When we lose our footing all together, all at once

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 25^th 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.