On Haiti, death and life: Is there sense in the nonsesical?

For 24 hours I’ve refrained from thinking too hard about what’s going on in Haiti. For 24 hours, though I’ve known, I kept the sturdy blockade between my conscious and the unfolding horror in the Carribean in place.

That’s going to change. It’s time to think about it. More precisely, it’s time to feel about it.

Last night about this hour, 6:30 p.m., I worked to wrap up a 30-page report at work. With only a few associated tasks yet to complete I flipped over to The New York Times Web site for a breather and saw a photograph of rubble, a building that had been reduced to jagged fragments. The headline read something like: Thousands Feared Dead In Wake Of Haiti Quake.

I didn’t read the article. I went back to work.

A few more minutes passed, and my phone rang. I picked up. It was a friend who lives back East.

“Did you hear about the earthquake? Jason Lillibridge is in Haiti. He was supposed to be in Port-au-Prince today. He was there on the same trip my dad went on last year with our church. Have you heard from him?”

I had not.

“Do you have Facebook,” the friend asked. “He’d probably post something there.”

I checked Facebook. There was no sign of recent activity. I posted a message alongside a few others who had already thought to probe for signs of life.

“I have to finish a report at work and talk with my boss,” I said. “But I’ll call if I hear anything.”

And I went back to work, added an appendix to the report, printed it and marched into my boss’s office, handing him the report.

“Did you know there was a big earthquake in Haiti today?” I asked.

“I don’t know anything that wasn’t printed in the local paper today,” he said.

“Well there was. A really good friend is there, in Haiti. Haven’t heard from him.”

“I hope he’s OK,” was the response, and then we talked about the report.

I didn’t stay at work much longer. I was supposed to meet friends at a lecture about public lands cattle grazing in the West, and I needed a jog and shower before. But instead of driving home I found myself turning south onto a meandering ribbon of asphalt that worked beyond Boise’s sprawl into the sagebrush desert beyond. It was a warm evening, about 45 degrees, and raindrops spattered the windshield. Far to the west, a crack of clear sky rose from the horizon to meet a charcoal smear of heavy clouds, and the last traces of twilight were still visible, a subtle orange glow that felt peaceful and calm. It was seven o’clock. The longer days of summer aren’t far away.

I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t, really. I was listening more than thinking, and my instinct was to drive, to seek out silence and space. And the more I drove the more Jason Lillibridge crept into my thoughts.

Three months ago, when I was in my home state of Pennsylvania for the first time in four years, I joined an old friend to go for a drink one evening. We walked into a bar, where a familiar pair of twinkling eyes and dimpled cheeks turned from a barstool in our direction.

“Now, what’s this?” Jason Lillibridge asked. “You mean to tell me you’re in town and didn’t call?”

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s kind of a short trip, and I’ve been spending a lot of it with my folks.”

“How would you feel if you were sitting on a barstool in Boise, and I just randomly walked in? Would you be upset I hadn’t called?”

“I would,” I said. “You’d better call if you’re ever in Boise.”

“Well, pull up a seat,” he said. “I was about to go home, but now it looks like it’s going to be a long evening.”

And it was.

It was the summer or early fall of 1995 when Jason, along with a larger group of friends, dropped by my house in Gunnison, Colorado on a round-the-West circuitous vacation that’s common for people from the East. They stayed a few days and moved on, but Jason for some reason decided to hang his hat. After a few days in the San Juan Mountains near Durango he returned to Gunnison and rented the apartment immediately next door to mine. There is no doubt that his reentry into my life that fall was at least part of the reason I dropped out of school by the spring semester. The other reason was because another East Coast friend decided to come out West to ski-bum for the winter before leaving for a semester of study in Japan. They became roommates next door, and the three of us proceeded to throw all caution to the wind. We made enough money to live, barely, and we lived. We really lived.

Sitting on barstools in Pennsylvania, Jason and I talked about all the crazy living we did, about Crested Butte’s famed steeps, about skiing naked, about the time I fell through the drop ceiling at a bar, about slam dancing through the cowboys’ Macarena lines on Friday nights and hiking and smoking and girls and his cat. Jason had a little fur ball named Freak. Freak had six toes on each of her front paws and goofy tufts of fur protruding from her feline ears.

