Kindness

Naomi Shihab Nye (1953-)


Kindness


Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the
Indian in a white poncho lies dead
by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night
with plans and the simple breath
that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness
as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow
as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness
that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.


My friend Marc heard this poem, as was his wish, within the last hour of taking his last breath.

A couple of us were singing What a Wonderful World, when he stopped breathing. It was the line, "I see friends shaking hands, sayin' how do you do, They're really sayin' I love you...", that he heard last. His caregiver and I noted the time: two nineteen pm, Thursday, January 28, 2016

With such attention to detail, training up his care-givers, friends, and community members about his wishes, his was the best choreographed death I've ever attended, except perhaps my mother's which was four years ago today. Barbara's was similar, in that the last thing she heard was her family singing her favorite song.

All we have is this moment. Why not make the most of it?

Kindness counts.

Speaking our truth and preferences makes life hum.