Eulogy for Jocelyn
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Cris Stoddard's Eulogy for Jocelyn |
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On Jocelyn - Cris Stoddard What value will I
carry away from this tragedy? Toward
what purpose can I put this loss so that my life and her life will benefit with
a total victory over the negativity inherent in this violent act? Jocelyn’s benefit
in my life had been to imbue me with certain characteristics – she was a model
for me in many ways of how I wanted to interact with the world, of the good
person I could be. She always saw that
good person in me even when I could not, even when we fought so much that in
the moment she did not. She told me that
she always knew I was a good person and that she so valued my role in her life. My relationship
with her was the first major adult relationship I had with a woman. I thought, as did she at that time, that we
would be lifelong partners. I was 22,
she was 24. We had no money and I had no sense at all of how to be an adult, to
have responsibilities, or even to have goals.
Jocelyn had a strong send of self, a strong moral conviction, and an
idea of what she wanted her life to have.
She taught me the value of what I was doing, thinking, consuming and
desiring at any given moment. She made
me question anything that I thought I knew.
She made me laugh and she made me feel safe. Unfortunately, I
was a young little self-absorbed shit-head and despite my best intentions, I
had no spine, no courage, no honesty with which to
live my life. As I have stated ever
since we broke up, I had found the woman that I did want to spend the rest of
my life with but I found her before I had learned painful lessons. I lost her because I had to learn painful
lessons. I looked for her in many
subsequent relationships until I finally found a part of her in the Self that I
needed to become. By the time I had
found me, I had thought that I had lost her – she had moved to I lived my life in
ignorance of her and whenever I caught up with my two closest friends, Laura
and Kayt, we often asked, “Gee, I wonder where Joc
is?” I moved last fall
to western I know that she felt pain at feeling disconnected, period. This is a human condition and Jocelyn was very sensitive to it. She has not had, as have I not had, the greatest track record with relationships. Yet, she gave her time, her heart, and her life freely – as can be witnessed by the work she put into every job she ever had, the connections she made with people at CC, and the impact she has had on – well, my life for certain. She gave generously of her time and strength to others and I believe this generousity helped to mitigate the disconnections she felt in life. So, having found
her number, I then remembered that I had never fully made amends to her for the
ways in which I had failed her. I was too
embarrassed to call her. I was too afraid
to call her. I thought that I could just
wait and maybe that courage would come to me and then I could reconnect with
her. About one week
later, I received an email from her. In
her usual steadfast and determined way, she had set about to find me and so she
searched the Internet until she did.
What she had found was an old posting on usenet
in a dog forum in which I was having a belligerent argument with someone I had
deemed a prick. I learned righteous
indignation before having met Jocelyn but my experience with her righteous
indignation had taught me well. If you
acted like an asshole to me, I would climb up into your face and tell you that
you were an unmitigated asshole. I know Jocelyn
never held back as well. Anyway, this
posting to usenet from 1996 had my email address on
it and this is how she found me. There are very few
moments in our lives when any of us actually get a chance to rectify our
pasts. Somehow, when
I received her email, I found the courage to immediately apologize for the ways in
which I had let her down and I earnestly spoke to her from my heart about how
much I loved her and how happy I was to have her back in my life. Jocelyn is and was always the family that I
never had and I felt an enormous sense of relief at being reconnected with
her. To my great joy, she responded with
an abundant and embracing love and told me that she was back in my life to stay
and that she hoped we would share the future together as friends. I connected her up with our mutual friend,
Laura, for her recent trip to Jocelyn encouraged
me, motivated me, and moved me. She felt
strongly about all of her connections and she felt great pain at the ‘disconnects’
she had felt in her own life. I was looking forward to flying out here to visit
her and to talk with her, to really connect with her. I hoped that I could influence her with my
new sense of self to help her overcome her sense of disconnect. I hoped to be able to repay her my debt of
gratitude by being able to offer her encouragement, support, love, a guiding
hand. Of course, I let my
daily life and the few 1000 miles of distance interfere with calling her as much
as she wanted me to do. She called and
left messages that I swore I’d return.
On I was so livid and
yet so aware of my anger. I wanted to
get up into this man’s face and tell him to go to hell for crumpling my
car. Instead, I folded my arms and said
nothing. I am trying to control and to
contain the rage in my life and to spread peace and dialogue in the world – not
pain and discord. However, this accident
so ruined my day that I decided to not attend a concert for which I had tickets
– WAMFest – also for which Jocelyn had written about
in her letter to me. When the phone rang
and it was the 719 area code, I figured it was Jocelyn asking about the concert
and I decided not to pick up the phone. When the phone rang
early the next morning from 719, I really wondered why the hell she had to be
so tenacious about reconnecting with me.
