Tonight's post begins with this lovely photo of some of my nephew Jim's kids enjoying winter in Iowa. Like me, Jim has produced a very impressive number of offspring, all unique characters.
My old friend Ken Kelley, who died earlier this year, loved kids. Somewhere I have a Polaroid he took of my oldest son, Peter, in his first Little League replica uniform (the Cubs) posing and ready for action.
Since writing my memorial for Ken in January, I have heard from many, many people, including some of Ken's relatives who were left out of the information loop by his immediate family when he died.
Today, I heard from Wayne Kramer, the skilled guitarist from the MC5, who had found my post and liked it. Of course, there will be those, like Ken's immediate family, who may wish to airbrush his memory (see the official obituaries that appeared in Michigan and here in San Francisco.)
But I tried to write about the true Ken, because he was so much more compelling a character than the airbrushed version. He was a very difficult person to be friends with. He also was the most loyal friend anyone could ever ask for.
Real people are not necessarily always simple or easy to understand. We throw around pejorative labels in this country with a carelessness that borders on cruelty: alcoholic, homosexual, drug addict, child porn possessor, dealer, whore, slut, junkie, sexist, racist, fundamentalist...and on and on.
But these words do none of the work necessary to understand others. They help separate us, that's all. We need a new language based on empathy. For Christians, there may be a sort of comfort in "there but for the grace of God go I."
But that is essentially a statement of superiority.
What I am thinking about tonight is how we might embrace each other on a new level, one based not on our perceived shortcomings, but one based on our unique personal strengths.
In these terms, our departed Ken, and so many others, deserve a better label. Maybe "angel" can work.
What do you think?
-30-
1 comment:
What do I think? Two things come to mind. Complicated -- this single word is the best description I've ever found for the effects of life upon life -- Ken's life was extraordinarily complicated. The second that comes to mind is something that a psychologist once mentioned in couples therapy -- when he was presented with opposite viewpoints from each partner, he always discovered that there was at least some truth in each person's perception. Ken's life was incredibly complex and full of many unique truths -- so much so that I'm not sure any one of us ever completely knew him. But what most of us were lucky to have from Ken is the knowledge of what it truly means to be a loyal friend, as you pointed out. He was almost bitter in his loyalty -- he went after us when we were in trouble (and sometimes didn't even realize it) dogging us, confronting us, and helping us. I can still hear him screaming to me on the phone back in 1982 (he called me 15 times in one day), questioning me over and over. Why? Simply because he was worried and wanted me to feel better. He was like this the entire time I knew him, from 1971 until the last time I saw him in 2003. And perhaps the very reason that Ken was able to understand and interview to the core so many completely different people was due to the fact that he, himself, was the most highly complicated of us all. Tamara
Post a Comment