the knowing.
May your journey to the other side be peaceful and easy. May you leave behind all memory of pain, sorrow, and suffering. May you carry with you all memories of love and laughter. May you be met with joy and fellowship by those who went before you, and when you return to the circle, may we who loved you know you once more.
I raise a glass and toast you, feisty, kind, shiny, wise, compassionate, creative, encouraging, goddess of a woman.
Hail Kathryn. Hail the traveler.

Remembering*

Some were victims

Some were heroes

They are gone

But not forgotten.


No...
Not forgotten.

"Only the dead have seen an end to war." - Plato

Edit - I wrote the following as a response to someone else's memorial post, and I decided I wanted to place it here, too:

The place where they once stood reminds me of the child who, struck in the face by the schoolyard bully, has lost his two front teeth. It's an obscene and violent emptiness that demands filling, demands something to remedy that wrongness, that absence of once-present substance.

Whenever I see the skyline, I feel that empty place keenly, and I don't even live there.

I keep hoping that from the ashes, the phoenix will rise; all these years later, it isn't triumph I see, but division, sorrow, anger, and confusion swirling in a quagmire of indecision, derision, and the constant tug-of-war of "remember" versus "forget".

Shade and Sweetwater,
K (who wept when they fell, and prayed as hard as ever she did that the people had gotten out - because anything else was too horrible to contemplate)

* I wrote this post last year...and it still holds true today. I'd like to add - whatever I may think of military actions, of wars and violence...I am grateful to all of the armed forces who fight for freedom's cause, who do a dirty job under equipped, under supported, under appreciated, and under constant fire from all sides. Come home safe and soon.

*Edit - go here to see thousands of beautiful, poignant, heartbreaking, and uplifting photographs of the WTC event, taken by people who were in the thick of it.

Mass, Turtles, and Ice Cream, in One Post

We survived the mass. It was...erm...Catholic. Really, really Catholic. And I got a little peeved at the priest, truth be told, because he intimated several times that Aunt D wouldn't make it to heaven without prayers of intercession...and I loved her and considered her a wonderful person who more than answered the criteria for a pass through the gate. I actually thought "How dare he!"

Also, for some reason, when he mentioned that whole "I am the resurrection and the life..." part where Christ said people would never die? Yeah, umm...I thought "epic fail!" and nearly giggled. I managed not to, but it was a close one.

It was even harder when I noticed that the Christ on the crucifix was doing the Nixon peace-fingers thing while hanging up there...good grief...

I got a real workout, all that stand and sit and stand and sing and sit and pray and kneel and stand and sing and stand some more...whew.

We went to Uncle T's house after, met a number of folks, talked about Aunt D and how she could piss off my grandmother like a champ, and hold her own with my grandfather, and her time as a Brannif (sp?) stewardess, and her life and how well she lived it. It was nice.

After a while, I felt like it was time to go...probably because Bird wanted to swim in the pool and I didn't want him in there with no adults, sooo...we hugged and good-byed and promised to keep in touch...and maybe we will. I know I'll e-mail Uncle T, anyway.

We changed into casual things and headed to a turtle rehab center nearby with Aunt A (Mum's sister) and Cousin K (Aunt A's daughter). It was cool - they had a sort of museum room with shells, fossils, and turtle lore, and then outside were tanks with recovering turtles. Some of them were up for adoptions. We adopted one:

His name's Carlisle - isn't he cute? He's freakin' huge - the picture doesn't do him justice...I have a ton of photos of different turtles, but that's a post for another time.

We drove back towards the hotel, but decided to stop for ice cream. When I was a kid and we lived down here, we'd spend the whole day at the beach, out in the sun, in the water...and on the way home we'd get ice cream, and try to eat it before it melted all over us. The car windows were open because we didn't have A/C, and we'd get splattered by the droplets of melt-off as we rode and licked like mad.

This time, we ate inside the shop. It was Bird's first real cone, so of course I took pictures! This one was my favorite:

But I have many more, and...again...it's a post for another time.

Interspersed with all this hilarity are thoughts of my Uncle and cousins, of their loss and sorrow. I wish I could tell them what I know - that she made it through the gate and is raising hell up there, joking with Papa (my grandfather) and grinning like a fiend (she had a marvelous smile). I know she misses my Uncle - you could tell how much they loved each other when you looked at the pictures. Any time she was near him in a photo, she was grinning like a Cheshire Cat. I am worried about how he will miss her...and I hope that he'll look to the people still here, still loving him, when he feels low...

Meanwhile, life goes on, we honor the dead by living, and I intend to figure out what I need to do to smile like Aunt D did, love life like she did, and get on with it.

We Live, We Laugh, We Dance, We Are Purple

I am alive. I breathe, I weep, I sing, I hold my son close and rejoice in his aliveness.

