About Erik, On Grief and Hope

This is a picture of Erik Selby,  farmer and  radio announcer.  He and his wife Susan  and his father-in-law ran a beautiful CSA called Meadow Rock Farm in Butler, PA.  Erik passed away suddenly last week and I am saddened by it.

As writers, there are certain issues that draw us in but remain elusive.  To speak about knowing someone and about loss is to enter into the realm of the cliched and the overwrought.   For me, it's almost impossible to write without considering the ontological, especially knowing the Other, so I've got to enter that fray each day armed with descriptions, new and old.  But loss is complicated in a different way.  The losses in my stage of life, in my geographic, social, and cultural context are different from the losses of those who live with war or poverty or other hardships.   I quote at length from a story by Jane Smiley, who has chronicled the kinds of worlds I often inhabit:  

..it seems to me that I have arrived at the age of grief. Others arrive there sooner. Almost no one arrives much later. I don't think it is years themselves or the disintegration of the body. Most of our bodies are better taken care of and better-looking than ever. What it is, is what we know, now, that in spite of ourselves we have stopped to think about it.  It is not only that we know that love ends, children are stolen, parents die feeling that their lives have been meaningless. It is not only that, by this time, a lot of acquaintances and friends have died and all the others are getting ready to sooner or later. It is more that the barriers between the circumstances of oneself and of the rest of the world have broken down, after all -- after all that schooling, all that care. Lord, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me. But when you are thirty-three or thirty-five, the cup must come around, cannot pass from you, and it is the same cup of pain that every mortal drinks from. Dana cried over Mrs. Hilton. My eyes filled during the nightly news. Obviously we were grieving for ourselves, but we were also thinking that if THEY were feeling what we were feeling, how could they stand it? We were grieving for them, too.  I understand that later you come to an age of hope, or at least resignation. I suspect it takes a long time to get there.

(The Age of Grief, Ivy Books, 1977)

I find myself in the position of caring a great deal about people I hardly have the right to say I know.   

Zack met Erik and Susan at a farmer's market outside of a local vineyard.  In what I like to think of as a valiant attempt to make me happy here, away from my beloved Food Bank Farm in Hadley, he went in search of local farms and CSAs and he stumbled upon the most engaging couple behind a table with beautiful tomatoes, cilantro, fresh garlic, and lettuce. And Erik immediately saw in Zack that this was about the vegetables but not just about the vegetables.  He loaded Zack and Zoe down with lots of extra goodies, which were brought home with enthusiasm that, for once, I did not squelch in a downpour of distain (because I am, unfortunately, a snob about the things I love).    And, when with that enthusiasm unabated,  Zack took me to meet Erik and Susan one Saturday afternoon, I couldn't help but share it.  Erik was a person who radiated kindness (without guile or gumption) right through his eyes.   Yes, it's a cliche, but dammit, you felt as if you knew him immediately -- and if you didn't, you walked away happy to have met him, wanting to come back for more.    Knowing he and Susan were part of my world made it a better place, one with hope.  There is nothing better to look forward to than beautiful things grown by people who take joy in each vegetable.  Just look at how he'd photographed their produce, the garden, and the chickens and you see the maker behind the thing made.

Over the last year, we had a lively email exchange in which he (through Susan) made it clear that it warmed his soul to know there were people who loved the farm, wanted the CSA to succeed, and enjoyed eating their vegetables.  They wanted us to come visit with the dog (even though I'm sure she'd wreak havoc among the fowl).  They supplied me with enough to roast tomatoes for freezing, to make all the food for Zoe's bat mitzvah (100 people), and to enjoy garlic all winter long.   This year they'd asked me to help them market the farm a bit more (in exchange for a share! Much too generous -- and too certain I actually had something to offer that was worth it).  It was just after I'd written back with a whole list of ridiculous ideas, thoughts, and connections that Erik passed away. An unfinished conversation, I am now thinking about how I might be a small factor in getting Susan the farm help she will need to make it through this season.  I cannot imagine even remotely what else I could offer for solace in her loss.    

The cliches trail me: my imaginings of the world, my sense of its possibilities, of my own place in it, who I am and who I could be, and what we have to offer each other is much richer, wider, and hopeful because I knew Erik even for a little while.   In that passage, what Smiley's character doesn't yet see (and perhaps what I am learning) is that the people we grieve for are sometimes the path to hope rather than resignation.