It is infinitely precious for me to translate the scratchy marks you made on that board next to the closet. Naturally the top mark is Dan, tall papa, rock of our family. I remember each and every notation on the wood. How excited you were when you were “officially” taller than me – 3/01. You were 12. As a little girl you were amazed to see the mark that showed “ how big I was when I got borned.”7/24/89 you were 19 ½ inches long. The lowest marks near the ground are really hilarious, where you kept the pet record. I smile to see that our kitten Zeb was 7 inches tall on 9/92. I recall the difficulty your 3 year old self had taking that measurement; though it was not nearly as hard as making your parakeet Opal sit still long enough to be recorded on 4/99.

For the record Morgan, you have shrunk to a dimension of 10x10x4; the size of the cigar box where you now reside.

Memories permeate the marks you inscribed in the wood grain of your grow stick. Contemplating it is bittersweet but the sadness is tolerable because we had much fun with the silliness of the task. What is still excruciating beyond bearing is the flip side of the board. That’s where you planned to chart the growth of your own children, your anticipated family. Those beloveds who will never exist were also stolen from us. The unmarked and forever empty expanse of wood on the flip side is invisibly inscribed with pain, a virtual Rosetta Stone of loss.

In the midst of agony Morgan, your family chooses strength. We choose survival. We choose love. Wecontinue to choose, insist upon, and embrace growth.
Always, 241, Mama

Our daily landscape is a minefield riddled with objects/thoughts/words that unleash memories which quickly plunge into emotions and grief. Photos displayed around the house that used to comfort now sometimes lash. I catch sight of your beautiful face and smile and quickly try to shake off the horrific mental hologram that seeks to superimpose images of your gap toothed skull. I look at a picture on the fridge and stop myself from the gruesome calendar math inherent in the image. I try not to calculate how many days you had left to live in each and every scene.

We have grown some of the muscles that surviving loss demands. We navigate the tough places and hold feelings in check. Just when I think I have successfully walled off the no longer possible life, I see Dan weeping over wedding dresses shown on TV. Not our path now. So much anticipated joy surrendered. On Easter, there will be no Peeps here. A ridiculous and silly thing to miss, I know, but it is another little whiff of fun we have had to dismiss. Morgan, you thought that Peeps were hilarious: the Easter equivalent of fruitcake, always present and yet never consumed. And so they were a funny inclusion in every Easter basket I ever assembled – another task that is no longer mine to do.

I am grateful that it is easier to hold these feelings in check than it was a year ago. Morgan, our life is not so sharp and fraught with pain. We are making it. Feels sort of like we have moved from walking on shards of glass to merely walking on eggshells. Still a tricky path to navigate and one I so much wish we didn’t have to walk. We miss you always and mourn the loss of joy.

241
Mom

Morgan Harrington

English 111

Reader’s Journal #3

11 September 2006

“My Philosophy of Life”

This weekend, my mom told me that my chores would involve outdoor work instead of the usual indoor vacuuming. I was not thrilled about this change from my typical routine and had a bad attitude when I first knelt down to begin gardening. Once my body finally adjusted to the heat and my hand movements developed a circular pattern to spread the soil, I grew comfortable in nature next to my mom. As I thumped the earth around the roots of the flowers, my mind began to wander. It was then that I realized how plants are very similar to people.
Just as people need certain things to survive, plants do as well. A young plant needs serious attention from a gardener until it grows strong enough to thrive on its own. A gardener must position the plant in an area where the sprout will receive just the right amount of sunlight; however, too much sun will cause the plant’s leaves to shrivel up and eventually it will die. Regular water is also a necessity required for plant survival but too much water will wash the roots right out of the ground and kill the plant. After the plant has been placed, and nurtured, the gardener has to step back and let nature run its course. The plant still requires some nurturing and care, but survival is up to the plant. Some seeds never sprout, some blooms shrivel up and die unexplainably, and some plants never seem to grow to the expected size and splendor. There is only so much tending a gardener can do and the rest is up to nature and the plant. A person must be carefully nurtured and have good values instilled in him when he is young and begins maturing. Childhood is a “make or break it” stage in development where the individual is very fragile; therefore, parents must raise their kids with the best intentions. Parents must introduce tools for success to their children at a young age, for example, stressing the value of a good education. If a parent is overly emphatic and insistent about school, though, a child might reject learning altogether. Informing kids about the hardships in life is also something that a parent must do; however, if the parent reveals too much about suffering, the child could become overwhelmed and fearful of the world. Protection from overexposure to danger is necessary to a certain extent to maintain innocence, but there is a fine line between being protective and smothering the individual one tries to protect. Parents lay a foundation for their children, but after a certain point, it is truly up to the child whether or not he wants to thrive. Some kids have many opportunities presented to them but never take advantage of them, some kids drop out of high school, and some kids fail to reach their full potential. There is only so much a parent can do and it is really up to each child to lift his head up and reach for the sun.
I watched my mom clip dead basil leaves and I felt even more confident that my newly discovered philosophy of life was correct. My mom taught me about life and raised me to uphold certain values, but now I’m a senior in high school and I’m starting to make decisions for myself and emerge as my own person. I will always remember what she taught me and keep that knowledge in mind as I make independent decisions. Now I can only hope that the flowers we planted will do the same – but even if they don’t, I still have experienced a growth of insight as well as greater closeness with my mom through this simple gardening project.

