I've been working in the office of The Newlin Center for Quaker Thought and Practice since August. I've been learning a lot about Quakers, and how they think and practice...which is to say that there is a lot I still don't know or understand about Quakers. Also, the joke about eating oat meal and wearing the big black hat is only funny a handful of times. Then it gets old. Or maybe it just wasn't funny to begin with.
One of the programs run out of The Newlin Center is Quaker Fellows. It is a program offered to Quaker students that promotes their spiritual development as well as to encourage and train them to be the next generation of Quaker leaders. The students have to write written reflections, meet one on one a few times with my boss (the Director), meet as a group weekly, go on retreats, participate in activities across campus. They become very close to one another.
And this afternoon, we said goodbye to one of them.
A few weeks ago, our campus experienced one of those tragedies that you see on the news, but happens many towns or many states away. Far enough that you understand it's signifigance, you feel bad for the community, but it has no real impact on your life what so ever. Three of our students, in a moment of questionable judgement, were too close to the rail road tracks when an oncoming train was heading toward the Depot District of Richmond. They were struck. One young woman was killed instantly. One young man was severely injured, but released from the hospital about a week and a half later. And then there was our Lenore. She was critically injured, but survived several surgeries. The reports from the hospital were cautiously optimistic. Enough time had gone by, and many of us had taken the "cautiously optimistic" mantra to heart, and had begun to start anticipating her recovery time, and no longer thinking of the alternative. Yet Monday morning, the news of her passing was like a band-aid being ripped off the grief that had started to heal on campus. She had not made it. There would be no recovery.
I actually had never met Lenore. I am new to this office, and my schedule did not overlap with when most of the students in the program would be in our building. Also, she had a field trip to go on the weekend that the Fellows had a retreat, so I didn't get to visit with her at all on the drive to drop them off or to pick them up. Really, the only communication I had with her was through email I sent to the group, and a frantic call from one of the students who had borrowed and then lost track of Lenore's jacket on the retreat. That was it. So my grief is different than the groups. It is different than the students.
My grief manifests itself in the need to support the staff of my office who have organized the gatherings and the memorial services. It is to hold in prayer the counselors, the staff of residence life, and my husband and his Department of Public Safety as they walk the students through this time of mourning, and the new normal that comes after the things we can't imagine when we are young.
It means I make sure there is enough Kleenex in the meeting house for the memorial service, and that people are eating. It is doing what I can when I fell helpless to do anything else.
I sat there today, my first time in the silence of a Quaker meeting house, watching the young people in their grief. They think they are adults. They can talk at length of philosophy and the economy and how to bring peace to the middle east. Yet the unthinkable happened to two of their own, and they looked so sad and lost and I just wanted to grab them and hug them and say "Shhh...there...there." And I thought of Meagan, and Kelsey and the other college students that we left behind in Illinois, and thanked God for their health and safety and the joy they have brought to my life.
While I never met her, in the last few weeks, I have learned much about Lenore. She was funny, and liked to play practical jokes, and there apparently some long standing joke about writing names in other people's underwear. I still haven't heard the full story, so I will leave it to the students to remember on their own. I understand inside jokes...if everyone is in on them...they are not so funny.
The service this afternoon ended with a video. It's on youtube, so I am assuming it is OK to share. Please take a few minutes and watch it:
This video made me laugh for several reasons.
First, because I wish I had seen this before the train. If I had, I would have given her a hard time, but would have loved her, because it was clever and funny.
Second, because I thought of it as a cautionary tale...what youtube videos will they be playing at MY funeral? I had better be careful. And I guarantee it WON'T be of my belly button talking.
Third, because who doesn't love dessert...for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, for dessert???
If you pray, I ask that you keep the families and friends of these young women in your thoughts and prayers. I ask that you pray for the students and faculty and staff of our school. These deaths were not the only ones that we have mourned this fall...it has been a hard year.
But most importantly...I ask that you go eat some Lucky, Lucky Charms and remember a young woman that you probably have never met...and celebrate her legacy of humor and laughter and joy.
