Sinning Saints

This morning I looked for a condolence card for a friend who's Mom recently passed. All of the cards wrote of losing such a great love. There were endless sympathies and exultations about the deceased. I spent a long time in the aisle looking for something that recognized the complexity of loss. I didn't know my friend's Mom, but I know my friend. One of her most admirable qualities is telling it like it is. Recently, she described the privilege of finding some resolution with her mother. Towards the end of her Mom's life, her Mom knew some peace and ease. Her Mom spent most of her years strenuously working at being a wife and mother without time or inclination to explore her chosen pursuits. My friend was grateful to see her Mom have some joy. She was also plain about how challenging her Mom was as a parent, a woman, and that their relationship was strained.

Where is the condolence card that says, I'm sorry you lost a real person? Someone who hurt you and also loved you? I'm sure for many these nuances are of less comfort. For me, the absence feels like a further erasure of the person I've lost.

In the past week, Maya Angelou and Yuri Kochiyama also moved on. I think many of us were surprised at the relationship we've developed with Maya Angelou's work. I know that I never personally met her, so I obviously have no real connection to her as a person. However, her work taught me art, poetry, and womanhood. "I know why the caged bird sings" ran on loop in my mind when I heard of her transition. That image of the incarcerated singing taught me about human spirit and resiliency. Maya reached me and I'm grateful to her.

As we publicly mourned her passing articles began surfacing about the erasure of so much of Maya's life: her time as a sex worker, the complications of her early life abuse, her silence. To many, it felt like a disservice to only mourn the lauded poet and academic and not these other aspects of Maya Angelou-- these other Maya's.

When I heard of Yuri Kochiyama's passing I pulled up an old photo from a dinner I shared with her and other friends in Oakland, CA years ago. This woman who spent her early years in a Japanese internment camp, who held Malcolm X's head on her lap as he died, who spent a lifetime committed to social justice was so sweet, lively, and humble. I was so grateful to be in her presence. Her stature as the woman behind these various events is looming. Physically, she was small and didn't demand attention. Her presence taught me so much-- that we can act with assurance and impact and still integrate into the larger folds of our community.

I'm interested in these stories we tell about ourselves and our loved ones-- those closest to us and more abstract, like Maya Angelou. How we morph these stories at times of transition and which edits we make. I'm most interested in transparency, honesty, and a collective permission to be whole. Towards that end, I'd love a condolence card that acknowledges the weight of death and the complexity of who we lost.