By Andrea Scarpino
“Love is the most complex sensation in the world, partly because it’s a mix of everything there is to feel. Finding a definition for it could take a lifetime, and in the end, it’s still only a theory.”
~Gracie James
I’ve been in Boston more than three weeks with my friends whose daughter Gracie was killed in a car accident. Another girl was also killed. The car rolled twice. This beautiful girl, who was only 17, who was deciding for herself how to live, struggling to see her own future, this beautiful girl who was a writer, a skater, a music lover, a compassionate and thoughtful person, this beautiful girl.
And the love, these three weeks: a bouquet of flowers from the parents of the other girl who was killed, a dozen donuts delivered on the morning of Gracie’s memorial service, offers to bring Gracie’s little sister to and from school, a hired cleaning and laundry service, anonymous cash donations to the foundation begun in Gracie’s name. Again and again, the love has stunned me, brought me to my knees: Gracie’s skating friends brought dozens of flowers to her memorial, have offered to collect money for her foundation, are dedicating their spring show to her. Friends of her parents, people Gracie barely knew, ordered vegetarian meals be delivered, worked tirelessly to make the memorial service a healing and peaceful event. Church members baked dozens of cookies and brownies, pans of lasagna and macaroni and cheese so that we could eat her favorite foods after the memorial. A local Mexican restaurant that sponsors her boyfriend Sam’s soccer team donated burritos because they understood it was important to Sam.
Again and again, I have heard, “I just don’t know what to do.” But again and again, exactly what was needed has been done. An embrace. A cup of coffee. The creation of the memorial program. Photographs. Music. Offers of respite, a weekend away, a dinner with friends, drinking wine by a fire. Stories about Gracie, her many kindnesses. Donations for her foundation.
In one of Gracie’s writings, she says, “I hope to learn . . . to accept my past, to embrace my future. I want to learn to see beauty in the world again.” I’m not normally someone who believes in love-at-all costs, in unconditional love. I’m also not someone who has much faith in humanity, who thinks people are generally good or kind or loving. Often, when I think about love, I think about its fracturing, the moment it splinters in our hands. Often, I think about the worst humanity has to offer, the worst we do to one another.
But in these past three weeks, something has shifted, some opening of my heart. People I’ve never met responded to requests I made on behalf of my friends—trusted me, jumped into action. People who Gracie never knew—a high school English teacher from a neighboring town who read her story in the newspaper, friends of her grandmother, friends of her aunts and cousins—sent the most eloquent cards, gave generously. I’ve seen love firsthand, seen how it can manifest.
I want to be clear: Gracie was supposed to live. She was supposed to have an amazing career. We were supposed to meet for lunch throughout her life to gossip about her parents, exchange writing. Nothing can happen to make her death less senseless. But as I’ve slept in her room, as I’ve read her writing, as I’ve answered the front door again and again to friends, donations, flowers, food, I have to admit something in my heart has shifted. Gracie has helped me see “beauty in the world again.” Even amidst this horrifying loss. Even amidst this sadness.
Poet and essayist Andrea Scarpino is a frequent contributor to POTB.
Planet of the Blind 
i met gracie, i think, once, and then not enough to get more of an impression than a pleasant young woman. but i know her mother, not intimately but with a certain degree of fondness–and enough to know she’s one of life’s good ones. so i baked macaroni and cheese because i felt i was helping chris as best i could, and i needed to help chris. i went to the service for the same reason. it left me feeling i knew gracie a little, now, in seeing the various aspects of her world being honored by those who did know her, to feel the love and pain emanating throughout the room….and yes, people being their best selves in their love for gracie, for chris, for the family. it would be hard not to love gracie after that, or feel gratitude to her for being someone who even after her death could inspire such love in others. i find it difficult even to touch my own sadness about this, let alone try to contemplate chris’s and her family’s. what is so remarkable and yet so predictable is that for the unfathomable pain i see in chris’s posts here, i see also her knowledge of how lucky she was to have had this girl as her daughter, with all the cost in pain….
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We are reminded of our humanity in the face of the greatest losses and carried by these seemingly small yet, oh so grand gestures of solace through the depths of despair, to safety. We are sustained and eventually saved by these kindnesses. Interesting that technology has helped create a soft place to fall, among so many loving hands.
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what does it mean when it takes a horrifying loss to remind us of- not just the power- but the mere existence of love? pure love. the kind of love that begs “please dear god let me shoulder some of this burden for you, my friend, let me take some of some of this pain from you”. i’ve been thinking of this, too. the way our ucwc women became sisters in arms and came together to fight for gracie, and for chris, after news spread of the crash. and in the aftermath of my friend’s suicide, the way our circle of friends came together to support her partner and each other. what does it mean when it must be tragedy that draws this love from us? why are we so guarded the rest of the time? let’s make a pact to love fiercely every day. to love bravely all our lives. even when it doesn’t seem to matter, because really it always matters. love always matters.
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