In loving memory of Kyle Harty Strang (1993-2010)
I was having lunch with Persis at a restaurant, catching up with my friend of some 20 years after I returned from Iran. I had lost touch with her for a few years. Her soft face lit up when she told me: “I have two sons now, Kyle and Niko.” It was quite a ways into the conversation when she said “Kyle is my stepson.”
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I was at Persis’ home for our monthly writers’ meeting. A table full of good food was prepared in a very nice arrangement for us. Others were busy reading and talking when I saw Kyle at the table. Already tall and growing by leaps and bounds, with handsome-man features emerging on his face, Kyle had come in to help himself to brunch on what to him must have been a lazy summer’s Sunday. I said “Hi Kyle! How are you?” He looked at me straight with confidence and said “Good.” In words which would have no doubt embarrassed my own sons I said: “My God, you are turning into a very handsome young man!” He smiled and simply said: “Thank you.”
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I was shaking. The whole world had come tumbling down and crashing on my head. I couldn’t breathe, and strangely enough I seemed not to want to, either. A parent’s worst nightmare had just unfolded before my eyes on my computer screen, as I read in disbelief that Kyle and his friend had died in a car crash yesterday. Nobody knows this pain until they have experienced it first hand, I know. But as parents, we are so familiar with the fear of this nightmare. All that we do, all that we say to our children, about being careful, about being vigilant, about taking care of themselves, is always motivated by the lurking fear of this nightmare. Our children must never die before us. If I could make one divine change, it would be to make sure under no circumstances do our children die before us. I wouldn’t know how to make that recommendation or to whom, and nobody seems to be listening to me anyway, as this unspeakable tragedy keeps happening all around me, making me wonder, making me question, making me doubt. I don’t want beautiful Kyle to be gone. I don’t want this email to be true. Though her tone is so caring and she is obviously a loving friend of the family, I want this stranger, this woman, who has written to me, informing me of this news to get lost or to be arrested for playing a cruel joke on a very nice family. I read it again and again. It’s all there. They died instantly in a car crash on Richmond Parkway. Oh! Persis, Craig, and Niko, what will you do?
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My son and his friend Kayvan bounded into the house in their usual noisy fashion. They ducked their heads into the living room to greet me. I looked at them and said “Salaam.” My son said: “What’s wrong mom? You are so pale?” He must have read my anger on my face. Kids always do. I invited him and Kayvan into the room. They approached me cautiously. I said: “God damn you kids! All the time we are trying to raise you, you sound like you know everything! You never listen to us. You always talk to us as though we are some retards. We endure. We tolerate. We cajole. We compromise. All because we want you to remain alive until you are wise and you can take care of yourselves. The hope for the time when you are mature and wise and you can actually sit down and talk to us as equals keeps us alive and strong, so we keep forging ahead with the painful and tricky business that parenting is. You keep challenging us because you think you are invincible. You think nothing will ever happen to you. Well, guess what?!! You aren’t invincible. You aren’t na’meera, alive forever. You could die and you might as well take your parents with you, because we won’t know how to live without you.” The young men were trying to make sense of me and my desperate state which was coming out as anger. My son said: “I know Mom. It sucks. You are right.” The two of them came around and hugged me and quickly left the uncomfortable room, which smelled like fear and sorrow.
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I was at Temple Emanu-el, a Jewish Synagogue, in San Francisco. There was no room inside so people were standing outside the hall, listening to the comforting eulogies. Akh, khoda joon, it was so sad. Through the words of different people who took up the podium, a pretty clear picture of Kyle was compiling, a smart young man, a caring, energetic, and loving member of his community in Berkeley, making the pain of his loss all the more difficult to endure. It was a good thing I was so far in the back, away from Persis, Craig and Niko who were sitting closely next to each other all the way in the front row. They couldn’t hear my sobs.
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I was at Home of Peace Cemetery in Colma. It was raining relentlessly, as if the clouds in sky were tormented by the death of Kyle. I stepped under a temporary canopy that was set up around Kyle’s grave. There were so many people around his grave that there was hardly any room under the canopy for all of them, and as such so many others were standing under the heavy rain, with or without umbrellas. The noise from downpour of rain was helpless in muffling mournful sobs. Raindrops were rolling off the canopy, falling down only after they had each made sure that we could see them before they descended on the ground. Everything and everyone was crying. I stepped away into the rain and stood there for a few minutes, my hair and clothes soaking up the big tear drops from the sky. I was one of the last ones to go to Kyle’s now covered grave. I stooped and put my hand on the ground, touching the muddy soil. I know of no Jewish prayers, nor Christian, or Zoroastrian, so I recited a fateheh prayer for Kyle.
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I went by their house in Berkeley to take the baghali polo I had made for the vigil at his home, and to see about my friends. Of course they didn’t need the food, but it was all that I could think of doing, like so many others had done. The house looked different. There was a T-shaped canopy set up outside, with lights running all along the roofline, protecting the guests and the food that had been laid out in abundance. I know it was my imagination, but the setup reminded me so much of hejleh in Iran, a portable structure of mirrors and lights that is normally set up outside homes of those who mourn the loss of a young man.
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The wise man at the memorial ceremony said: “When we get filled with questions of why this had to happen, why did a young man have to die like this, or why he was taken from his family; perhaps we should turn the question around and ask it a different way, in a way that leaves us capable of answering those questions. We must ask, why was this person born? Why was he alive? Why was he a part of our lives? That way, we can answer the questions a little more easily, and a lot more completely as we remember all that made the individual worth loving.” Kyle was born to touch the lives of hundreds who sent him home tonight, keeping the memories.
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I was in my living room again, wishing my friends strength, love, and patience in dealing with their child’s loss. The huge teardrops continued falling off the sky, mingling with mine.