241
Mom
1/26/2012

Morgan, you had such a hard time separating. That first year at VT was so rough on you. We thought it was because you were such a homebody, happy to have the foundation of family. I worry now instead, if you knew in an instinctive way that separation would be the death of you. Should we have listened differently?

The gift of loving and relationship brings with it the vulnerability of loss. It is a risk, but regardless, it is worth us experiencing this pain to have had you as our daughter for 20 years. Morgan you brought us much joy in your short life. Astoundingly, even two years after your murder, your positive legacy continues to reverberate across the world – Africa, USA, Switzerland, and Nepal.

Tragedy can either strengthen or destroy. We choose strength. We embrace the transformation that is not beating us down but forging us into tools, honing us as blades. Weapons – that are relentless in our pursuit of justice for Morgan Dana Harrington. Tools – that will hammer and smash the culture of complacency that contributed to your death; determined to Help Save The Next Girl.

Always,
241
Mom

Morgan you were, and continue to be part of the fabric of our lives. Silly things keep cropping up, like butter. There was always Alex butter (real butter) and Morgan butter (margarine). Now Alex is our only living child and it grieves me a bit to know that this insider Mama knowledge of my family’s preference is now irrelevant. Morgan is dead; get over it Gil! I am seeking closure and instead, at time, feel foreclosure – that all our investments of love and nurturing have been forfeited, wasted.

The anguish we feel from Morgan’s exclusion from our lives is cutting. The foreverness of death looms larger now as shock dissipates. We must change this pain into productivity; that is the way to wholeness and healing. I understand the huge opportunities that develop at times of loss. Like a field, you must be plowed; broken open and raw to receive new seeds that can flourish. We are there. We must surrender and let hope germinate. We must let go of attachments to certainty and allow the full spectrum of possibilities to show up. The harvest of that surrender is our very survival.

There is important work yet to be done as a result of Morgan’s death; both to honor Morgan and to Save The Next Girl: there is a school in Zambia to finish, a culture of complacency to change, and a scholarship to fund in Roanoke, and legislation to support that aids law enforcement and protects young women.

I am at best a reluctant activist. I would rather be on my third cup of tea, reading with a dog in my lap, not working, fighting for justice. But this is what I have been given to do and like every task I put my mind to; I will work hard and do my very best.
Morgan, the world was brightened by your time here and will be blessed by your departure as well. I am convinced that divine order exists. Perhaps we will have an arrest in you case only after we have wrung every possible bit of goodness from this terrible wrong. We are trying baby.

241
Mama

Gil: Bustles around leaving order in her wake and attempts to shore up this fractured family. Hoping eventually to organize us into some semblance of wholeness. Gil will travel to Zambia in November to check in on the nearly completed structure of the Morgan Harrington Educational Wing at OMNI village.

Alex: Has been phenomenally successful professionally. We believe that his trajectory is fueled by, driven by, Morgan in some way. We are so very proud to watch him soar.

Morgan: Still dead, and the obscenity of her murder demands retribution.

Kirby: Remains deranged. He is only a quasi-domesticated creature. We are afraid that there is badger or wolverine somewhere in his bloodline. Morgan loved Kirby despite his many  flaws – as do we.

We are all taking on a bit of water just now. I am not exactly sure why. I think it has something to do with the time of year. This is the season when you were killed. It is also the start of school and all the promise that youth entails is on display at every corner, waiting for the school bus – or tiptoeing into the campus bookstore agog at new horizons. Those visas are closed to us now as we try to live an inexplicable life.

