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To Gen-X, "The Times they are a Changin'"
When our good friend Todd Matthew Kinney, age 35, jumped to his
death from the 21st floor of the Malaysian hotel where he had
been staying, my fiance' Pearly Jo and I realized that this was
the first time someone close to either us had died; that is,
one who was in our lives on a daily basis, or someone who wasn't
a grandparent. I mentioned that fact to a couple of people the
week following, as we were planning Todd's memorial service,
and everyone to whom I mentioned it said the same thing. We all
were neophytes in this desperate arena of sorrow and confusion.
It was a very sad time for us, having to learn to grieve for
a dear friend who filled our lives with joy and excitement and
love.
Todd, a microbiologist, had been in Malaysia on business for
a bio-tech company that cleans up messes made by the petroleum
industry. He had been in Asia for three weeks when he decided
to pass away on September 8, 2002. In just so happens that for
several weeks prior to going overseas, Todd had been immersed
in a turbulent and high-powered spiritual quest. That period
for Todd was described very well by an anecdote told by another
of Todd's good friends. On the day she heard Todd had died, she
went to her Bible for consolation and coincidentally opened her
Bible to II Corinthians 18: "…Because we look not to
things that are seen but to things that are unseen; for the things
that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are
eternal." We all found that to be incredibly apropos, for
during the time leading up to Todd's death he had been living
a great deal of the time in the world of the unseen.
Each person has an almost limitless set of choices we can
make at any given time, and I would be surprised if the readers
of this article occasionally - maybe even just once -- didn't
entertain the thought of what it might be like to leap in to
the Great Unknown as Todd did. Unfortunately for his friends,
while it took some amount of spectacular albeit bizarre courage
to actually perform the freestyle skydiving act Todd did, making
such a choice is one of those which one cannot clean up afterwards;
it is pretty final and certainly no fun, for anyone involved.
And Todd believed in fun. I once said something to him in passing
that he later told me he had taken as his mantra. I said, "Todd,
you were born to festival." If Todd were to write his own
epitaph, I would not be surprised if that is what he chose: "Born
to Festival." He loved music, kids, animals, and nature.
Returning to the New Testament, more than anyone I know Todd
embodied the admonition of Jesus, whom they called The Christ:
"Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom
of God as a little child will never enter it." Todd looked
at the world like a little child. Sadly we can never know what
factors led up to Todd making that bizarre choice on September
8. But for someone who was in a deep spiritual quest and who
lived life through the eyes of a child, it is understandable
why he might have lost his hope in the world today. We are certainly
living in some of the more dire and frightening times in recent
memory.
The memorial service for Todd was going to be held on Friday
September 13 by his Austin group of friends at Barton Springs
Pool, one of Todd's favorite nature refuges, a place that resonates
with spiritual peace for all Austin residents. Driving our way
through Zilker Park, Pearly and I were listening to the new record
Home by Austin's Dixie Chicks. The third track on the album is
called "Travelin' Soldier" and was written by Austin
songwriter Bruce Robison, brother-in-law to Chick Emily Robison.
It's a song about a girl, too young to have a boyfriend but old
enough to fall in love, who meets an 18-year-old soldier who
is due to leave the next day for Vietnam. The soldier holds her
hand and asks if he can write her letters from the War. She will
"never hold the hand of another guy…waitin' for the
soldier to come back again" From the war, he writes to her
that it might be love and when he closes his eyes at night, he
sees her pretty smile. Later in the year, at a Friday night football
game, the names of the Vietnam dead are read aloud. With her
piccolo, the girl in love hides under the bleachers, cries and
swears she will never love another.
As I listened to Bruce Robison's beautiful and plaintive song,
I thought, "Here I am: 36 years old, and I am going to the
memorial for the only close friend I've ever had who has died;
same with Pearly; same with many of us who would be gathered
there at Barton Springs." It occurred to me how incredibly
lucky our entire generation has been. I thought about the generation
preceding, 18 and 20 year olds who lost many, many of their closest
friends to the Vietnam conflict. And their parents, who sent
so many of their loved ones off to die in World War II &
Korea. And so-on, going back throughout American and world history.
How incredibly, unbelievably fortunate my generation has been!
For those of us lucky enough to have been born in post-Baby-Boom
America, we are the first generation in history to reach adulthood
without experiencing the horrors of war. Sure, we all lived our
childhoods in fear of The Bomb dropping on us; but it never did.
And for awhile there, it looked like it never would.
They call us Generation X, because we have not had a defining
zeitgeist like the civil rights movement or the wars in Asia.
Compared to The Jazz Age, or The Beats, or The Baby Boomers,
I have always felt like my generation has been invisible. The
so-called "Greatest Generation" of WWII, the Baby-Boomers
and the Generation Y'ers around us seem to have gotten all the
attention. Those generations are well defined by their unique
times. The closest Generation-X'ers have to an identity came
from Richard Linklater's observant Slacker: a generation of passive
observers, philosophizers, and people who generally like to lay
low and watch. We are looked at as consumers of pop music, beer,
and fast-food, a generation with little identity other than that
provided to us by the TV we all grew up watching.
I must say this to all my fellow Generation-X'ers: I hope
we all realize how lucky we are.
In our thirties, now that many of us have children who are
not quite "draft age" but are enjoying the flower of
their childhood, now that we are old enough to run for President
of the United States, those of us born in the turbulent 60's
need to reflect on the unique and blessed condition in which
we find ourselves. We should think about how wonderful it has
been to grow up with our friends and brothers and sisters into
adulthood. None of us has experienced what it is like to lose
half of the men - or more- in one's graduating class to the machines
of war. None of us have had to make a pilgrimage to a war memorial
and weep for our dear loved ones. None of us were faced with
being drafted, having to go into the fires of battle, perhaps
against our will. We have never had to face the decision: "Do
I do my legal duty and fight and kill for my government or is
my government doing the right thing when it decides to take up
arms against distant enemies? Do I fight or flee?" Yes,
we Generation-X'ers are in a truly unique and blessed condition
in history.
As the next generation sits on pins and needles, poised under
the aegis of a bellicose government and in the ashes of a befuddling
national tragedy, those of us born in the 60's who are or will
be soon making the decisions should recall how wonderful it has
been to watch our generation grow to adulthood and fruition,
how much fun we have had witnessing the enormous potential for
creation and growth we all have. As we make decisions about the
future for our nation and our world, we should remember that
this next young generation - the youth of the 21st Century -
faces the tragedy of losing classmates, brothers, and sisters
- a fate which we GenXers seem to have cheated from Destiny.
I hope for the world that my generation of Americans, the first
generation to actually realize such a wonderful fate to grow
to adulthood in peace, will be the one to usher in a period of
history when no one has to see their childhood friends come home
from overseas in red, white, and blue boxes, dead as the wood
that forms their coffins, rather than growing up to teach and
create and live in love and joy. I guess I'm just another one
of those dreamers John Lennon knew to be in the world when he
wrote the song "Imagine." I take comfort that the slain
prophet of our youth was certainly speaking the truth: "I'm
not the only one."
- Chris Oglesby
- September 14, 2002
- (All Rights Reserved)
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