Sometimes you’re going along in life -- traveling at that furiously hectic pace we often decry but seem helpless to moderate -- when something brings the craziness to a crashing halt and changes the very fabric of reality. These larger-than-life events are landmarks on the map of life, plot points of no return, moments that mark the end of one way of being in the world and the beginning of another. For my family and me such a moment happened last weekend with the unexpected death of my aunt, Judi Crowder.
Aunt Judi was an amazing woman, one of the most compassionate and generous people ever to walk on this earth, a humanitarian in the truest sense of the word, and a devoted mother, wife, sister, grandmother, aunt, friend and most dedicated special education teacher. Take a look at the Judi Crowder Memorial page on Facebook, and you get a sense of what she meant to so many.
What you will read time and time again boils down to selflessness. Even while telling people loudly and with great fanfare that it’s “all about me,” she lived a life that was so very often exactly the opposite. She chose a career path few take, working with profoundly impaired and handicapped children, rarely passed up an opportunity to offer an encouraging word to the discouraged, and frequently reached out to those in need to meet their needs, often anonymously, with no ceremony or fanfare. She counseled, she listened, she advised often, even when it was inconvenient to do so, when the easier thing to do would have been to just walk away, not answer, respond or return the call.
She loved so many unsung souls deeply and passionately, regardless of color, race, creed, orientation, doctrine, or state of cleanliness -- the stinky, the dirty, the tired, the poor, the different, those who most often are ignored in our society. To those hopelessly lost in webs of darkness, she made no distinction about whether the dark morass they were engulfed in was what some might characterize a “moral choice;” she just embraced them as only she could in a great big Judi hug that reduced the suffering of life to a crazy, funny, silly-assed dance filled with laughter.
Oh, how Aunt Judi knew and understood the healing and freedom that comes when people are given the space to be silly and laugh! In another life she might have been a stand-up comedienne – that’s how funny she was. She could transform anything we were doing into side-splitting, wet-your-pants, doubled-over, laugh-until-your-stomach-hurt hilarity. And the thing is, she made having fun so effortless and easy, you didn’t even know she was running the show until she left the room, and then you realized the magic left the room too, and you couldn’t wait for her to come back.
Aunt Judi was of course very human – and she made no bones about her flaws – but she’d come to terms with who she was, made peace with it. She was comfortable in her skin in a way few are, and that gave her the clarity to be tougher than nine-inch nails when needed, unflinchingly examine her shadow side, and acknowledge moments of despair. She often creatively cursed the unfairness of a world mad with power, celebrity, greed and selfishness.
Aunt Judi had absolutely no use for pretentiousness or egoistic fools, and could see through bullshit faster than anyone I know. If a lucky soul ran into Judi in the midst of an episode of narcissism, you could count on her to cure them of their illusions of self-importance. She whittled people down size in such a way that they never really knew what happened – they just went away with a better of understanding of how to be in the world. Conversely, those engaged in actively helping others, she lifted up, encouraged, rallied to their side, often slipping them a check to help their work.
And speaking of ego, people often say they don’t care what people think of them, but then if you just listen and watch awhile, it’s pretty clear they don’t really mean it. Aunt Judi was one of those very rare people who really and truly didn’t care what you thought of her, or whether you liked her. That made her a force of nature that couldn’t be manipulated. She used that power for one purpose – to help the kids she worked with – and God help you if you got in her way.
Aunt Judi was an advocate like no other. I have no doubt that every principal she ever worked with paradoxically admired, respected and avoided her. In her quest to ease the way for her kids and their families, she was simply undeniable. Resistance to Judi was like trying to resist the Borg of Star Trek fame – futile – and telling her “no” wasn’t the end of a battle, it was the start of a war, guaranteed to end in metaphorical death-by-Judi -- a deeply painful and drawn-out process where you might, not-so-quietly, be hassled and reduced to a quivering mass. Better to say yes -- the inevitable outcome anyway -- and be done with it.
Aunt Judi did all this without any illusions as to the general shittiness of life or thinking her efforts would somehow change things. She “got” the Universe, its randomness, human insignificance, our capacity for violence and cruelty, our general lack of consciousness about our planet and the lives of all species on it. She knew all that and I think consciously decided to just try and live the change she wanted to see.
At an instinctual level she knew that suffering punctuated with joy was the reality of life, that joy can be found in the smallest of things, in music, color, art, nature, animal friends, laughter, dancing. She saw light in the most unexpected of places and in the darkest of times. And she knew that if we have the will, wisdom and courage to stop and see that joy, to grab and hold it close in our hearts, those flashes of frivolity and bliss would carry us through the suffering.
“Listen honey,” she would say, “Life is shitty, so we might as well drink wine, dance and laugh every moment we can.” And this is how our Aunt Judi lived.
I see her limping from the ankle she broke that never healed quite right, appearing at my door for a visit carrying a “cheap” bottle of wine in one hand – rosé was her favorite, and cheap because with characteristic self-deprecation she would tell you up front she didn’t know a damn thing about wine and didn’t care to. She chose her wines based on the price or because the label appealed to her. She was practical and honest that way. In her other hand she’d have a bag of goodies for the kids, some small and always fun gift that she’d later spend time exploring with the kids, making them feel as though they were the center of the world, because at that moment, in Judi’s world, they were the center.
And that too was another of her gifts – she knew how to make you the center of her world, to make anyone feel special. On every visit, she’d come through my door, her arms open wide, ready to hug and be hugged. She’d fold me in her arms, kiss me multiple times, tell me how good it was to see me, how much she loved me, and then -- eyes bright and full of mischief -- she’d hand over the bottle of wine and suggest we have a glass now because, “Life is short and it’s never too early for wine.”
Today I cannot comprehend a world where Aunt Judi does not limp into my living room with cheap rosé, or imagine how the next family gathering will function without her boisterous hilarity, her legendary chicken and dumplings, her affinity for the down-and-out, sad and lonely, her ability to talk about anything and everything, the radical way she had of making lemonade out of lemons, of making every single, dreary thing fun – and of making all of it seem like the most natural thing to do in the world.
So today and all the days hereafter, to keep her close in my heart, I’m going to strive to live life as Aunt Judi did – generously, selflessly doing the dance of life. Somehow I just know if I do, she’ll be there, limping along right beside me, helping me find the funny side of everything and laughing all along the way.
