Dignity, Value, Pride, Respect

These are words I'm grappling with today.

I have a dresser and a bed that I no longer need. I wish to donate them to a person who needs them. I placed an ad on craigslist offering them free to a person in need, and within fifteen minutes I had 30 responses. I started to think that maybe some of the people were just trolling craigslist for free stuff to resell for profit, so I emailed all of the responders asking politely for them to confirm that they were, in fact, in need, and not just looking for profit. I phrased the question respectfully (I thought) and clarified that I did not intend to offend, embarrass, or pry, I just wanted to know that my furniture was going to someone in actual need. 

Several people responded with detailed stories about why they truly needed the items, a few admitted that they really weren't in dire need but just liked the look of the dresser (it's a rather good piece of furniture), and several simply did not respond to my email.  All of those emails (or lack thereof) were expected.

What I did not expect were angry, insulting, obscenity-laced responses from two different men. One threatened to have my craigslist account flagged for misrepresentation, to which I responded that I had not misrepresented anything as the items are still free (though they will obviously not be going to him). The other actually responded to my request with his story and only sent me the hate-filled response when I emailed everyone to let them know the dresser was no longer available; he called me retarded, an idiot, and told me if he were me he would shoot himself, along with other choice statements that I don't care to repeat.

So here is where the grappling comes in:  The responses were disrespectful. I believe the disrespect was fueled by wounded pride. I think the gross lack of respect indicates a lack of value for other people. But dignity is where I keep sticking.

Dignity can be intrinsic or assigned; one can carry oneself with dignity (intrinsic), one can be treated with dignity (assigned). One can be deserving of dignity (intrinsic), one can act in a dignified manner (assigned).  Intrinsic dignity is supported by value and garners respect, and is almost the opposite of pride.

But what about assigned dignity? That's where I keep getting stuck. Was it wrong of me to ask for people to expose their need in order to have it met? I believe humility is important, I believe pride comes before a fall. But I also believe it is wrong to take away a person's dignity to inflate your own self-satisfaction. "When making gifts of mercy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing." I think that is in part to emphasize our own need for humility even when doing a good work, but also because drawing attention to good you do for others makes a spectacle of them, potentially robbing them of dignity.

So was I robbing those men of their dignity in asking for an explanation? Would it have been better to simply state clearly in the ad that I did not want to give it to a reseller and rely on the honor system? Am I any better off now that several people exposed their vulnerability to me and I could choose only two, not really knowing whether their stories are actually true, effectively relying on the honor system after all? What was I really trying to accomplish?  Was I truly trying to find the person who needed the most help, or was I just slyly letting my left hand know what my right was doing?

I imagine calling you to ask your opinion:

You side with those men in spirit. Of course you think they were wrong for being so hateful, but you point out that I attached strings to my offer, thus forcing them to give up some of their dignity in exchange for meeting a need.

I argue that it was less harm than allowing this opportunity -- quality furniture for free -- to be taken from someone in need by someone in greed. You counter that I can't fix the world's problems and sometimes I'm blind to the way my attempts are received.

I counter that dignity is not something that can be taken away, it is something you give up. You argue that it's easy for someone with an extra bed to feel like dignity is just another commodity.

I get indignant; it's not my fault that people are poor, and it's not like I am being self-serving, here. I just want to ensure that this one time, where I have control, things turn out in the fairest way I can make them. You tell me the problem is that I want to be in control, and I'm dressing it up with good intentions.

I say the problem with the world is that everyone is so entitled, that my resources are my own and I have the right to do what I want with them, but they don't have the right to be abusive toward me because I don't choose to enrich them with my things. You ask me whether regarding the furniture as not good enough for my own bedroom but good enough to make someone grovel for it says anything about my ego.

I tell you you're being mean and I hang up on you. I spend an hour ranting on the phone to the friend who will just tell me that I'm right without question. I listen to her agree with me and all I hear is your voice, and I realize I really prefer it when people make me examine myself. I decide you had some valid points, resolve to be more sensitive in the future, but I never call you back to tell you so; I don't want you to know how much a part of my conscience you are.

That's the paradox; you always kept me grounded, but it's you that's making me feel like I'm floating away.

Thai Food

Today the thing that bothers me is that I don't know if you liked Thai food. Not that you're gone, that I can never talk to you, that your son will grow up without you, that you will have no more sons. Not that you were too young to die, that I am too young to have a dead brother. Not that your things are sitting here longing for you, your lifeless computer monitor neglected on the desk next to mine. I mean of course those things, too -- always. But not in any special measure today. Today I am sad because I don't know whether you liked Thai food, and I will never get to ask you.

