She was so keenly attuned to the wonderings of young children and their interests. When they spoke to her she listened, and found multiple ways for them to represent what was in their mind with dots and lines and colors, both on flat surfaces and in three dimensions. "Easy peasy" she would say. And her whole body would wiggle and dance when a child ran up to her, arms fluttering up over her head before coming to rest on her knees, so she could look in their eyes and ask about what they cared about. Without a hint of distraction.
She went back to her apartment after breakfast not feeling well, and was presumed to have died sleeping in her bed on a Tuesday around noon. Her students miss her, and they know very well how suddenly she took her leave. A few of them, the first children in Forest City, will remember when her family came here from the Netherlands dressed in black, the people who called her their daughter, sister, crazy aunt, all gathered in Forest City in grief with the young man from Thailand, her adopted nephew, who would have gone anywhere to honor her memory. That young man may have been the only one who knew all along that she wanted a Buddhist ceremony to mark her passing.
That's what I remember about her and the people who came to honor her memory. Other people have their own memories, but my memories are part of me and her story is part of me now. And though her story doesn't belong to any of us, it belongs to all of us. We can all respect that we may have memories that would reveal different facets of her humanity. And that there was even more to her than what any of us will ever know.
When one of us dies, we are no longer here to tell our story. Almost immediately, the meaning of our words and actions becomes ripened and distilled in memory, then diffused everywhere. Everyone remembers us a different way, and makes sense of our life according to their own experience of it. No two stories will be the same. The story of one person becomes the story of many people. One person transforms into many, and the names and the words we use have the power to change the way we remember.
Until now I have told the story of the first people to live here without mentioning a name to remember them by. Out of respect. Not everyone wants their stories to be known, or passed on. Our families are not always proud of their circumstances in this sparkling new city. A single mom whose children have different fathers, from different countries. Families with ongoing abuse and domestic violence. Children living here with grandparents that miss the rest of their family in China, and they don’t want to talk about it. The unhappy realities interwoven with our Forest City dreams, mine included. But what does it matter after we are gone? We have to be very careful, out of respect for that part of the story that will never make it into the books.
Our names are among the first words of our life story. I think it's strange that a few years after being born, just as a young child from China might be getting used to their name they come to an American school and on the first day, they are introduced to their teacher with an English name. They become Bob, or Cindy, or even more likely Jason, or Judy. It's supposed to be easier for the teachers. We expect these children to learn an entirely new language, but the first concern is that it might be hard for us to learn their name. One of the first things a Chinese child in an American school learns is to start over again, to learn to recognize and identify with what they don't know. The whole world may have something to learn from this. There is always some part of the story that can't be told, that remains unknown. To remember that we have to remember the storyteller, and not be distracted by the story.
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