Friday, November 19, 2004

The Swift Uplifting Rush

I’m writing to recommend an article I had a very hard time getting through, about a TV program I’ll find it just as hard to watch.

The article appeared in Thursday’s Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58911-2004Nov17.html) and it’s about a Discovery Channel program called Cha-Ching: Money Makers, a reality show that chronicles the efforts of families to find money for pet projects, like vacations or remodeling projects. In particular the article is about the episode that aired today, which records the efforts of the Rush family to raise money to re-do their basement.

We’re interested because the Rushes are Capitol Hill friends and neighbors of ours. Mary Rush was our son Phil’s second grade teacher. Phil and Jack Rush went through school together from nursery school through the eighth grade.

As the Post article makes clear, there’s a lot of Mayberry about Capitol Hill. Everybody knows everybody. And everybody knew Mary Rush. She taught your kids in first or second grade, stood on the sidelines with you watching kids play soccer or softball, or bought vegetables or flowers next to you on Saturday at Eastern Market, and volunteered in a hundred worthy causes. Her innate kindness and ironic wit were as integral a part of the Hill as the trees that shelter the streets and sidewalks.

Have I given it away by using the past tense?

That at age 45, in perfect health as far as anyone could tell, while overseeing afternoon recess on a sunny May afternoon, she had a heart attack and died, right there on the Watkins Elementary School playground?

A year or so earlier, another much-loved Watkins teacher had died. In the line outside her funeral, which packed St. Peter’s Catholic Church to overflowing, my wife ran into Mary. They marveled at the crowd. "Do you think," Mary asked, "that we’ll get a turnout like this when we go?"

Well, of course she did. A memorial service at the school spilled out the auditorium and onto the playground, where her friends, present and former students and their parents, and colleagues held candles in vigil. The funeral the next day at Capitol Hill Presbyterian drew 700 or 800, according to the Post. All I could tell was that the church, the balcony, the lobby, and the sidewalk were all full.

The memorial card they passed out at the memorial service had a verse on it. I hadn’t seen it before, but a Google search gets over 15,000 hits from all over the country and the world, so it has obviously had meaning for a lot of people.

That May night on the Watkins playground, it was as though it had been written just for Mary, and just for us.

Do not stand at my grave and weep;

I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn's rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush,

I am the swift uplifting rush

of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry;

I am not there, I did not die.


12:30:07 PM    comment []