When I look back at 2010, I determine it a year of consistency. I realize that it started and ended the same way: with death. January 12th, the earthquake in Haiti, and the loss of Molly Hightower, college acquaintance and NPH volunteer. December 31st, Honduras, the loss of Rosa Lilian, one of the very best of Rancho Santa Fe. Tragic, but consistent. My tone here might convey anger, or resentment, or disenchantment, but that is not at all the tone of the last twelve months that I’ve lived. Instead, they’ve been filled with life and energy, even if incredibly tiring at times. I have to say this to convince you that it was a good year, a great year, despite the losses. I’m going to describe a few of the recent ones that have been on my mind and in the prayers of all of the Ranch community lately.
Rosa’s death on the last day of the year completed four deaths in four weeks for our Ranch home. We said goodbye to Glenda, Chrisly, and Juan José, all three of which lived beautiful lives full of love despite their health conditions. In Chrisly’s case, it was a very tired heart; with Glenda, it was a very tired body; with Juan, it was tired kidneys. But Rosa wasn’t tired, and that is the tragedy. She was full of energy. The news of her death came as a complete shock to us all. We were just about to assemble for the special New Year’s dinner when instead we were all called to the church where they broke the news. News can never be repaired, only broken. She had been on the roof of an NPH house in the city collecting some of her things to come to the Ranch and suddenly felt faint. Her friend tried to reach out and catch her, but it was too late, and Rosa fell. She fell down the stairs. There was nothing anyone could do.
I will never forget the wailing of her older sister, Eda. Sobbing and wailing, she lost her best friend and little sister. Rosa, just sixteen years old, leaves behind four other younger siblings besides Eda. I best remember her as my 9th grade student, squeezed in between her two best friends in the front row, tossing me confused but always respectful glances whenever I introduced a new grammar topic. She received top grades in my class even if the language did not come naturally to her. I always knew which assignment or test was hers by the eponymous flowery handwriting that matched her nature, as warm and smiling as script can be.
I cannot begin to imagine the suffering that her brothers and sisters and closest friends are feeling. Just the pain I harbor having known her the little I did is enough to make me question God’s plans. Especially as we’ve buried three others so recently. Maybe this is one reason why these things happen, though: to make us question. This brings us closer to God, right?
Today I set off for my usual afternoon run heavy with the thoughts of Rosa and the past four weeks. I was expecting a rough time of it, as I was already breathing pretty hard when the bottom of the hill came into view. Up ahead of me I saw the outline of a young boy walking slowly and swinging a sling-shot, or something like that, by his side. For a moment I thought that it would be a child from the Ranch, like me, upset about Rosa’s unexpected death and seeking some time away and alone from the least private place on Earth. As I neared him from behind, he turned quickly, his tall wide eyebrows heightened with surprise. I didn't know him. I apologized mid-stride for having scared him. He flashed a quick toothy grin, then surprised me when he too began to jog, still swinging his contraption as he ran with me. I looked over at him, nodded approvingly, and kept running, knowing that if I stopped I would never make it up the hill. He was running faster than I was, and even though he was a young boy and could probably run a marathon without breaking a sweat, I couldn’t let some kid show me up. So I picked up my pace.
My hill is steep and full of crevices and rocks, and you can easily lose your footing if you’re not paying attention and faceplant right into the baking Honduran dirt. Knowing this, and having been close to this faceplant in the past, I couldn’t help but marvel at the spry gazelle next to me prancing up the mountainside without so much as a huff. Each time my foot successfully negotiated another rocky crevice, it was a stone of emotional pain that I felt breaking off of me. It was the shock and tragedy of Rosa’s death, the loss of three others in the past month, the hundreds and hundreds of Christmas photos that I’d been sorting through all day, and the worries of having to say goodbye again in six weeks that were all sliding off of me with each stream of sweat that dripped down my cheek. I pushed through the pain.
We were at the steepest section and I was breathing hard. My little companion didn’t say a word, and neither did I; we both understood that words were unnecessary and impossible at this, the hardest point of the hill. I pumped my arms faster to keep up with him until finally we cleared the summit. I expected him to wave goodbye and start walking, but he kept with me. Now on the downside, I caught my breath enough to acknowledge our shared accomplishment. “You’re good,” I say. He nods. “I’m used to it,” he says. “I play soccer.” Of course. Soccer. He plays soccer. And I run every day huffing my way to the top, imagining months of damage of rice and beans sliding off my love handles like grease. If only it were so easy.
“How many sisters do you have?” I ask him, still breathing and pumping hard. “Oooh, lots! And one niece, too.” He grins and rattles off four or five good Catholic names, names that I already associate with at least three girls a piece from the Ranch. His name, though, is a secular Roberto. Looking ahead, I realize that we have already reached the first gate where I usually stop, stretch, and turn around if I know I only have a short amount of time in the afternoon. I look at my watch and see that it’s been the fastest first leg that I’ve run in months. I’d hardly noticed the time as we were puffing up the hill. Slowing to a stop, I tell my running buddy that I’m going to stretch my muscles and turn around, and he stops, too, watching me curiously while I bend over and wince. “It’s so that I can run again tomorrow,” I explain, and he laughs and waits patiently while I brave the waves of pain running back through my calf as I try to reach my toes. Straightening up, I see that he is still smiling, the same carefree smirk he’d worn all the way up the hill. “I’d run with you any day,” I say, starting the goodbye to this 17 minute, 11 second friendship. “Tell your family hello for me.” His eyebrows rise up so high they might float off his forehead, but he grins and nods, then turns quickly on his heel and takes off running, still swinging that sling-shot by his side. It takes me a minute to notice that he isn’t wearing shoes.
I finish stretching and start my stopwatch again, convinced to take it easy since I’d just lapped my past running self. The sun was lowering and it was my favorite evening time, when the sun’s position casts a gold hew on all of the green crops through the pine trees. I soon noticed that I felt light . . . and happy. It was as if all of the hurt, disbelief and doubt—in a word, Rosa—that I’d started my run with had dissipated, taken over by the memory of Roberto’s grin that I replayed in my head. The sweat still poured down from my temples, hot and lingering like fresh tears. But the tears I’d shed already for Rosa became suffused into some familiar but odd hope that ran with me now. Suddenly I realized that it wasn’t the losses that we are meant to hold onto and live with—though I wouldn’t mind living with the loss of those extra pounds—instead, it is the gifts we’re left with that we are meant to remember and take with us. Rosa was a girl who lived without resentment; without bitterness; even though her father had been killed and her mother died of cancer just two years ago, she rejoiced in each day: in guiding her handicapped older sister down to classes, while fixing her younger sister’s hopelessly limp ponytail, by confiding in her brothers. Those were her gifts, and she was grateful for them by the way she lived her life. Roberto, too, was grateful. He had picked up and started running without a thought, even though we were at the beginning of a domineering hill. I said a silent prayer of thanks for this small young companion who had miraculously showed me grace and hope in the simple act of running by my side.
If I were to live here for the next ten years, I’m not sure I would ever get used to so much death. I’m not sure I’d want to, either. But a theme of my experience over the past year and a half has been sheer admiration for the resilience of these kids, for everything they have suffered and continue to suffer. Yet they are able to shed their hurt, negotiate those rocky crevices, and continue up the hill to the other side. This I will remember and take with me wherever I go. And like Rosa, I want to live appreciating the gifts of each day.
Happy New Year!
