Chip and Lilli, Rest in Peace
I remember this day last year. Laura called me and told me the news. I didn’t want to talk to her. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. I didn’t exactly know how to process that information. How am I expected to reconcile something I am totally unprepared for? I read everyone’s dedication poems, paragraphs of memories of her, written in a language too beautiful to be English.
I think, over the years, hearing the bitter news of a stranger, acquaintance, or best friend’s death, I’ve learned that it’s not something that’s meant to be reconciled. Death is not a problem that is meant to be solved or an issue with a definitive answer, it’s just a fact, a fact we all deal with in our own way. Hopefully, an attempt at acceptance will be appreciated by those we lost.
I may not have known Lilli as well as others did, but instead of getting angry with myself for not getting to know her better when I had the chance, I am thankful that I had the oppurtunity to know her at all.
And on this day two years ago, I was most likely unpacking from DYWC, basking in the memory of a monkey flying at my face when a poem (or prose, most likely), was taking too long for me to share with my fellow dreamers. Two years isn’t a long time, but right now those memories seem so distant. I think change, no matter how drastic, causes the length of time between two points to widen significantly.
Sometimes when I hear news like this, I permit the childish counterparts of my imagination to wander into the depths of the afterlife, dreaming of a cloudy room where Chip and Lilli, despite the differences in their lives, can meet once again to view the sorrowful yet glorious ways in which they are remembered by those who knew them both. Hopefully, they are remembering together what it was like to join up and share in a community where everyone can instantly feel comfortable, and hopefully, they know that their positive and welcoming nature are what made it so easy for everyone, especially myself. I hope they know that in addition to every other meaningful difference they made in the world, their contribution to the enrichment of the lives of duke young writers is appreciated, and their presence at DYWC will never be forgotten.
Thank You Lilli. Thank You Chip. Just being there…made all the difference.
