It was April 28th, 2016 and Kathleen Joaquin Burkhalter-Bell departed from her earthly life.
Today is May 1st and I will play the most difficult concert of my life.
It was always to be a Memorial Concert, but this entire semester, I had hoped it wouldn't be a Memorial for someone so important to me.
I know that her family is suffering this loss more than I am and I am not writing this to take away from that pain but I still need to express my own. To help me to wrap my head around how I feel as well. To give a sliver of insight into how my pain reflects there own on a scale that is so minuet it barely compares.
Still, I've never hurt this much before.
In a lot of ways it's difficult, near impossible, to talk about this rationally or to put the words and the reality together in a way that is both accurate and understandable.
Her kids, my closest friends, have described the void of her presence as a black hole.
I may not have that black hole. But there is still a mark. A deep gash left in the wake of her parting.
My heart aches in a way I wasn't sure it was possible for me to feel, even more so because Mama Bell and everything she gave me, is part of the reason that I sometimes can believe in overcoming the darkness of that place. She is a major part of the reason I'm still here.
Let me explain:
Mama Bell has saved my life in more ways than I knew before I was forced to start recognizing her loss. She has given me more than I understood before this moment. And to admit it, means to admit to some of the demons and truths that have been bouncing echoes in my heart for some time. It's naturally difficult, but on the scale of what is happening, of the pain of loss, my personal struggles seem like nothing. Still, I need to explain it.
I started college in 2007, stumbling through the process of making friends, as many do, I met and connected to some people who are still connections in my life. However, throughout my Freshman year, I always heard about one particular person. Someone just outside my periphery. It was in my sophomore year I finally met this person that everyone talked so warmly about, Ana-Maria Bell.
Ana-Maria is a sparkling person. A true gem. I knew that truth from everything I had heard about her, even before I had the chance to meet her. What I didn't realize until I met the whole family was that this was a common trait. Their mother had instilled that sparkling passion, wit, creativity, and knack for mischief into each of her children and (although I have no way of really knowing this) I assume she brought it out in her husband, David, as well. Mama Bell had a way of making everyone around her sparkle and bringing out their best, whether that best was kindness, sincerity, gossip, mischief, wit, generosity, or any number of other things. Maybe that talent for connecting and bringing out talents came from her unabashed love of the things she enjoyed. Maybe it was her absolute sense of presence or her undying love. Maybe it was her own motherly instincts, her boundless care and generosity.
It doesn't matter what caused that sparkle, not really. Because it lives on in every one of her children today. Even in hard times.
Every one of them possess that Love of Life that she did. They laugh often and loud. They love things and they grieve things.
And although this grief, this loss, will be one of the hardest to bare, I know she left them with the skills and love and outlook they need to keep moving.
...let me go back to my explanation.
I met and became friends with quickly with Ana-Maria Bell when the fates finally allowed. I love her deeply and that has never changed. She was always willing to aid me if I needed it, always willing to sit in the sun between classes like her beloved cat Tigger, warm in the grass of the college Amphitheater. We talked and complained about classes and professors like any other students but I loved spending time with her because she made me feel like I was special and different and lovable in a way that I didn't know or understand before. I was so grateful to have a friend that shared a way of seeing the world that was so fresh and so new. Getting to know her and her family made me feel so saved, so changed, and so renewed.
In a lot of ways, this was the first instance that Mama Kathleen Bell saved my life. She raised and formed Ana-Maria into the person I am friends with today. A strong, resilient, beautiful, caring, generous soul that was the core of everything that made Kathleen who she is. Wit and wonderment included.
Still, as is the unfortunate side of it all, my friendship didn't squish away the darkness that is my constant battle against depression. It never will but it always helps. At some point in my college career things were very internally dark and I realized that I needed help. I realized who might help me.
Mama Bell bitterly understood the way depression eats at people. I knew that from everything I had learned about her, from stories Ana told, and the stories that Kathleen herself had told me.
