Love and Be Loved: My Remarks at the DEF Celebration of Excellence Scholarship Dinner
(You can access the video recording HERE)
For the past few years I have started my speech with “What a year this has been,” thanks to Covid. This year, I say those words with a more personal viewpoint.
This event, the heart of our DEF year, has always been special as it is a moment when we stand at the precipice that exists between what was and what will be. For me, this has never been clearer than it is tonight, as I look around and welcome you all, I think here we are: poised between the worlds of before and after.
This has particular weight for me this year as I find myself caught between the WAS and WILL BE in just about every area of my life.
Sometimes, the “befores” and “afters” in our lives are perfectly expected, anticipated, and planned for. Like many of you, my daughter Hazel, our youngest, will graduate next week and her life, and ours, will be split into before (life in high school) and after (life in college). My own experience may be even more acute, “before our last child left home” (nest full), and after (nest empty). Recently, listening to a podcast interview with Kelly Corrigan, she shared that this moment of becoming an empty nester is just exactly what is supposed to happen. It means as parents we have succeeded and still, it must be acknowledged that it is the end of one thing and the beginning of something entirely different.
Sometimes the split of before and after is pure joy. This past year also saw the marriage of my oldest to his Decatur High School sweetheart, and our life became “before” we got to add our amazing bonus daughter to the family and “after”. Before, if something happened in Haegan’s life, as his mom, I would be the first responder. Now, the “after” means having another human who will put my child first and will be his first responder, while I will have the understudy role.
For 14 years it has been my honor and privilege to lead DEF. It was a role that grew and expanded each year to respond to our changing community and the needs of our kids.
Soon my time at DEF will be the “before” and my resume will show an end date of June 2, 2023 I am sure there is more I need to do to process what that means exactly but with every note of thanks and congratulations I receive, I am keenly aware that I was part of something unique and precious. During more than a decade when our country and our world was torn apart by divisions and resentments, our community, every corner of these four square miles, came together and moved mountains for our kids. Whatever DEF identified as a need, our community was there with hands and hearts open.
There were many parts of this work that were gratifying, but one part is what I have come to regard as sacred and that is being in relationship with those who have gone through a heartbreakingly profound rift that shifted their life. Before a daughter’s cancer diagnosis; before the car crash; before the illness became life threatening. I have come to know some of you through your grief, and in that process, I have come to know your children. As I have gotten older, I have learned that one of the hardest things to do is to sit with someone’s pain and know that there is no fix for heartbreak.
Just three weeks ago, I was asked by my sister to write my mother’s obituary. It was the morning of the funeral and we realized there was nothing listed on the funeral home website, just the time of the graveside service. Losing a parent is the natural order of things and, as my mom was 95, this loss was not traumatic or even unexpected, but of course the grief and loss remain. I wrote the words for the obituary quickly.. What I wrote was the “before”, before my mom died, and I am still at the beginning of my own journey of absorbing this loss into my AFTER.
There can be moments of raw beauty even in these hardest of experiences. We had about three days when my mom was in the hospital but still clear and coherent. All of her four children, their spouses and her eight grandchildren came to the hospital, knowing that this would be our final time with her. My 22-year-old nephew Isaac, during a visit to Nanny Fay, asked her if she had any life wisdom for him. She replied, “Nahhhhh,”but then she thought for a minute and said “just love and be loved”. My brother-in-law Scott then started singing an old Nat King Cole song that he used to sing to his kids at bedtime and, amazingly, my mom sang the words with him. The song is called Nature Boy and here are some of the lyrics they sang:
And then one day
One magic day he passed my way
And while we spoke of many things
Fools and kings
This he said to me
The greatest thing
You’ll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved in return
We gather together tonight in a room filled to overflowing with LOVE, the lived experience of that life advice: The greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
What is the price we pay for love?
John Roedel is a writer who often writes of the struggles of being human and especially about grief. In one piece, John is speaking to God who advises:
To grieve means that you have loved. Grieving is one of the truest human experiences that you will ever participate in. It often arrives without warning – like a late day summer storm—obscuring the sun and drenching you in a downpour.
God goes on to say: Grief can come and go as it pleases. You gave it a key to your house at the exact moment you gave your heart to somebody else.
Every scholarship we present was born from love and is given with love. The donors who started these awards chose to do so to honor something profound in their own lives, by giving generously to students who, until tonight, were strangers to them. The parents and other family members who are here celebrating our 2023 graduates are filled with the love they have for you and the awe of watching how you have grown and left your mark on Decatur.
Each year I try to put into words what is so special about this event and now, during this raw time for me on the precipice of so many of my own “befores” and “afters”, maybe I finally understand.
Tonight, honors the love but also acknowledges and leaves room for– perhaps even welcomes– the grief, as they are the two most profound experiences of being human. One cannot exist without the other. Tonight, we as a community say to those who are no longer here “You were and are still loved.”
To our graduates we say “you are loved.” We see you in all your success and the struggles you may have faced and we celebrate and send you off to your next life phase – your “after”: life after high school. We know you will take what you have learned here and make your mark but perhaps…
The greatest thing
You’ll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved in return