May 22, 2012
I spoke at Jan’s funeral this week. Hers was the smiling face that often met you if you came to MPA for an evening event or were leaving at the end of a long day. Her daughter Laurie came to work for the founding head of MPA over 20 years ago and still keeps things on track…keeps me on track. And Jan’s great-granddaughter Emily skips and dances down the hall with all the others in her PreK class.
For many, Memorial Day is hotdogs and a three day weekend. For many more, it is the remembrance of loss, not so sharp as that dark day when it first came, duller perhaps with the passage of time, but there all the same. How would my life be different today if only…?
We shield our young from death in our culture, and we avert our eyes, more and more, from the death of young men and women on the field of battle. Memorial Day. The presence of death weaves its way through our community. The boy in second grade whose grandfather lies in the open casket, his image seared into the boy’s memory. It is the shadow that makes the light of life sharp and clear and real.
Our days in school are filled with light and joy and learning and growth. The green of new grass, new ideas, the challenge taken, the inch grown in height since last Thursday. Furtive glances between young ones trying on love. And those among us walking for a time under the shadow of a recent loss. There is comfort and safety in a community where the light and the shadow can exist openly, side by side. We share in your joy and your pain.
Memorial weekend marks the beginning of the end of the school year. It is a time to look forward and to say goodbye. Past the classrooms, at the end of a long hallway, someone switches off the light and a door is heard closing. Voices die away into the night of celebrations, tinged with excitement for what the future will bring and with the sadness of goodbyes.
Memorial Day. We remember Jan and so many others who brought light into our lives.
