Why Keep doing this?

The best I can offer you is this

I’ve written previously of what it was like in the aftermath of losing Olivia. “For months after Olivia was killed I took great offense at the world. It seemed impossible that anyone could continue going to work, or making plans, or going to football games or whatever. Didn’t they know Olivia was dead and the world didn’t work anymore? Didn’t they know that there’s no point in all the trivial activities of daily life? Didn't they know it was all a farce? I felt like a ghost haunting my former life. The only time I felt really corporeal, truly seen and heard, was with my family and others who knew death. I would drive around town looking at the buildings on campus, the restaurants, the places of business as if I was watching an old home movie, trying to remember what they felt like, what they smelled like.”

So believe me, I get it when people try to find a way to remember, to hold onto, or memorialize the people they’ve lost. Amber Alerts were started in response to the loss of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, who was kidnapped while riding her bicycle in Arlington, TX, and then brutally murdered. Clara Barton started the American Red Cross, moved by the suffering she experienced tending to Civil War wounded. Countless scholarships, pieces of legislation and nonprofits have sprung in response to the devastating experiences people have encountered. Memorials, from grandiose fountains to roadside shrines, all seek to hold on in some way to what and who we lost.

I really do get it. We need to remember, we absolutely must not forget those we’ve lost and especially when that loss could have been prevented we need to work to set things right. I have nothing but admiration and encouragement for those who make this their life’s work.

I just never, ever, wanted to be one of them.

When Olivia was killed the last thing I wanted to do was start some kind of memorial or movement. First, because obviously and with every fiber of my being, I did not want her to be dead. I still don’t and there is part of me that will never fully accept it. Second, we all handle grief differently and at different times in different ways. Personally, it rips me apart to sit and look through pictures, hear her voice or watch her laugh and run on the videos we have. Not that I don’t occasionally do this, it’s just that I know I will be a wreck during and after and I’m a horribly ugly crier. Last, I’ve never felt like there was anything that could or should be done to add one ounce of meaning or beauty to Olivia’s life. Her life was so full and so beautiful, there was nothing that needed to be added to it and nothing could be added to it that would make up for the gaping loss.

So why then, fifteen some odd years later, are we still doing the significant work of helping to build homes for children and families in critical need? And doing this in Olivia’s name?

I wish I had a clear and compelling reason, one that took into consideration the spiritual and psychological needs in the context of our cultural moment, but I don’t. All I have is you do what you can in the moment to stay alive, to not become a ghost forever. You lean heavy on the people around you to help navigate and sometimes doing something good to help others together with other people who have had their hearts ripped open seems like it hurts a little less than all the other options. You find that spending time with other people who have lost much and being able to sit with them and maybe, just maybe, offer them some form of help has a way of helping you work through your own damn pain. You find that it gives you a tangible answer to the persistent question you’re asked “What can I do to help?” because all you really want to say is “make Olivia not be dead.”

You keep doing it, if you're able through loads of grace and the sacrificial generosity of others because there seems to be no end to the goddamned pain in this world. You do it because you find that even in the overwhelming pain there’s grace to find a slanted kind of beauty, a sideways kind of joy. These work their way through it all and call you to hold onto hope, keeps you from giving into despair and holds you, for a while longer, in the land of the living.

I’ll end with an unapologetic ask for your support for us to help keep us building for as long as there are families that need a home and as long as we can keep helping to build them. Thank you. Grace and peace.