I went to Charlottesville yesterday. Just couldn’t stop myself. I had to advise caution and awareness to a new crop of kids in that place where a predator still walks free. I know students feel invincible, Teflon coated, but while a murderer roams they are in actuality – fresh meat, fodder. It is too late to save you my darling, but having felt this anguish, I can’t quit on the next girl.

That’s what my trip was about: “Help Save the Next Girl”. I will not let your murder fade to beige and be swept aside – as suits so many. Towards that end, I went back to the bridge of your abduction. I weeded the boxwood plant and anointed its feet with iridescent glass jewels that catch the sunlight and spit it back like fire.  I festooned the gray granite of your marker with multicolored prayer flags that gesture blessings into every breeze. It may be for naught, silly even, for I know they clear away these expressions soon after I leave, but my urge to adorn and make note of sacred ground is a mother’s right, in fact a mother’s duty. Mine to perform – and so I shall.

Still I find it hard to believe that you are over, finito. How can that be? Morgan, you were so big. You drew in all the light and banged it back amped up x 10! So full of energy and life and fun! Now husks of bone and ash. What reality is this? Not the one I choose – but the reciprocal reality is madness. Though I dabble there at times, it frightens and holds little comfort. Pity, or I might take up residence in that space of altered mind where I could conjure you at will.

Morgan, I miss you so.

Always,
241
Mom

We are excited. Alex is coming home for a few days and we are planning to take a short trip together. It is difficult to envision such a thing, a pleasure trip, but we must find new traditions for our triangulated family to survive, to one day thrive again. Contemplating these new travels returns my thoughts to ponderings I had of you at the beach a few weeks ago.

Morgan, there are flashes of you all around. I see your rounded toddler legs pumping up and down the beach, splashing in the surf like a little sandpiper. I see your towhead white in the sunlight like dandelion fluff. I see your skin bronzing and freckles dawning on your nose. I see you dragging surfboards and buckets full of treasured shells over the dunes. I remember the grit of sand ridden sheets, of course in our bed, introduced by baby feet at nap time snuggle. I love to think of you grown and sleek in the water jumping waves for hours with Dad and laughing all the while. I see glimpses of you in other young girls, Kate, Eva, Iris. I think of you whenever a gesture or turn of phrase reveals youth and promise. These little daily bursts, trigger my memory cascade.

Morgan, don’t get me wrong, this process is NOT sad. I actually relish these memories and revisiting our time together. I am so grateful for what we did share. A lifetime telescoped into 20 short years. Was it your destiny Morgan, morgen? My morning girl, to leave here in the morning of your life? Perhaps.

We are all in the process of becoming; some of us change more profoundly or more quickly than others. We can only hope to transform into better, more useful stuff. That’s the goal. I understand that sometimes this metamorphosis is thrust, indeed forced on us, not chosen. The abrupt onset of transformation makes it harder to discern the innate positive aspects of change. That acceptance follows at a slower pace.

I remember several years ago pacing the beach, desperate to find one perfect shell to take to the sickbed of my beloved sister, dying at 50 years old. There were NONE. On this barrier island pummeled by tides, the shells are all fragments and bits. I wanted perfect, found none, and was forced to see a different option. We gathered broken shells, strung them together and presented Jackie with a mermaid’s necklace instead. You have to adapt to circumstances – as difficult as that seems.

Those broken shells are beaten and pounded into bits and become so tiny – grains of sand, which coalesce and become the beach we walk upon. That is what we must do. Take the broken pieces, the shards, the grains and build an island. This synthesis is the key to survival and the very heart of love.

We can do it, if you help Morgan.
241
Always,
Mom

It’s another birthday and it ain’t too happy

in fact it feels kinda crappy

see, you’ll always be

still twenty.

They tell me you’ll be forever young

and I just have to bite my tongue

coz from what I can see

forever young ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Morgan, you were such a beauty

but now you’re no way cutie.

I hate to be the one to tell

Honey, you look like hell.

In two years you’ve changed a lot.

There was that awkward stage of bones and rot

and now frankly, don’t mean to hurt

though forever young – you look old as dirt.

Oh yeah, how dumb,

that’s exactly what you have become.

Morgan, you’re 20 and holding, – your destiny.

Wish instead you were holding me.

241

Mom