On missing people you’ll never know; or, to mothers, fathers, sisters, grandmothers, and everyone else we love

I have a friend here who simply defies explanation. He is good-natured; he is optimistic; he is kind. I would be none of these things, if I had lived through what he has, and yet, there he is—smart, sarcastic, affable. It defies my cynicism, my own understanding of the world, simply to set next to him and to chat.

Today, we happened upon each other–he doesn’t live in Kigali–and we talked of a hundred thousand things. He is young, with complicated dreams of the future. He mentioned having been back in his village, having seen young men his age with three, four, five kids, but no real prospects.

He is a man of prospects. Whatever he wants he’ll make happen, not because he is ambitious, selfish, focused–whatever euphemism we put to that behavior in America–but because he has a single-minded vision of bringing a bit more good to the world…because he was, fortunately or unfortunately, brought here, among people, and takes seriously the thing most of us all forget: that being here, among people, he must account to them.

I find this remarkable. I asked him, Why do you think that you went this way, when the villagers your age went the way a different way–a way so many people would probably think you should go?

He mentioned schooling, mentioned luck, mentioned sheer chance. But he also said, Maybe because of my dad.

I’ve known this young man for several years, and I know the story of his father–how he survived Rwanda’s earlier massacres, alone; how he worked to become educated, employed, to raise a family. How, in an irony so cruel a writer couldn’t make it up, in 1994 his own family–save my friend–was killed.

I know my friend’s kindness, his compassion, his acuity with people and his brilliance with facts. I know he is a village boy, that the opportunities he takes advantage of, the places in which he finds himself, seem out of the narrative. I know this because I know him, and because people have always thought I was America’s version of a village girl. I am not an unintelligent person…but I have been given credit for far more smarts than I have, simply by virtue of the fact that people assume most folks where I’m from can’t really…read.

I know what it means to be seen as a village girl–but I don’t know what it means to be without family. I shudder when I imagine making my way in this world without my parents, or my sister, and I see this young man, doing just that.

And he is amazing, strong, compassionate. When he says, Maybe it is because of my dad, I feel sad. Because I want to shake that dad’s hand. I want to thank him for what he passed down to my friend, whose very presence makes the world more livable; I want to thank his mom, who taught him kindness and trust that defy the way of this world. I want simply to meet them…the same way I wish I could bask in the presence of the woman who raised 24 orphans in Uganda.

I have another dear friend back home, in New York, who like me has made a home of the world and a family of strangers. The Nana in that family–the matriarch, you might say, of his growing up, of his reaching out, of his learning–just died. I never met Nana, but I know about her. She was so important–is so important–to my friend that I have, since I’ve known him, always felt she was in my life, too. I can see, maybe even in ways my friend can’t, how much she has made my friend who he is.

And so I find myself missing people who’ve passed who I’ve never known. I find myself trying to imagine how to show, to the world of those who’ve gone before us, how grateful we are that they have shaped into such amazing people those they’ve left behind. I find myself wishing I could learn from these people now gone how to raise children the way they have; how to share gentleness; how to inject compassion into the currents of cynicism and distrust that characterize the world I know.

These are the people who’ve taught the people I love how to love. So I can’t but love them. I just wish there were a way to share that, so I could say, Murakoze.