As a friend to Nancy and
Olivia for some 25 years, I have admired them both
for their enormous and divergent talents which between
the two of them cover a broad spectrum of what is
potentially good in human beings. Having been in one
another’s relative proximity—sometimes nearer, sometimes
more distant—we have witnessed in different ways our
own personal evolutions. For me, particularly their
marriages and the births of their daughters, Colette
and Chloe, and the blossoming of those two little
souls into such beautiful little girls. And then my
being on the phone with Nancy one day who was telling
me about Colette’s stomach-aches, and that she was
to be seen at the hospital that afternoon, and then
Olivia’s phone-call that evening telling me of catastrophic
discoveries—and so the beginnings of Colette’s and
Nancy’s and Jim’s unimaginable year until Colette
was finally released from that most difficult of burdens
that any of us bear—and she a five-year old.
And then being on my knees in Colette’s bedroom alone
and holding her hand which I kept thinking was impossibly
cold, and after 45 minutes still determined to wait
there like that until she finally took another breath,
which I was convinced if I waited long enough, she
had to do. And which she never did. And from that
day, however long it took for Nancy and Jim to somehow
put at least a step or two between them and the blinding
glare of grief, and begin again. And give birth again.
This time to an answering purpose which they called
the Children’s Health Environmental Coalition. CHEC.
When Nancy and Olivia were more than 2/3’s of the
way through their simultaneous pregnancies (and when
Colette’s Wilm’s tumor was already—unbeknownst to
everyone for another 4½ years—growing against one
of her kidneys), Olivia asked me if I would write
a lullaby that she could sing to commemorate the births
of her and Nancy’s babies. I wrote a lyric entitled,
“The Flower That Shattered The Stone,” which composer
John Jarvis put to music. The words intend that no
matter how brutal the reality, no matter how brutal
the worst parts of our nature—what appears fragile
and delicate, what is most vulnerable in us and what
is most precious about us as living creatures—love—ultimately
love must prevail. The flower of love ultimately will
shatter the stone—be it of corporate power, political
power, individual greed, individual ego, whathaveyou.
I have to believe that the flower, in the end, will
prevail. Perhaps as individuals we won’t be here long
enough to bear witness to that advent, but I believe
that that is why we are here. To help push that stone.
An infinite distance with an infinite number of hearts
and hands.
However hard the equation, maybe Colette’s cancer—which
was caused by an environmental toxin—was also that
stone. And when Colette left where she had been, and
where she always will be, in her parents’ hearts;
another seed was given birth, to enjoin like hearts
to come together to protect other children. And that
too is the flower. And that too is CHEC.
Joe Henry
April 29, 2001 |
