As the eye of Hurricane Gustav ebbs closer to New Orleans, already having taken the lives of a couple dozen people in Haiti, I think about one of our last conversations. We were in the hot tub outside in the beautiful snow of Lake Tahoe at the cabin that Dad rented to celebrate his 70th birthday. You were telling me about Terry and the new business. You were telling me about marrying your friend Alistair. You were asking me about the Uhuru Movement and commenting on the way that African people had been dogged out for the past two years since Hurricane Katrina. I felt so close to you then. I felt that we were at a new beginning of understanding each other. We were no longer the older sister and younger brother but we were family who deeply loved each other relating to each other about what made each of us tick. I didn't quite understand your passion for flying seaplanes. You didn't really understand my commitment to the Uhuru Movement, but there we were, wanting to relate to each other, wanting to support one another in our dreams, in our aspirations.
Ned, I want you to know that your family and friends continue to miss you everyday. The kids and I just spent the night at Mom and Dad's and you were there - at the Eastman's party, swimming in the pool, walking on the horse trail, lying on the couches watching the tube, making eggs for breakfast table covered with today's, yesterday's and news from the day before.
The stacks of sympathy cards are still strewn about the house, your picture with dad and the plane sits on top of the mantle in the family room. You are there and will always be there.
I was looking at your high school graduation picture in the hallway at home. How skinny you were! And what a little boy - so different from the great man that you became (filling out a bit!). I was wondering what I was doing. Our lives have been so individualistic. I hate the society that we live in for that. I miss the time that I would have, should have and could have spent with you had I not been so wrapped up in my own individual life trying to figure things out, I thought I had to, on my own..
Last night Ron went to a party and some Samoan women sang in beautiful harmony the Rainbow song as Iz sang it and as we attempted to sing it for you. He sat down to cry for missing you as a brother, someone he was looking forward to sharing fatherhood with...
This song that you loved that we sang for you is about a better world, which I don't believe has to be in the afterlife. Many people are struggling for a better world now. If you listen to Iz songs, he talks about how life was unnecessarily hard in Hawaii. How his father didn't have to die of a heart attack. Hell, he didn't have to die of obesity, but used food, as many do, as an escape from reality.
I think Mom and Dad are doing o.k. Dad is always busy but he is so aware of what he is going through too. Mom is trying, as I am too, to put our loss in the context of the loss that so many people experience as a fact of life. That doesn't make it easier but it helps to keep us going in a certain way and lift us out of our experience as an individual.
There was an article in the San Jose Mercury News that I read this morning about the small plane crashes recently. It kind of made me mad though because it didn't attempt to analyze anything and didn't really shed light on anything either...I want to be able to go to Cherry Lake and understand something of what happened that day. I will talk to the people who live near there. I will listen to the wind, the river, the trees, everything..this will help me understand what happened to you.
I love you Ned and I hope that you forgive me for not expressing it to you enough. You are my little brother and you will always have a special place in my heart that no one else can touch. I look forward to hanging out with many of your friends and some of your new acquaintances up at the Clearlake Spashin on September 19th. I want to understand how much you loved the seaplanes even though that is what ended your too short life.
Give strength to the people in the Gulf Coast and I hope that they weather the storm. I believe that the global awakening of African people and people throughout Asia and Latin America to control their own resources is the storm that is coming. It will interrupt Obama's myth of a post racial America just as it is interrupting the GOP convention. I believe that we shouldn't be afraid of the coming storm but will have to ride it out. This storm will transform the world for the better. I believe that Ned would have understood that too. Thanks Ned for keeping it real. We all miss you and are pissed that you had to leave us!!! Your family and friends are carrying on though with your powerful spirit with us.
Love,
Wendy