So that's why, one sunny but spring like day, I went to the Bell House after classes just to talk to her. She might not be an expert (in the professional sense) but I just needed someone to advise me. Someone that was outside of my situation and my fears. Someone who could present to me a new way of thinking and seeing things.
I sat with her that afternoon and I explained to her some of the ways my brain worked. I explained to her how things were falling apart. The negative ways I was coping with them.
And Mama Bell, always willing to help, never faltering in the advice column, gave me the inspiration I needed. Taught me something important. Things I still treasure today:
First, Give up that negative vice. It's only going to make things worse.
Second, Always pray and don't be afraid to ask for signs. --She told me some of her stories of asking for signs from God. Asking for things that are specific. Things that you and God know and no one else, to help you know what his will is. It was a guiding force for her and she had a number of amusing stories about when these things had helped her in the past. (Including one of my favorites in which a "Bud" ad told her that yes, David Bell was her future husband).
Third, Projects are your friend. Even if there is nothing helpful about completing the project, the project itself is worth it.
Fourth, (and this is the one that always amazed me right to the end about her) always, always, find the good and positive things in life. Always find something to laugh at.
In addition to her advice, that day was the day I had my first connection with the eldest of the Bell children, Mercy. I don't recall where she was at in her musical journey at that time and I know I had met her before, but Mercy was and still is someone I look up to and admire. Mama Bell gave me another gift that day, another piece of advice I didn't even know I was receiving.
Be true to your passions.
Mercy has the adventurous soul that Kathleen always tells people to treasure. She would tell me sometimes that us children should go out and make plans to see the world because years from now when we are at home with our babies, washing the 100th dish of the day we can look back and dream of those places and things that we saw.
Passion for life. For dreams. That's what Mama Bell passed on to Mercy and when Mercy chimed in about how having projects was always helpful to her because it gave her something to do when things were rough, etc. Kathleen and Mercy saved me again.
I took all those words to heart and things started to change. I quit my job that was quickly causing me to fail classes. I changed. I grew. I learned. I found the purpose I needed to get through the school year. To push ahead. To dream. To drop my negative habits. All of it.
I won't pretend that it was an easy thing to do, but Mama Bell helped me through it in more ways than she even knows. Ana-Maria was a true and resilient friend in my life at that tumultuous time. Mercy became an inspiration.
The other children too, became connections that I love and felt so deeply over that next year and beyond. JM, the older of the sons, who was always a bright intellect, I honestly wasn't sure how to connect to until sometime that year when I found out that he had Mama Bell's passions for creative writing. Since then, it's been a great and enjoyable friendship that I cherish.
Rosie and Kiko, the youngest of the Bells, I watched grow up. I remember seeing them bustle in and out and around the house with the others with a sense of passionate freedom that Mama Bell instilled in them. It's been 8 years since I first met them and I have seen how they have grown and matured, following their passions into the beautiful, strong, intelligent people they are. Guided by the warm and loving hands of their parents. Mama "Bragamama" Bell was never afraid to talk about her children's accomplishments and they were many. Many many many.
I cherish every one of them, like I cherish Mama Bell. But the next time Kathleen saved me was through her other daughter, Seraphina. The person I am delighted and blessed to call my best friend. She is my favorite of Mama Bell's accomplished protege (sorry everyone) but looking at her, reflected in her mother, I see that the generosity, the kindness, the wit, the caution, the creativity, the willingness to laugh, the stubborn indignant and sometimes contrary nature, all the many facets of Sera's personality that I love and connect with, are things that Mama Bell had. Things that she gave and nurtured in her.
Although I knew Seraphina before this, she stepped into my life entirely when I was in my senior year of college. I was trying desperately to bounce back from a summer where my life was in shambles, falling apart at the seams. I had lost a lot of things, was desperate for control and stability. I was broken, depressed and starting a brand new semester with the hope that maybe things would be okay even though I had no idea how that could be possible.
