About Grieving and Birthdays

This isn't the first year my birthday plans have been tossed down the garbage shoot. Yes, I know a thing or two about grieving and birthdays. If we weren't in the middle of a global pandemic I would be celebrating my birthday on a beach in Sarasota, Florida. I also would have just opened a show on Thursday but neither of those have happened and instead I'm standing in my family kitchen attempting to bake my own gluten free birthday cake from scratch and planning a virtual birthday party with a bottle of prosecco. Happy Birthday to me. 

Twenty one years ago I recall another kind of lockdown. I was a senior in high school in Centennial, Colorado,  It was the middle of the school day and I had gone home with a friend during second period, I don’t really remember why we were at her house, but I do remember suddenly feeling an intense feeling of dread accompanied by a throbbing headache and a shakiness that sent me to her couch and begged me to lie down. Something wasn’t right. I called my dad and told him I was going to go home to rest, we had a rehearsal (or maybe a performance) that night and I needed to preserve my energy.  


When I got home I thought I might eat lunch and watch a little tv before lying down. I recall turning on the tv and only seeing snow. The cable was out. I turned it off, finished my sandwich and laid down on the couch. About thirty minutes later the phone rang. It was my dad, he asked how I was doing and if I had seen the news. I told him the cable was out. He said, “Kirstin something is happening but I think you need to know about it. Turn on the radio if you need to. You can call me back if you get scared.”  



My dad is not an alarmist, anxiety pooled sweat into my hand as I tuned the radio and learned about a lockdown at Columbine High School. Columbine was one of the high school’s I could have attended if my family hadn’t moved to the other side of the city six years earlier. I couldn't move. I don't think I moved from that spot in the living room for the rest of the day. Eventually the cable came back on and I laid on the couch with my eyes glued on the television. Just twenty miles to the West of where I laid, in a neighborhood where I learned to ride a bike, there was a war zone.


Two boys. Trench coats. Semi-automatic weapons. Fear. Chaos. Wounded. Dead. 1 teacher Dead. 13 students Dead. The Bloody library. Terror in a safe zone. 


My body felt numb as they began to name the dead, I would later learn a friend from my Kindergarten class was among them. My school shut down before the end of the day but I was already home. Rehearsals were canceled, all activities canceled. There would be no school the next day.


On the morning of April 22nd we received notice that it was safe to return to school. It was snowing. The gentle sheets of white falling from the sky felt like angels watching over us as we trembled back to a big cold building that no longer seemed safe. I remember there being a lot of speculation about copycats. Armed guards were  positioned at the entrance of every door while quiet whispers hung like spiderwebs in the vacant halls.


It was my birthday and it was weird.

On this day our top choir was scheduled to attend at a state-wide competition in Broomfield and I woke up early to curl my hair. As we quietly gathered in the choir room to prepare for our departure our choir director entered followed by the assistant principal. Something wasn’t right. 


I braced myself for more disappointment. 


Snow knows nothing about choir festivals and so our buses were canceled. The competition we had worked for all year was no longer a reality for us. But a new opportunity was offered. The school had arranged four class-wide assemblies for each year to come together, mourn and grieve for Columbine. Our choir was asked to sing at all four assemblies. 


There was a song in our repertoire that season that was my favorite to sing. We had sung it all over the school, in stairwells and once from the catwalks of the theatre. It was haunting and quiet and when sung in a space with great acoustics our voices would bounce off the walls and vibrate back into our bodies with a sensation that always gave me goosebumps. This was the song we were asked to sing. And the song was called, “Sing me to Heaven”.  


I remember watching the students pile into the West gym. A somber parade of heavy feet and muffled voices.  The students sank heavy into their seats in the wooden bleachers. Heads hung on the shoulders of friends as the assistant principal and counselors acknowledged our fears and collective sadness. 
 

Four times we stood and sing in front of a sea of sorrow.


Four times my voice broke when it sang "Love me, comfort me."
 
Four times our administrators invited each class to join in a circle if they wished, to gather and pray together. 


And by the fourth assembly the cold fearful anxious body that entered the building that morning had thawed into a body warmed by love. It was certainly something I never expected to see at my massive high school, riddled with egos and territory wars. It was the first time in my young life when I looked around and realized we all are just humans struggling to find our way. I looked around that gym and I didn’t see people separated by clicks and popularity, I saw humans holding hands in an effort to stitch wounded souls back together.


It was the most beautiful Birthday gift I have ever received.


I don't expect I will see that kind of beauty in the solitude I'm experiencing on this birthday. No. This is a much different way to grieve. Alone. And how the sorrow grows and stretches on. As of today I now can name four friends who have lost parents to Covid19. What a tremendous sorrow to endure together and yet apart. How horrible that we cannot gather to provide support or attend our loved ones funerals. And how terribly sad to know that we do not know when we can gather together in an attempt to stitch these wounds back together. This is a different kind of grief. Grief is never the same but it always changes us.


It's hard to fathom how the beauty I found on April 22, 1999 could not prevent the 250+ school shootings that would follow. It's hard to HOPE that we will do better tomorrow when we have failed so many since that day. But as I blow out my non-existent candles on my sad homemade gluten free cake tonight I will wish to see that beauty again on the other side of this grief. Because we must "Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly." -Langston Hughes


Sing me to Heaven

In my heart's sequestered chambers

Lie truths stripped of poet's gloss

Words alone are vain and vacant

And my heart is mute

In response to aching silence

Memory summons half-heard voices

And my soul finds primal eloquence

And wraps me in song

Wraps me, in song

If you would comfort me, sing me a lullaby

If you would win my heart, sing me a love song

If you would mourn me and bring me to God

Sing me a requiem, sing me to Heaven

Touch in me all love and passion

Pain and pleasure, touch in me

Touch in me, grief and comfort

Love and passion, pain and pleasure

Sing me a lullaby

A love song

A requiem

Love me, comfort me

Sing me to God

Sing me a love song

Sing me to Heaven

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