An Oakland Memorial: Ginny Kleker 17jun77-08oct08

The heavy, uncomfortable silence was immediately familiar as we walked into the room, packed with mourners and hushed voices. My grip on my husband’s hand tightened ever so slightly as each step brought us deeper into the jittery crowd and closer to the somber reality of his dear friend’s sudden death. We were both caught off guard when her mother led us to the front row, where two empty seats awaited. As we sat down between a calm elderly lady and a young man close to our age, shaking between sobs, it dawned on me that this was the first funeral I’d been to since the one I hosted s0 many years ago. 

The memorial began and I glanced across at Ginny’s family. Her mother, Teresa, was huddled against her shattered and numb fiancé, Jon, who stared vacantly a few feet ahead of him. On her right, Ginny’s sister, Kate, was composed, features strikingly similar to Ginny’s. She rose to the podium and began reading a letter written by her mother. As her even voice faithfully delivering the heart-wrenching story of Ginny’s struggle, the stone lid inside me shifted a little bit with each word, uncovering a well I thought had long since dried out.

My face flushed and my eyes brimmed with tears as the pain unwound itself, slithering loose from the knot I’d carefully twisted over the years. I wanted to reach out to her mom, to her sister, to Jon, to all those she’d left behind to suffer her absence, and assure them that their incredible despair was not bottomless. That the massive hole ripping into their core would mend. That the heartbreak becomes a less demanding bedfellow in time. But I knew that nothing could penetrate the fog of grief that hung over them now. It was too soon. Levi squeezed my hand and I responded in kind, hoping beyond reason that somehow my tears could take away at least some if not all of his pain as he started down his own journey of grief.

Without her mother’s brave words, it would have been difficult to understand why Ginny had chosen to take her own life. I did not know her well myself, but from having met her a few times and what Levi had told me, she was young and inventive, recently happily engaged, and, as the bulging congregation attested, loved by many. Sadly, her mother related a daily struggle against relentless depression that eventually led her to choose death over life.   

It is hard to believe that someone has really passed away without witnessing the actual death. You always remember them as you last saw them, turning the corner, waving from the window. Who is it really, lying there painted in the coffin? Could a handful of ash and bone be all that remains? A name typed on a program or engraved upon a headstone insists on your acceptance, but barely breaks through the haze of disbelief. Rather, it is that continued void, night after haunted night, year after tormenting year, that truly carves their absence into your heart. 

The heart is a resilient organ, though. The dull ache of loss pulses thickly through your veins. Jagged shards of remembrance cut indiscriminately into the walls of your heart. Night after day after night. Then comes one evening, when the sun sets without dragging your soul behind it. Then one afternoon, when the curtains flutter unexpectedly, letting in a bit of light from the outside world. Then one morning, when your first thought upon waking is no longer of death.

Ginny lives in everyone’s memory. For me, she is looking back with a smile on a foggy December morning, picking up the paper as she walks up the steps to her house, her half smile fading from the rearview mirror as we wave and drive away.  

*in memory of Ginny with love*