But then, Seraphina and I started working together at the Writing Center on campus and as our friendship grew, the scary dark curtain in my life started to lift. Things started to feel possible again and my heart grew stronger.
Mama Bell gave the world her children and did what she could to give her children the world. She gave me Seraphina and I was saved again.
The next time I began to stumble and fall apart, I was looking for a sort of "life coach". Someone to talk to that would help me get direction in my life that was now. At this time, although it had been a few years, I still felt newly graduated, directionless. I was living at home, working part time, going no where at all.
I was depressed and lost and I remember making a post "joking" about life coaches and Kathleen saw it.
She saw it and took up the challenge.
Mama Bell's natural disposition towards love and positivity made her an excellent neuro-positive life coach. I talked to her on the phone for an hour, once a week, usually late on Saturday mornings and she guided me one step at a time through the motions of positive thinking. Of rebuilding my brain toward a thought process that would be stronger and better, more sustaining. She encouraged me to create a "dream board" on Pintrest. Encouraged me to shoot for my dreams. Encouraged me in so many ways.
She pulled me up when I was scared too, about an operation I was having. About the looming fear of Breast Cancer, something she battled, understood, and was able to advise me on. She talked me away from a lot of painful edges and into something much more positive. In time, my schedule got too busy, I fell away from the practices she taught me. But I will always love those conversations. I will always cherish those early afternoons and remember them with the fondness of sunlight, coffee, and the warm wit of her sharp tongue. The stories she told me will always echo in my heart.
I will miss those stories.
The most recent way that Mama Bell saved my life, was again through her children.
Briefly, It happened that I fell into a spiral of depression much deeper and darker and more dangerous than I had experienced in a long while. I didn't know how to push through, I didn't know how to deal with it.
At my worst place, I reached out to Seraphina, a token of light and goodness in my life. Light and goodness she learned from her family, from her mother and father. From David and Kathleen. She helped me find my footing again.
Kiko too, although I don't know that he knows it, helped me by reminding me "one day at a time" in relation to something else unrelated. Take it one step at a time. He spread joy, he smiled, he did and continues to do, as his mother always taught him to do. Live life to the fullest. "One day at a time".
And then JM too, although I don't know he'd know it either, brought me a feeling of acceptance, of connection that I had thought was gone, by simply talking to me about writing. About stories. Like my opinion was valid and mattered. Kathleen always did that. She always listened. She always made you feel like you mattered. In a big way.
Rosie became something of a kitchen cohort. She and I shared videos, baked cookies and cakes and brownies, and the smiles on her parents faces were always kind, excited, and validating. Especially in those trying times....
David and Kathleen gave me the best friends I have ever had.
I love them so much.
I love them all so much.
I love and will still love Mama (auntie, Tita) Bell very much.
The worst part in all of this, is that no matter how much I loved her and will always love her, I couldn't do anything for her in the end. I couldn't save her the way she saved me. I never was able to give back to her everything she gave to me. I was never really able to show her how much I love her and how much she means to me.
I know, logically, it wouldn't change the outcome.
But I still wish, as I know all her family does in some way.
I cannot imagine how much her family hurts right now. I cannot comprehend it. The way I feel now is bad enough. Magnifying it a thousand times over seems incomprehensible.
Mama Bell, I know you are looking down and smiling at all your friends and family now. I know you are happily reunited with the people who went on before you. We will all miss you here, but we still feel your love in so many ways...
Today, May 1st. I have a concert.
It's a Memorial Concert.
I never intended to play it for you, Mama Bell, but I will now.
Every note that I manage to pull out of my shaking fingers will be for you.
To say thank you for everything you did for me, everything you gave to me.
And above all, to tell you how much I love you and I miss you already.
So, enjoy the Heavenly Chorus, Kathleen. Enjoy laughing with your sister, talking with you mother and father, and watching over all the people whose lives have been blessed by your presence.
Mama Bell?
Rest in Peace.
