Yesterday I could barely walk. I don’t know if this condition reflects the arrival of the direly predicted end of my over-extended ability or just a phase in the cyclical neurological state with which I’ve lived for sixty years. I struggled through the day, to the office, to court, to the store. My feet keep walking. It’s what I do.
The relentless news spurs me. I cannot surrender to my small nagging problems when 49 people no longer breathe, shot down by the senselessness of hatred. I can’t debate whether the hater worked alone or had joined a terrorist cell. I focus not on the hater but on those who died from the brutal force of his hatred. The blood shed that night in Orlando reminds me of the blood which courses through my veins. True enough my blood clots too easily but how blessed I am that the blood still flows through my body, that I still have life, that I can write these words. That my feet keep walking.
I tried to find a rainbow flag yesterday here in Kansas City. Though I am not gay, nor bi, nor trans, I am a human being and those 49 people who died belonged to my tribe. The human tribe. They were men, and women; mothers and fathers; sons and daughters. Their feet walked them into a place where they sought to be happy and now, because of hatred, their feet have been stayed, their voices silenced. How can I not strive to show some small symbol of my solidarity with them?
I put myself on a waiting list for the rainbow flag delivery at All Nations Flags in downtown KC and went in search of a substitute. I found two rainbow kites at the Dollar General Store on Holmes, south, by the rough part of my street where some folks of my color refuse to go. I stood in line talking to a VA nurse buying Lucky Charms breakfast bars and 5-hour energy drink for his wife. We talked about potato chips. He laughed. He moved forward to pay and when he had completed his transaction, turned to say goodbye.
Earlier I had bumped carts with a guy in Target and we laughed together. I noticed that his shopping companion had on a rainbow T-shirt but I did not say anything. We saw each other again at a table in the store’s Starbucks, where a cluster of shoppers sat drinking coffee and waiting for the storm to pass. I smiled at the men. One of them told me to be safe. I nearly cried. How much safer I am than those two men, who left the Target to go out into a world where they can be gunned down for loving each other! I pulled my cart out into the evening air. I felt inadequate; I felt too lucky; I felt like screaming. My feet kept walking.
I went home and hung a kite in each of my front windows. I made a crude sign from their tails and electric tape. It’s not much. I got online and posted message after message, spreading the word about vigils, fundraisers, and people offering to foster pets of those who died. I have nothing to give but a boost in the ripple of love with which we hope to conquer hate.
It’s the fourteenth day of the thirtieth month of My Year Without Complaining. I’m alive. My son is alive. I have no complaints. Not one. I am not one of the forty-nine. My life continues.
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Thank you so much.
How well you speak what so many of us feel. Your best yet.
Personally, I think it is a LOT! You show not only solidarity but also compassion. Many people these days just say “how awful” then shrug their shoulders and move on. You don’t do that. You are an inspiration to the rest of us.