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

We have spent several days at the beach. Initially, the solitude and the slower tempo are difficult for us. It takes a few more days to turn down the staccato cadence of our lives and follow, instead, the measured rhythm of the ocean. These natural rhythms are healing and calming, but hard to discern when you move so far away from source. It is vital for health to find a slower pace. Many treatment modalities are based on allowing intrinsic patterning to reestablish, like defibrillation for cardiac muscle – or meditation for the spirit. Sometimes, we just have to turn off and reboot to factory settings to function optimally.

That is what we do for ourselves here at the ocean. We de-frag the program of our lives by reintroducing the simplicity, strength and beauty of nature into our existence. Funny that it is so hard to give it over to this process. We cling to the distractions and business of our lives like the children playing in the surf cling to inner tubes, thinking that will save them from the force of the tide. It is wrong thinking though. Inner tubes and water wings do help you float in calm water – for a while. Ultimately, what you need to do to survive in water is learn to SWIM. Be elegant and strong – fishlike in the waves. Morgan, you were like this in the sea. Boldly diving into the pounding waves, your hair silvered like an otter’s pelt and your movements as sure and sleek.

Living requires courage; do not just bob along on the surface, near the shore, afraid. Most of us live below our spiritual capacity. Dad and I have been pushed into deep waters and choose to be brave and to swim; knowing that we are here for a purpose and choose to show up and live at the highest level. This is what I learn from you Morgan – and from the wisdom in these crashing waves.

241

Goodness, things have to lighten up soon.  I am about at my limits of strength and ability to process information.  I am just back from a quick trip to NYC to shore up Alex.  It feels like I have been in constant motion since returning from Africa – to NYC twice, to D.C., to Charlottesville, to North Carolina…. spinning like a top at times.  I have been traveling so much that I’m getting disoriented when I open the fridge and think “but I know I just bought milk. Where is it? Oh, that was another fridge.” Much of my busyness is to stop the despair that Dan and Alex slide into during my two weeks away in Africa.  We have all become like delicate plants that wither quickly when nurturing and tending is withdrawn.

So I am on the circuit to do my Mama nurturing, leaving filled refrigerators, clean laundry, and order in my wake.  That is a particularly hard task to do in NYC where I have to cart the fixings of every meal through the streets and up three flights of stairs to Alex’s apartment.   I found myself considering meals dependent on their weight.   Somehow, I couldn’t get Alex to buy into a dinner of rice cakes, popcorn and marshmallows.  Pity, it would have been so easy – and light!  It is funny to figure out what value you add on.   I see that mine is to provide sanctuary to those I love, easing things up a bit.

This is a nice gig to have and pretty intuitive for me.  I know how to make the daily grind recede and the sense of home emerge.  When Dan and Alex fall in the door, I can be there to catch them with the sustenance of food and music and love all around.  Then, they are able to take that nexus of calm and use it as a foundation to take on the world – the next day.   With my caring, I chip away some of the anguish from your death and the incessant demands of work.

The habit of joy is so easily forgotten and most difficult to recapture.  We have definitely lost our way on this – we have got the work side of the equation down solidly, but the pleasure/reward part is missing since your murder, Morgan.  I believe that the way out is to add the grace notes, wherever possible and to guard the space where contentment might grow.  Exuding joy into your life is like the letting down of milk; it cannot be forced, but creating an environment of serenity allows the nurture to flow.   We need to pay attention to this process and help it along.  Otherwise, I fear we are at risk of essentially becoming collateral victims of Morgan’s killer, alive, but without a life.   No way, no how, will I let him inflict further damage to us; we will work it out.  I happened on a phrase that resonated and that I want to create for our triangulated family:  “post traumatic growth”. It IS possible – it even has a name!  Morgan help us conjure this reality.

241

Mama

I have a streaming of thoughts to you constantly, incessantly. Those thoughts and feelings do not always make it to paper for many reasons. Some of it I know is reluctance to probe the painful places. I think, maybe if I let the feelings alone, pain will dissipate of its own
accord. Instead, I find that the emotions fester. I know it is air and light that retards infection and decay – so I will start.

It has been a hard stretch all around. My trip to Africa was both transformative and instructive as it always is, but my absence was particularly difficult for both Dan and Alex this time. Our OMNI team of 15 saw 3077 patients in seven clinics in Zambia. We worked hard and did much good. Our attempt to address the inequities of destiny is gratifying and frustrating as well. I am proud of the many we did help, but heartsick at the throngs we were unable to serve. We will try to do more, be better, smarter, stronger, and more effective – next trip.

The Morgan Harrington Educational Wing is coming along. In the span of a single year, the site has gone from a grassy field to a building, a big one! With walls and a roof! Some interior work remains, but it is getting close to being completed. So very exciting to watch it grow.

Growth/synthesis/forward motion is imperative to surviving our grief with any kind of wholeness. It is hard to achieve growth and even hard to recognize it when it occurs. I had some insight gardening after my return from Zambia. I was deadheading the spent overblown blossoms of my favorite Peonies and feeling a little sad that I had been absent for
the fullness of their flowering. This brought tears when paralleled with the realization I also will miss the full flowering of you, my beloved child.

It is incomprehensible that these plants, my peonies, will be back next year – as magnificent and fragrant as ever. I will have another chance to revel in their beauty. You however, will not sprout next year and give us another chance to witness and to love. The Morgan form of you is
finished. Over. But here is the very cornerstone of faith to me: the unwavering conviction that the direction of nature/God/the universe is towards growth and good. That core belief makes me receptive to the vestiges of you Morgan that continues to show up. I get that you are over as a person, but as a presence, I am searching for you everywhere and because my eyes are open, I find you.

Morgan you were murdered so young, just 20 years on the planet, but your life, your impact, your goodness continues to reverberate in the world. Our beautiful incandescent girl continues somehow to shine, against all odds, even death. You are part of educating children and physicians, your art are on display, you are changing laws and mores, shattering complacency and building community.

Morgan, you STILL matter.

241
My sweetheart,
Always,
Mama