ASL Songs

You didn't know ASL but you would not need to know any sign language to appreciate these videos. "Handlebars" is an awesome song, and the video is really awesome (M-- and I are making a storyboard from stills of the video to hang as art in our office), but the ASL interpretation is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. "Gravity" is not really my favorite song, although I do like it, but the ASL takes it to a place John Mayer only wishes he could go. Anyway, these made me think of you. I know you would have loved both. I'm still working on "I Grieve" in ASL for you. I'll get there. <3

Moving

Mom is moving from that awful apartment she's been in for over a decade. I was looking at the baby shower pictures with you and S--- and little not-born M---, and I realized they were taken in that apartment. That's a whole lifetime that she has lived there! I just found a baby picture of C-- with me holding him on her horrid salmon-colored faux-leather sofa. So many memories...I can't remember if she lived there already when I lost my baby, but I think so; she would be 13 years old this January.

We have to go over there this weekend and clean up and pack it up (as if we have any hope of finishing that monumental task in one weekend), and I'm afraid of all of the memories that are gonna come with that task. Mine, yeah, but also, so much of you. It's going to be hard to erase that chapter of my life, no matter how badly it needs erasing. The crime and corruption and danger there outweigh any value that nostalgia might bring; still, it will be a hard weekend. I'm already tearing up to think of it.

In about three weeks, I'm moving from my apartment, too. There isn't much nostalgia to be had here; you never saw the place, and the only connection it has to you is that I was standing in my bedroom here, leaning up against my dresser, in a hurry but answering my phone anyway in case it were some sort of life-altering emergency on the other line, when L--- told me you were dead. Not much nostalgia in that, but it is a memory, anyway. That, and the boxes of stuff that came from your apartment are still stacked next to my computer desk; what with everyone being in a state of flux, I have a feeling it's all coming to my new place. Hopefully I get the three-bedroom with M--: concrete floors, a big office, a window to my car in the parking lot, plenty of closet space, and the only unit with central air/heating in a utilities-included complex. It's not five stars, but for our price-range and specifications, it's pretty good. I think your stuff will end up hanging out in the office for a while.

I wish you were here for this. We all wanted Mom to get out of that place for so long, it's just wrong that you won't be here to argue and fuss and fight about getting it all done. Moving has always been a family affair, but ours is a man down.

The Right Way

Grief looks different for everyone. I'm good at pretending like I don't feel it at all. Maybe I seem callous to those with formed opinions on how a sister ought to grieve her newly-dead brother, I don't know.  What I do know is this: nobody counts my breaths like I do, weighing them against your silence. Nobody can reach inside my heart and pull out that stone that sits in there, weighing me down. My lips smile and my voice laughs and sometimes I sing even when nobody is watching, because I need convincing the most. There is no right way to be sad, and this is the way I know. I miss you, little brother.

My Answers for I---

I know we have different belief systems, but I also know my brother would want me to at least try to comfort you. These are the things that comfort me; hopefully something in here can be of some comfort to you.

1. Where are you?
1b. Are you where dad is, even if you never met him?

2. In what 'form' do you exist now? I don't even want to think that you don't exist in any form anymore.

3. Do you still have feelings and memories of your life? Or do we forget everything after we're gone?

4. Can you see me? Can you hear me when I'm talking to your photograph?

1-4. I believe that he is sleeping in God's memory, that he is at total peace and unaware of our pain and sadness, nor feeling any of his own. Ecclesiastes 3:19, 20 and 9:5-10 mean to me that he is not in any pain or aware of what is happening now, but John 5:28, 29 and Revelation 21:3,4 mean to me that, soon, I will see him again, and he will be happy, and all of this pain will be behind us. I believe that, because he is asleep (unconscious), he has no memories of anything right now, but when he wakes up from "the memorial tomb" he will be who he is, with all of his memories of his loved ones intact. Even though I don't think he can hear me, I talk to his picture and write to him on my blog because it helps me to feel like I am directing that love at him, and I believe I will see him again and when I do I will tell him how I missed him and how I talked to him all the time like he was never gone.

5. How long until I see you again?

I don't know how long in hours or days, but I know that to God one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as one day, and it is because he is eternal and not bound by the limits of time. I believe that eventually we will all be freed from a temporary existence, and then even a thousand years will be to us as simple as a day, and the memory of the time we spend now missing him will be so small and insignificant that we may recall it only as a joke, like remembering being five and feeling like waiting thirty minutes for dinner was an unbearable torture. It seems like forever now, but someday not too far out, it will happen, and then the memory of this anxious waiting will fade. I keep looking ahead to that.

6. Why did you have to go? If everything happens for a reason, what's the reason for this nightmare? I don't think any reason will ever be good enough for taking away your life.

Ecclesiastes 9:11 means to me that some things are senseless, sometimes there is no reason or connection to the bigger plan, and we are all subject to unforeseen occurrences, such as my brother's death. I think the belief that all things happen for a reason come from a desire not to feel like it's all pointless, and that's why it is important to me that God has the power to undo any of those unforeseen occurrence, including a shocking and tragic departure like my brother's. I agree that no reason will ever be good enough, so it is comforting to me to think that it was not part of God's plan to take my brother away from me so painfully, it is just part of being human that he succumbed to death, and God's plan is to bring him back to me. (John 5:28 and Revelation 21:4)

7. Does S. know you're dead? Does she care? Will she get to see you earlier than me? Am I crazy to feel jealous of her being older than me? Then again you never know..You weren't supposed to die so young either.

