Community is Everything

Community is everything.

That is what I believe. I believe that because I am living it.

A year ago today at 8:00 am the dreaded call came in. The call where you learn of a tragedy that is so painful that no words exist to convey the loss. A year ago today at 8:00 am the phone rang rousing me from a deep sleep. I had struggled to get to that level of slumber. My sons' and his friends' lives, shattered in a single moment. Is Robby there? asks the caller. No he spent the night with his girlfriend. He is needed, immediately, the caller demands. There was a horrible accident, Mike, John and Bryant are in the hospital and Tim... Is Tim okay? Tim is deceased. I repeat the words, somehow I can't grasp them, I don't understand them, it is as if I am speaking a foreign language I have never heard. I do not understand this language of death and youth. I repeat the words, the meaning of them so painful and powerful my brain cannot derive meaning, I repeat them, Tim is deceased. Tim is deceased.

Ohmygod not Timmy, not any of them, ever!

My husband and I know that our son and his girlfriend cannot receive this terrible news over the phone, we race over and tell them. We give them the news that will change their lives. The response to the news is something that continues to echo in my mind. There are no words to comfort, no words to still the pain. Nothing can help but we, nevertheless, try. We hold them and take them to their injured friends. The loss is indescribable. Tim was always surrounded by friends. The host of every teenage gathering. He had an impish grin and a sparkle in his eyes.

But the hero in all of this is Tim's mother. Oh Maryann, woman of strength and grace, may you always come to mind when we are faced with tragedies and hardships. For SHE has been the great healer to all, even with the pain she carries in her heart. A small woman with the determination and strength and spiritual stature of the Sphinx. Nothing will tear her down. She carries everyone. I know, however, that it is the community that lifts her, she herself has told me this.

"It is you, and them, and him, and her who lift me up," she has said. "Timmy is the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about when I close my eyes." But in between those two painful spaces, friends, families, acquaintances, neighbors, stranger's kindnesses carry her. And that is why I believe that community is everything.