An Open Letter to the Community

(Or, “No, I Would Not Give You False Hope on This Strange and Mournful Day”)

In the simplest terms, all I can say is thank you. But there are so many things to say thank you for: thank you for the hundreds of comments posted to this website; thank you for the cards and condolences that fill up two shoe boxes next to my bed; thanks to the kids who drew us pictures, and made art work for or about Zachary; thank you for the donations that helped my family care for our son in a way I never imagined I’d have to. Thank you for the phone calls and the food you’ve prepared with love; for your time visiting Warring and Derby; the prayers; the hugs; the support.

Thank you to the three young women who tried to save Zachary’s life immediately after he was hit; who stepped in with the love, compassion, and immediacy of a parent and became Zachary’s temporary mothers for a few minutes at Warring and Derby, providing comfort, caresses, a gentle voice, and genuine love as my son passed away.

You did exactly what I would have done for my son, had I had the honor of helping him one last time that afternoon. Thank you to the police officers and firefighters who respected Zachary in death, and took care of his body after his fight was finished. From the deepest place in my soul, I need to thank you.

I’m not sure what I could ever give in return, or even how to express my gratitude for these things. Already, these words seem inadequate and hollow, simply because what you’ve done for my son and my family is so profound and beyond my capacity for expression.

What I can say with certainty, however, is that I would be in a much darker place today, because of the loss of my oldest son, were it not for your love and support in these and a thousand other ways. I want you to know that Jodie and I have read and re-read every single comment on Zach’s website. We’ve read and re-read your cards and the artwork from your children many times during the past month. We’ve been out to the crosswalk where Zachary died, and we’ve met some of you there. We’ve brought some of your living plants home and we’re trying to keep them alive. We’ve removed some of the old flowers and laid them down on the hill behind our apartment where Zach liked to play, in the hope that they will help keep the hillside green as they decompose.

On the other hand, things haven’t gotten any easier, despite the passage of a small amount of time. I can’t believe it’s already been a month since I last saw my son alive and I’m honestly surprised that the days are getting harder. For some reason, I had imagined that those first days would be the hardest. But Jodie and I are trying to figure it out and we’re focused on taking care of Miles while still remembering Zachary.

For whatever reason, I’ve been re-reading books I’ve read many times before when faced with my new daily reality: my life without my son. I’ve turned to Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, the book of Job, Ecclesiastes, and the theorist Walter Benjamin. Sometimes it helps, and other times, it doesn’t. But in saying thank you for all you’ve done for my son and my family in the past month, I’m reminded of some of the things I’ve read recently and I want to end by sharing those things with you, as a small token of my appreciation.

One of the young women who knelt with Zachary in the cross walk after he was hit wrote me a letter after the accident. In her letter, she paraphrased a Roman historian named Plutarch, who lived in the first century, AD. After reading this young woman’s amazing letter, I looked up her paraphrase and found Plutarch’s “Letter of Consolation to His Wife.” I read it out loud to my wife the same night.

Plutarch and his wife endured not only the death of their firstborn child, but also the loss of their youngest and only daughter. After the second death, the Roman historian wrote, “we must not obliterate the intervening two years [with our daughter] from our memory; rather, since they afforded us delight and enjoyment of her, we should credit them to the account of pleasure; and we should not consider the small good a great evil, nor, because Fortune did not add what we hoped for, be ungrateful for what was given.”

I’d like you to know that I will try to remember, always, to be grateful for the nearly six years I shared with my son.

Yet, like Paul Simon once sang, “I would not give you false hope / On this strange and mournful day.” False hope might be to end with Plutarch; false hope might suggest that I’m at peace with Fortune, or that I’m searching for peace with what happened on February 27th, at 1:47 in the afternoon. I am not …

But I am at peace with you, and perhaps there is some real hope in that. One of the things I said at Zach’s memorial service in Berkeley is that I didn’t have too much faith in anything before my son died; my faith was limited to a faith in family and friends. Beyond that, I didn’t know. But your kindness and generosity, your spirit of communion (common-union), has restored my faith in people: regular people just like me and you, who want to do something positive to help our neighbors in a time of need. I hope you see that is what your cards, comments, prayers, tears, hugs, and donations have done: they’ve restored my faith. I also hope you can see what we’re capable of as well: what we can build when we come together. If your deeds have re-built faith itself, what more might we one day accomplish together, for our community and the children we’re still fortunate enough to have by our sides? I, for one, hope we can come together again soon for a more joyous reason; I hope we don’t wait for another “tragedy” to compel us to do the next right thing.

There is a moment in Steinbeck’s Depression-era novel, The Grapes of Wrath, after the Grandfather dies en route to California, also out on the road, where the Preacher Jim Casey is asked to say a few words as the Joads bury the eldest member of their family. In burying one of the youngest members of my family, I thought about this prayer, and asked that it be read at Zachary’s Berkeley services. The preacher’s benediction for the old man goes like this:

This here ol’ man jus’ lived a life an’ jus’ died out of it. I don’ know whether he was good or bad, but that don’t matter much. He was alive, an’ that’s what matters… . Heard a fella tell a poem one time, an’ he says, “All that lives is holy.” Got to thinkin’, an’ purty soon it means more than the words says. An’ I wouldn’t pray for a ol’ fella that’s dead. He’s awright. He got a job to do, but it’s all laid out for ‘im an’ there’s on’y one way to do it. But us, we got a job to do, an’ they’s a thousan’ ways, an’ we don’ know which one to take. An’ if I was to pray, it’d be for the folks that don’ know which way to turn. Grampa here, he got the easy straight. An’ now cover ‘im up and let ‘im get to his work.

My son, I’m sure, is already at his work. I’m sure he’s performing his new job, whatever that might be, with the same kind of purity, passion, and joy that he expressed through his life. But like Steinbeck wrote, it’s a different story for me and you. There’s a job left unfinished for us here, and we don’t know what to do. So, like Jim Casey, I’ll pray for the folks that don’t know which way to turn: I’ll pray for you. Please continue to pray for me.

From the bottom of our hearts, my family and I thank you for everything.

Yours in hope, faith, and charity,

Frank Eugene Cruz
March 26, 2009