When I saw the color drain from my roommate’s face as she handed the
phone to me, I wondered why I was still so selfish – I knew something was
wrong. When I heard a voice that told me
she was Tina Pettit calling from I have, to date,
lost about 39 close friends to death of one sort or the other. Motorcycle accidents, drug overdoses,
suicides, AIDS, cancer. It is my plague
in life and my greatest fear has always, always been losing one of my former
lovers. I never wanted to feel the agony
of losing someone whom I had slept with, or romanced by, or otherwise
intimately involved. For me, the pain of
not being connected to any of my ex’s had always been a hardship and a sore
spot. I know Jocelyn felt that way as
well – she told me so. We both asked
each other why those we had been involved with shied away from us. I surmised that everyone needs time and space
to heal from their own pains… that I had an ex or two that I really wanted
nothing to do with. She told me that now
that she’d found me, she would never go away from me and I concurred and we
both took comfort in that sense of connectedness. I almost told Tina
what she was trying to tell me. I asked,
“oh no, this isn’t that, is it, this isn’t ‘bad bad’ is it? This is just ‘bad’, right? Not ‘bad bad’.” Babbling. Her next words
stunned me. I knew by the call that
Jocelyn was dead and I was already trying to process the profound sense of loss
I was starting to feel. When she told me that Jocelyn had been murdered and then
the circumstances of that crime, as she then understood it, I was dumbfounded,
enraged, shocked, stunned, and so so so so so
very sad. It felt and feels
unfair. Unfinished. This will never
make sense to me. “Why” it happened will
never be understood. That it happened
and that it has consequences is all that can be understood. That there are so many twists and turns of
fate in my personal story of her will not likely be understood. But that her death _must_ have some value is
essential. It is what we do with our
knowledge that makes all the difference and it is how we live our lives after
we are impacted by an undeniable event that then shapes our lives and our
worlds. Jocelyn will never
be meaningless so long as my memory of her, and your memories of her, translate
into some action taken on her behalf and on our own behalves. Whatever ‘lesson’ or ‘moral’ that can be
drawn will be different for us all… but her gift of herself to me means that I
must be more earnest and diligent in my gift of my life to all of those who
come my way and who came my way. My
anger, my indignation, my sorrow, my fears are not what is of value. It is my joy of life, my compassion for
others, my determinations to help and to guide, to mentor others, my
willingness to work as hard as it takes to accomplish my dreams and goals….
These are all things I learned from Jocelyn and all the very things that I can
carry on with to ensure that her life is an eternal well from which others may
benefit. She _loved_
living. She reveled in music – that was
her haven and her refuge. She loved
being in a community of music – she loved going to shows and listening to music
and spinning music and she loved everyone she worked with at CC. I know this because when we last spoke to
each other she made sure to tell me how much the folks at CC meant to her. She knew that it is through culture – through
music and the arts – that people are touched and she contributed to that
touching of other people’s lives by all of the work she did around music. Maybe
I am making it grander than you might think, but I know her and I know she has
a love for humanity that makes her a true bodhisattva of this saha world. I know that I can uphold her values around
contributing to the world culturally. I
know that I can carry on in her tradition of mentoring people but never being
condescending to people. She made time for
people. This was a very core value of
hers and I am battling with my shame for how I do not make time for
people. I can determine to carry on her
tradition of making time for people and for checking in with people no matter
the relationship. I believe that she had
no regrets about the efforts she had been making in recent months to get it all
straight with everyone she had ever connected with in her life. I am eternally grateful that she sought me
out and I will courageously attend to this in my own life in order to keep her
spirit alive. The circumstances
of her death are difficult. Why did she
leave her vehicle? Who did she
encounter? What was the encounter about? Who started it? How did it come to end as it did? What role did she play in the outcome? I know my last statement may seem
inappropriate but Jocelyn would not hedge the question had she been alive. No one is perfect in any given moment. We don’t yet know what happened and it is
futile to speculate. However, I need to
carry away from this a pledge in my life to not contribute to violence on any
level. Christ called this turning the
other cheek, Gandhi and King both preached non-violence, and my mentor in faith
tells us to battle for our happiness and to create harmony in our lives and in
our world regardless of external circumstance.
I want her murder swiftly and justly avenged. I want to carry myself in such a way that I
don’t worsen the roles that violence plays on this stage. I want you all to do the same – I really
want to show from her senseless, meaningless, horrific death that a greater
good is at the end of all evil.
Specifically, that greater good is how we each change as a result of
this tragedy and how we each vow to not perpetuate the senselessness of
violence in each of our lives. I am really talking
to each of you directly. That GF or BF
you want to nag or to decimate due to some perceived wrong? Think again.
That asshole who called you some name as you walked by? Think again.
The boss, the parent, the whatever – whoever – whatever that brings that
animalistic desire to fight? Whoever
murdered Jocelyn carried something within themselves that allowed them to stab
her that we all carry within us, which we all manifest when we dismiss someone
critically, when we gossip maliciously, or judge or condemn, or hate. The hate we show to others by being rude or
passive or unkind is also the hate with which we can treat ourselves – our pain
of disconnectedness. Besides that I will
not in this lifetime be able to sit with Jocelyn and to laugh with her again,
that greatest pain I have is that this woman, who loved so many of us, felt
disconnected. True, she told me that she
was happier than she’d ever been but she also carried a pain of separation
about her. That she died alone, face down,
in the early morning, so close to home and yet so far away… this is the most
painful thing to me. This is the
greatest tragedy for she lived her life so gregariously so for so many people. She LOVED all of you. I am disgusted that she died alone. We abandon each other in a multitude of ways
daily – I am determined to not abandon anyone again as this incident so
outrages me. Jocelyn should have lived
to be 100 and should have had each of us waiting on her hand and foot. She should have outlived her parents. She should not have died ALONE. And I sure do
hope she’s able to be somewhere enjoying the
terrible irony that her former lovers and her current friends and her family
all gathered in the same place, Shove Chapel on the campus of Colorado College, to honor
her one fine Spring morning in 2002. "once the realization is accepted
that even between the closest of human beings infinite distances continue to exist, then a wonderful loving side by side can grow up, if each succeeds in seeing the other whole and against a
wide sky." –rilke my life closed twice before
its close it yet remains to see if immortality unveil a third event to me so huge, so hopeless to
conceive as these that twice befell for parting is all we know of
sorrow and all we need of hell. -emily |