Yes, S. knows. I don't know if she cares, but I can't imagine she would not care; they cared about each other once. But she was his past, and you were his present, and I think his very first thought upon waking will be, "Where is my I--?!?!?!" I think because of the verse I talked about above, it's pointless to think about age and death, because obviously the two are often not related, and anything can happen. Furthermore, as I said, you are the one he will be looking for when he is able to, not her.

8. Did you really relapse once or was it a habit?
8b. If once why that specific day? It wasn't any different than the others. Why did you choose to go back to that when in 2 days you were supposed to go stay with your gran for a while?

This question drives me crazy, too. We can't know, and it sucks. Will knowing make it any easier to take? I don't know; knowing his cause of death didn't make it any easier, so I don't know that knowing his frame of mind would, either. I think in the end, when it's all done and we finally get reunited, we will all forget to ask about this. For now, I hope you don't let it make you too crazy.

9. Did you realise what's about to happen when it happened? What were your last thoughts? If you knew this is the end, did it cross your mind that you're about to die while I'm waiting for your reply? My god, honey, I hope you didn't realize a thing.

This question (did he know what was happening?) makes me crazy, too. I like to think he had no chance to realize, that it was so quick that he had no idea. I think about the moments before falling asleep; my exact last thought is never really clear to me, just the general theme on my mind. So his last thoughts were about you, about his feelings for you (based on what we know from the investigation). I don't believe he is dreaming, but I think if he were, it would be a sweet one of you.

10. Do you miss me like I miss you?

I don't think there should be any doubt in your mind that he would miss you as much as you miss him. As I said, I don't believe he is conscious of what is happening, which is comforting to me, but I do think his very first thought upon returning to life will be of you.

In the days after his death, I read When Someone You Love Dies from beginning to end several times; it helped a lot. We all have our own understandings of things and I am in no way trying to intrude upon yours, I just derived a lot of comfort from this and I wanted to share it with you if you were interested. Whatever else, just know I am here for you if you need anything. <3

Awful Coincidence

Today was harder than some days.

I'm in Salt Lake City, Utah, for mentor training (basically, learning how to be a good mentor to new interpreters). It's an incredible learning opportunity from a guru in the field of interpreter mentorship, and the information is like gold dripping from the lips of royalty. But I'm not fully here today.

Part of it is that I woke up at stupid o'clock in the morning, and that always robs me of some of my brain power. Part of it is that I don't really like this city. But part of it is you.

At the same time as this training there is another training in the same building for trilingual interpreters and I keep running into people I know. The topic of Jorge Dieppa's tragic murder keeps coming up, over and over and over, and I haven't resolved that yet. I'm not ready to discuss his senseless death with the proper amount of respect and outrage it deserves because every time I start to feel sad for my teacher I feel guilty; his death is so tangled up in yours in my head that I can't process it until I process yours better.

Jorge was my Spanish interpreting teacher for the trilingual training course I attend every summer. He was a genuinely nice person, and a fabulous teacher. He was jovial, always with a kind, supportive word. He had this incredible smile that he started every class with that made his students feel like he really loved being there with them, that he wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world. He had high standards for us, but he did everything in his power -- from silly impressions of different accents to a concerted effort to fully understand our work with Deaf people -- to ensure that we were always able to meet those standards. He loved his work and he loved his students, and we loved him.

On July 6th, he was kidnapped in Ciudad Juarez and was murdered by his captors when he attempted to escape.

I learned of this a week after your death. It hit me hard; suddenly I was bawling like I hadn't even cried for you yet. It wasn't an indication of my level of grief that this news broke me like the other had not, it was more..the last straw. I was stretched so thin that a dead bird might have shattered me. But even so, this reaction triggered this deep-set guilt that I can't let go of.  I haven't allowed myself to think about Jorge since the day I found out, because somehow I feel that I need to give you your well-deserved mourning period, that it needs to be pure and untarnished by any other sadness, before I am allowed to explore my feelings of loss concerning my teacher. I know that doesn't make logical sense, and I know you would not begrudge me sadness about Jorge or think it could in any way interfere with my abiding sadness over your departure. But that crazy moment where my dam burst and my reasons for purging got all tangled up and wires-crossed did permanent damage to my logic center on this issue. I just...can't.

And so now, here I am, surrounded by people who are sad for Jorge but don't realize how sad they should be about you, and I am trying to fake the level of interest in conversations about this revered community figure that I am supposed to have, and I am tired. I don't want to. But the world spins madly on, and on, and on...and I want off tonight.

I know this is not a healthy coping skill, but I curled up with a bottle of wine and my dessert and pretended like the world had disappeared. I'm wine-infused now and ready for bed, but I felt like I needed to tell you this before I slept.

Goodnight, Brother Moon.