Nepal, May 2015
Everything is heavy and thick and dense but nothing is
solid. There is nothing to grab hold of.
It’s too vivid to be a bad dream; too ethereal to truly be happening.
Body and brain are too small to grasp this thing that is so big. This
incomprehensible thing - this energy - that is too massive for even the earth
to contain. You grow up being taught, through idioms and adages, the importance
of the earth as a foundation for everything. Stay grounded; keep your feet on
the ground. But what if that terra firma is moving under you? How do you
prevent your own foundation from shaking along with the earth? It’s not just
the structural integrity of the buildings that is weakened with every
aftershock, so too are our bodies worn down with each consecutive shake.
And just when the air is beginning to thin, when backs begin
to straighten and people seem to be growing back to their former statures, it
happens again.
We all had a story. Now we all have many stories. Mine, like
everyone’s, are layered with fear and uncertainty. There is a disconcerting
theme of chance. Luck runs through them all. And loss. There is the tangible
loss, of which there is more than a heart can hold. And then there is the loss
that is harder to pinpoint, more elusive. It runs like a current through the
body, through communities. But it creates communities too. It brings people
together. A shared experience so powerful it becomes a shared existence for a
brief moment in time.
I too have a story to tell. I’ve seen the buildings crumble
in front of my eyes. I’ve heard the earth growl. The panicked tales of
devastation are real. But there is another story too. About the generosity of
spirit. About kindness. About camaraderie. The countless tales of people
without homes sharing food, sharing space, sharing themselves.
Just days following the April 25th earthquake my
amazing coworkers/friends went in search of reunified children that were
unaccounted for. The first family they
found had lost their home. They offered the family the bag of food and medicine
and supplies assembled for them that morning; they were countered with an
invitation for dinner.
People are taking care of each other. They are watching out
for each other. Our neighbors warn us - with a desperation that could only come
from genuine concern – about the impending aftershocks that the rumor mill has
churned. We stand by them, in the garden, until the rumor’s prediction has
waned. We won’t let them be afraid alone.
Because they wouldn’t allow us to be.
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