My old friend, Kristin Natvig, has died of cancer. In trying to remember her over the past months, while her condition worsened, I tried to grasp why I would care as much as I do about her passing. I couldnt remember any special thing she said or did. When I close my eyes, I see her standing by a fireplace at my old school, next to some other people of her year, and maybe on the school bus, too -- if thats the case, we would have been quite young when we met. I remember her smiling, and laughing a lot. She had an elfin face, and wore simple, loose dresses. She listened to the Grateful Dead, I think. She was two years ahead of me in school, at a time when I was focused intensely on status and wished desperately to be older and more sophisticated. I remember her kindness and generosity in hearing my jokes and laughing at them. At that fireplace, there was a radiator, and we measured our value to the heart of school society by how close we could squeeze on the radiator to the fireplace and the cheap sofas around it. In my recollection, she was always wherever she chose to be, maybe sometimes in laps, and welcomed me into conversation as though I were an equal. If it werent for Facebook, Id have no idea she had passed, nor that her friends from that era had cared for her in person, in that bleak mineshaft that love drives down into the dark, until she did. Id not have seen the heartfelt sorrow from men and women, now my age and equal due to the proportion shift of time, when two years is a mere blip in our lives. I saw in these few years of the dreaming news feed her grace in her care for her dogs, and her thoughtful and caring willingness to seek our sympathy and love as her chances of remission or freedom from cancer receded into fate. It reminded me of her open face and gentle spirit all those years ago and only yesterday, I sent her a cancer-sucks CD of music to listen to, including a rare song from her friend, David Schools, who is now a tremendously successful bassist for a popular rock band. I also put on some Stones, because I know her friends Rob Crosby and Tom Crosby -- gracious twins -- listen to them, too. She is a reminder that all our actions matter, and that all of our mercies are eternal. I am better because she was kind, and now I know why I miss her. Her death is bitter; my cause to remember her kindness is sweet. Bye, Kristin.
Posted on: Tue, 20 May 2014 20:15:38 +0000
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