Matthew 5:4
eulogy
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
Matthew 5:4, CSB
i was helping Kathleen’s parents clean out her apartment. you always worry that you’re going to come across something scandalous, something that forever redefines how you see this person you thought you knew so well — a drug stash, or weird porn, or Air Supply albums.
under her bed, i found a big square hat box. and in the hat box there were these two photo albums. one was neat and well-laid out. it was pictures of the kind of moments in a person’s life you want to commemorate: proms, graduations, weddings, first day in the new apartment, holding your nephew for the first time. in the biography of a person, these are the defining events that lay out a timeline and connect them to other people and the events of the world.
the other album was a mess. it was a shitstorm of Polaroids, prints, cutouts and collages. Kathleen had written everywhere in all different color markers. sometimes there were ribbons or pieces of decorative wrapping paper, sometimes there’d be some random artifact taped in there, like a double A battery or a Cheeto or a shoelace. there was even a flattened Fresca can STAPLED to one page. stapled. an aluminum can.
and the pictures here were just ordinary life, nothing worth chronicling. they were from 3am escapades on the swings at Davis Elementary, sitting on Mariah’s back porch throwing pine cones, in the bed of Tyson’s truck out at Gibson’s Farm. none of the moments are milestones — no world travels, no achievements, no formal celebrations. there was one photo where we were eating birthday cake, but i’m pretty sure that was from when Emily lied to the waiter at Chili’s because she said she wanted to hear him sing, and that was the only way we thought we could get him to do it. i guess we could have just asked him, but we were nineteen and stupid.
it’s pictures of dogs and clouds and middle fingers and hamburgers and, for some reason, Kathleen singing into various non-microphone items like a hairbrush and a tv remote and what i can only guess is a windshield scraper. she was a notorious lip-syncer, the air guitarist of the vocal world. and the fact that Kathleen thought still photographs of her pretending to sing were something worth preserving, shows you something of how her mind worked. it’s a frozen, silent reproduction of an action that is itself a silent pantomime of some other person actually doing something purely audible and invisible that can only be perceived through the passage of time. it’s like eight degrees removed from reality, and Kathleen lived in that reality-defying universe. it’s what makes this photo album so incredibly special, not because the moments were special, but because Kathleen was.
two albums. one laid out the major events of Kathleen’s life in exacting, chronological detail. the other, a confounding whirlpool of just random whatevers of ordinary life.
if a genie emerged from an ancient lamp and granted me the ability to relive a series of moments with Kathleen, and i had to choose between these two albums — either the momentous occasions of her life; or the boring, mundane, weird ordinary — i would grasp the ordinary without hesitation and relive it as slowly as i could muster. i would savor each stupid second. and the only difference would be, i would hug Kathleen more, just in case she has any doubt that i love her.
i face this thought after the death of Kathleen, but i realize i have this same choice with everyone still living. i have so often neglected the priceless moments in favor of what the world says is important, and — you have my word — i will never make that mistake again.