These memories were at first fuzzy for me, and it made me feel a little guilty that my focus has grown and changed and shifted so far from those terrific juvenile antics and from people I know and love. When I returned to Idaho I decided to write about that winter. The intentionally self-deprecating story’s nearly finished; the only thing missing is the crescendo: me falling through a drop ceiling at the bar one frigid Friday night.

These were my aimless earthquake-evening thoughts yesterday. The were about memories that centered around a particular person, a handsome man with a big heart and adventurous spirit, a man I don’t think about from day to day. I didn’t think the thoughts were underscored by death, but there’s no doubt they were. That’s the whole reason I was thinking them.

After standing in the rain for a while and watching the last hint of twilight swallowed by the advancing cloak of night I returned to my truck and drove home, climbed into bed and read books for the rest of the evening. It was a warm, happy evening. Really good books.

This morning I arrived at my desk to discover Facebook comments about the earthquake. Jason wrote: “still in Haiti and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to leave. The roads and airports are pretty banged up. THANK you, all of you, for you concerns. I was very fortunate not to be seriously inured or killed. Many others in my direct vicinity were not as lucky. Many are suffering and dying right this second. I can hear their cries and screams. It’s hell on Earth.”

A little while later he followed that with this: “Go to your nearest loved ones and hold them tight and tell them how much you love them. RIGHT NOW! Call them if you have to. Just don’t take for granted what I have seen violently and unexpectedly stripped away and lost forever. Keep those people in your prayers. See you all soon.”

And then the day proceeded. A pretty typical workday. I learned that one friend got a new cat and is anxious to go home and play with her. Another friend likes Valentine’s Day because it’s easier to get laid than on most days—and women are apparently kinkier than average. Another friend is traveling to visit his sick father. I e-mailed back and forth with a friend about a pending trip to Seattle. I e-mailed back and forth with a friend about an upcoming birthday party. I performed copy edits on my report. And, well, nothing was any different. The cars moved, the computers flicked alive, people wrote reports, some scheduled meetings, people complained, the computers went dark, the cars moved, people went home.

Nothing was different at all.

A hundred years ago we might not have known for weeks that a horrible fate has befallen hundreds of thousands of people in one great gnashing of Mother Nature’s teeth. A hundred year ago I wouldn’t have known anyone who’d traveled to Haiti to help build homes for the homeless and clothe the clothesless. Today, in a flash of technological brilliance, all of this was possible. Friends were there, reports were sent, photographs posted, stories were written, feelings were felt.

There is no explaining carnage on the scale of what befell Haiti this week, New Orleans in 2005, Indonesia in 2004 or Pompeii in 79 AD. There is no explaining children with no parents, parents with no children, sisters with no brothers and lives and bodies maimed by incomprehensible destructive forces. We draw life from the Earth, and the earth can take it away.

There are no lessons in untimely death if one doesn’t look to his or her own life, and Jason hit the nail squarely on its head. “RIGHT NOW!” he wrote. He didn’t write this directly, but I think it’s what he means: Don’t take your life, or the lives of others, for granted. Tell them you love them. Give someone a hug. Help a person in need. Make a difference.

There’s an unexpected response people often exhibit when confronted head-on with sudden, ugly death. The shock, manifested as post traumatic stress disorder, can become a life-long ailment. But reflective and motivated people usually return to an important place, and that is the recognition of the value of life. Part of it is living for the moment and embracing the precious minutes we have on earth, though that’s a mildly soiled and selfish version of it.

The lesson is bigger than that. It’s about giving and participation. It’s recognizing the community of which we are all a part, lending strength when others are weak and pulling together to overcome both unthinkable tragedy and everyday obstacles. Even in these difficult economic times we in the United States are wealthy beyond words, and yet we so easily fail to see it’s not always money that’s needed. The smallest gestures can change lives.

I came to know death in a personal and lasting way at the age of 10, and it’s something that has tracked much of my life. Even so, I can’t pretend to understand the horrors unfolding for thousands of men, women and children in Haiti this week. Yesterday was the day that children forever began asking why. It’s an echo you can hear from here if you pause long enough to hear it. In their tragedy I hope we all understand the importance of what Jason wrote:

“RIGHT NOW!”

© Greg Stahl