“Where there’s love, there’s no death.” – Marian Kolodziej
On December 24, 2013, the Peace Corps family received
shocking news: our training manager died suddenly only two days before. He’s
the quintessential Peace Corps Volunteer – he served in Jamaica, then traveled
and obviously couldn’t get enough of the organization, because he came back.
And for all of us who have passed through the halls of Peace Corps Panama, we
are lucky he came back to Panama. During his service, he fell in love, as we
all are wont to do, with the country, with the culture, with the people. He got
a wife and two beautiful children out of his time with the Peace Corps. His
wife is still pregnant with their second child.
I got this news and I couldn’t react – I tried to block it
from my head, go through Christmas with my family, take advantage of the fact
that I could. I am lucky. And my family, not even knowing what was happening,
supporting me. But every question about Peace Corps, about my job, made me
cringe. The man who greeted us off the plane, the first Peace Corps face we
saw, we would never see him again.
When my grandfather died almost two years ago, I collapsed
when I got the news. When my friend died three years ago, I collapsed. News
like this, I know how I react – I know how I am. But this time, somehow,
everything was different. It was as though I blocked the news from my head, not
allowing myself to believe it, though knowing in my heart it was true. I could
barely look at facebook those days – too many of my friends pouring their
hearts out to him, giving him, his family, their memories, their thoughts and
their hearts. I couldn’t do it. Not yet.
On a bus ride to Panama City, I read a story of a Polish man
in a Nazi prison camp. He survived, taking on a dead man’s name after he was
sentenced to death. Marian Kolodziej never told his wife, his children, anyone
about his time in the prison camp until he suffered a stroke in his 70s. He
began to draw, to write, to tell his story and spent his final years bearing
witness in the camp. Bearing witness, the story said. He painted murals on the
camp. He remembered. The Zen master, Bernie Glassman, who told this story knew
the man personally. He helped him paint, he helped him remember – not just the
bad parts, not just the evil, but the beauty of humanity. He remembered the man
who changed his name by slipping his death order under the pile, he remembered
the man who gave up his soup for one who dropped it in a time when the
prisoners were only served soup and bread while building the camp. His final
words, when he died in the same camp that imprisoned him for years, were these:
“Where there’s love, there’s no death.”*
Finally, I could mourn. Finally, I learned the words to
explain Brandon’s life. He loved, he bore witness, he did everything in his
power to help each and every one of us. By day two, he knew all our names. And
in a country with over two hundred Volunteers, knowing every single person’s
name is incredible. He knew what we were going to go through, he knew what we
went through. He knew exactly what we were doing. And he stayed in Panama to bear
witness to the challenges, to the work, to the beauty of each day that he had
and that we all had. Brandon Valentine loved us all as he loved his family. In
a way, we were each a part of his family. He loved with his whole heart and
because of that, he lives on with us. Where there is love, there is no death
and Brandon, like Marian, proved that with his life. And for that, for all he
taught me, I will always be grateful.
*
This story is from The Dude and the Zen
Master, a conversation between Bernie Glassman and Jeff Bridges.
No comments:
Post a Comment