In the last two weeks, I’ve heard from so many people. Some of these people are our relatives. Some of them are friends from childhood, or college or grad school or work. Some are former or current students. Some are parents of my kids’ classmates. There’s the folks we went to day care with, by which I mean we were parents of toddlers together, and the folks who only know me from the internet. Some of these people were clients of Lori’s. Everyone has a kind word. There have been gofundmes and we’ve raised a scholarship. I never knew just how many friends we had.
But I should have.
Lori and I always tried to practice a politics of love. Sometimes, it’s simple. Back when I still took the train to and from work, before the kids started at SCH, I was coming home in a bad rainstorm. Lori came and picked me up at the station near our house. While I was waiting for her, I had struck up a conversation with a young man who was waiting for the storm to break before he walked the few blocks home. When Lori pulled up, perhaps with my daughter in a car seat, I told the young man to get in and we drove him home. He was very grateful. Lori told me later that giving the young man a ride was something she loved about me, that it would never occur to her to do that. We talked about why I considered it okay, and how maybe if she were alone, it wouldn’t be a good idea. My former students write and tell me about how I was there for them and now they want to be there for me. People I haven’t talked to you in years are sending me notes on facebook telling me about a time I helped them out and wanting to do the same for me.
While I’ve always been good with strangers, Lori was the kind of person who once she knew somebody even a little, loved them almost unconditionally. She was a room parent at day care every year for about a decade. Her clients loved her and wrote tear-filled tributes on facebook about how Lori was the first one to know about their happy things: pregnancies or promotions; and their sad things, a miscarriage or a family death. I got a note from one who told me of how Lori talked her out of buying a house until she had more money so that she wouldn’t lose it if she had a setback. She cared about her clients as people. She was always willing to kill a deal if she sensed her clients would be harmed by it.
The politics of love can be hard. It means telling people no; it means helping them through their pain. It can mean asking a kid a really tough question when there facing the music for an action that hurt other people. But it also means checking in with that kid for the rest of his school career so that he knows who to talk to when he’s on the verge of making another bad decision. It means opening your heart to the risk of rejection and hurt, and when that rejection or hurt comes, you open it up again the next time. It means caring about people you know well, and caring about people you don’t know well, and sometimes, caring about people you never met at all.
As I was getting coffee the other day in the school cafeteria, a parent I didn’t know came up to me and hugged me. For so many of my peers, this moment has shaken us. Lori’s stupid, senseless, statistically improbable death made them face their own mortality and ask what would happen to their loved ones if the unthinkable came about.
What I know is, I’ve been helped by so many already. And so many people are waiting their turn. And I believe this isn’t because people pity me, it’s because I’ve worked hard since I became an adult to practice the politics of love everyday. It’s one of the reasons I’ve had so much support already. And it’s one of the reasons I can face the hard tasks ahead with more fortitude than fear.
Hug your loved ones, mend your fences, do some good. I love you all.