It is amazing the way this day lands in 2021. Today, this
year the date April 4th cuts across multiple cultural/ethnic and religious
lines... It is the date that MLK was assassinated, which I remember vividly. This
year it is Easter. And it is Qingming Festival... Tomb-sweeping Day in China, Malaysia,
Thailand and in about eight other countries it is celebrated.
All three items are significant to me. Firstly, I come from Lutheran
and Catholic religious families. Secondly, there will always remain a red
thread in my soul and across my heart… I have Chinese family and Thai family
relations. And Third, this date is to me
is the first although solemn, as a most significant piece of history I remember
from my childhood. It was the assassination of MLK. It was a horrid day. One I
won’t ever forget. I still feel the loss, deep in my soul. The Vietnam War is
second in my childhood memory of historical events. The names of the dead, casualty numbers shown
on our television sets, ‘In Memory of…”, are embedded in my mind perhaps
forever. Hauntingly so.
I wondered why everything was more quiet than usual this
afternoon as I made mint jelly, marinated a leg of lamb, checked messages, edited
a screenplay and wrote. My oldest was working, my youngest was resting and
being her creative self, quietly. Our pets, the two bunnies were passed out,
under my now deceased husband’s favorite chair. And our male guinea pig lay in a
pile of hay, sleeping in his cage.
As I stirred, then checked our plants indoors and outside,
something was tapping my essence. It was an odd Easter. It’s been a ‘strange
time’ for over a year now, for most of us in the world. I noted that. Then came
the whispers in my mind… ‘there’s more to this moment. Something’s missing…’.
My steady mind queried my upper mind about the death of MLK. And I kept
pondering as I walked around our yard and stirred the mint jelly on the stove.
So, as would be the usual nowadays when you have a question…
you search the internet for the answer. And yes, there it was, both MLK’s
assassination and Qingming Festival. And right after I saw that… it popped up on
one of my social media pages, both did. I internally asked myself if anyone may
have realized this. Then there arrives that self-inquiry, ‘Did anyone want to
know about anything other than Easter today?’
People mostly become self-contained on a holiday. Yet, in
the past thirteen months, societies have been nearly beckoned to view our world
and its people globally. And that is
highly unusual. I have found that as much as many of us want to think that we
may be altruistic. We are not. Few are altruistic much of the time. Many times,
altruism is seen as a weakness. However, I see it as a necessity. A necessity to
truly feel fulfilled before the end of this human life. The one we are living
in this very moment in each of our self-contained vessels, holding only what
one knows what is inside, itself.
A few weeks back I was speaking with one of my husband’s cousins and his wife, both are medical
doctors.They, out on the west coast, me here on the east. As we chatted for nearly an hour on the phone.
I was
describing personalities of my daughters. They commented on the giving aspect
of their
personalities.
“You know the giver, lives a better life in the end.” One commented and the other concurred
with
me.---Jody-Lynn Reicher
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