I dance. I dance in the rain, in the sun, beneath the moon; I spin, circling, circling, circling, dizzy, joyful, and throw wide my arms to embrace it...what it?...all of it, everything. I am a mote of dust, a mote of light, tossed into the wind, floating on a sunbeam. I open my mouth, and from me pours the music of the Universe, the music of Creation, the one note, the many notes, the Song.

We honor the dead by living. Certainly, there is sorrow to be borne. Certainly there are hard moments, hard days to endure...but we live, you and me, we are ineffably thrumming with our own vitality.

Today, I am wearing purple to honor a bright little light that winked out last week. Does it matter that I never met her, or her parents, or any of the scores of other people doing the same thing? Nope, not a whit.

Today, together, we live, we laugh, we dance, and we wear purple while her family says farewell.

Blessed be, little girl, sweet child, small wonder...I hope your journey around the spiral is swift, and the ones who knew and loved you will know and love you again when you return.
~~~~~

Reposted from last week



I don't know the Spohrs, not even a little...but I have read their blog from time to time, and I read many people who read them, and they were dealt a stunning blow yesterday...and this is all I can think of to show support, compassion, and love to a family that walked off the edge of a cliff without warning. If you have some time and a few bucks to spare, let them know you're out here in the Blue Nowhere, part of their community, part of their web.

Sweet dreams, baby girl.

Update - the Spohrs, like many people in this world today, did not expect to be seeing their daughter through the veil. They could use some help with funeral costs. If you know me you probably don't know them...but don't let that stop you. Even a dollar is a blessing to parents who weren't expecting to lay out a bunch of cash for something that is definitely NOT a first bicycle, summer camp, driving lessons, a prom dress, a wedding gown...so please go to: http://babyonbored.blogspot.com/2009/04/if-youre-asking-yourself-what-can-i-do.html and look on the lower right part of the page for the Paypal link that says "For Maddie" with her darling picture on it, and donate what you can.

The Silent Blue

September twelfth, seven years ago...

The sky over my house was empty of anything built by man. It was blue, clear, and silent - no jet roar, prop buzz, or rotor thud. No sulphur yellow-grey creeping up from the horizon, smirching the dome of my world. Only nature and her noises, and the distant sound of the almost-empty highway (people were still stunned, sitting still and waiting to breathe again).

It was a hopeful day - maybe they would find someone alive, maybe they would find a pocket, a miracle, a place where angels, fairies, saints, goddesses, superheroes or ancestors had held up twisted metal and rent concrete, had turned them aside, had extinguished fire and cleared poison from the air to make a little haven in which hundreds huddled, simply waiting to be discovered by clever eyes and ears. Maybe.

As the day stretched to the breaking point, no havens, great or small, appeared. No portals to other worlds, no dimensional bubbles, opened and released victims and heroes to the ones waiting on this side with a hopeless sort of hope for another living soul, another survivor, another reason to send up a ragged cheer and to reach into the murky well of possibility again for more, more, more.

I felt powerless and lost, hurt and angry, and bewildered and driven to seek answers.

I went out into the sunlight, looked up and felt peaceful. Empty of mankind, the sky was a blessing above, a place to lose myself; I stared up and let my eyes go wide and watery, head tilted back so all I saw was the endless open; never blinking, mind unfocused, released, all of my being an exhalation - I felt my feet lift from the ground, gravity unleashing me for all of an eternal moment to float and dissipate into the upward pull, uninterrupted by reminders of anything wrong with this quiet, the empty, clean morning sky, the silent blue.

For a moment, reality relinquished me to the crossroads of all-that-was and all-that-could-be, and I was full to bursting with all-things-being-now-and-never-and-always.

Soon enough I found my way back downward to feet firmly planted, a crick in my neck and a salty stiffness on my cheeks. The peace, though...the peace lasted. My sky wasn't clouded with still-smoking, dust-choking clouds of the gods only know what...I was far, far away from that with an empty mind, an aching heart, and the certain knowledge that things would start up again...if not exactly as before then much like...and that there would be a terrible price paid for the previous day's events.

We have yet to finish the tally.

Remembering

Some were victims

Some were heroes

They are gone

But not forgotten.


No...
Not forgotten.

"Only the dead have seen an end to war." - Plato

Edit - I wrote the following as a response to someone else's memorial post, and I decided I wanted to place it here, too:

The place where they once stood reminds me of the child who, struck in the face by the schoolyard bully, has lost his two front teeth. It's an obscene and violent emptiness that demands filling, demands something to remedy that wrongness, that absence of once-present substance.

Whenever I see the skyline, I feel that empty place keenly, and I don't even live there.

I keep hoping that from the ashes, the phoenix will rise; all these years later, it isn't triumph I see, but division, sorrow, anger, and confusion swirling in a quagmire of indecision, derision, and the constant tug-of-war of "remember" versus "forget".

Shade and Sweetwater,
K (who wept when they fell, and prayed as hard as ever she did that the people had gotten out - because anything else was too horrible to contemplate)