Dear bread friends,
"...the stars looked down just the same..."
These are the words of Lawrence Beesley, a Titanic survivor. After the great ship slipped into the ocean, the stars did not change. The phrase came to me as I stared at the clouds over the Cohoes Falls, asking nature to help me with the dissonance of last week’s court rulings — gun rights were affirmed & reproductive rights were denied. This impossible reality sandwich squashed the excitement I wanted to feel for my son’s high school graduation, which was Friday.
Felix has 3 external siblings, kids who grew up together because 3 moms needed (and liked!) each other. We swapped childcare many days a week, not realizing what a connection we were forging. Jude, Willa, Lola & Felix are steady pals, and 3 of them were graduating. Lola was valedictorian, and she got our families to sit together. We were in a row up front, just behind the almost grads, and under the blazing sun. As the day set and pushed cool shadows over us, I admired another stunning skyful of clouds, and cried at Lola’s speech. I am grateful she is letting me share it with you. Such a wise take on the usefulness of grief!
Yours, Amy
Emulsion by Lola Garrigue
Good evening Troy High (for those of you who hear the morning announcements, you might recognize that). My name is Lola and I am the valedictorian of the class of 2022. Basically that means I spent the majority of my high school experience doing homework and obsessing over my GPA, so now I get to talk for an undetermined amount of time at graduation. I want to start off by explaining why I’m here. As I was preparing for this speech I had a teacher ask me what pushed me to this position. Honestly, I’m not totally sure. I think it started around Middle School, I just had this drive to be on top. I felt this hole inside of me, as a result of what then felt like my life falling apart, and I wanted to stuff it full of straight A’s and high GPA’s. I thought the feelings of accomplishment and pride I got from the grades could mask the pain and grief I was feeling. Surprise, it didn’t work! But from that grief I have grown into the person I am today, hopefully as each of you will learn to grow.
I wouldn’t have grown if it hadn’t been for the people I met here at Troy High. So, I want to shout out Mr. Matter, our only health teacher, for two things: teaching every single student on this stage, yet still remembering my name because that is insane and because he taught me the lesson that inspired the rest of this speech. Now, this is a lesson every one of you should’ve learned, and not just because it is in a class required to graduate, but because it’s an important one: the 5 stages of grief. The part that stood out to me in his lesson wasn’t so much the actual stages of grief, but what he said about them. He said that you can grieve anything. Grief is not just for those who have lost a loved one, but for anyone who has lost anything. Change is often described to be bittersweet, well the bitter part of that is grief. As much as this is a celebration of our accomplishments it is also a memorial to our childhood, our home of the past 4 years, the lives we have known. Now we go into the “real” world. So we must grieve what we have lost. So in case you have forgotten them, here are the 5 stages of grief.
Stage 1: Denial. This was the beginning of the year. The procrastination of college applications and decisions of our future. Pretending there wasn’t a timer counting down. For me, this was avoiding looking at the calendar, at the approaching June date, the approaching college application deadline. I spent the first half of my year obsessing over my grades and GPA trying to deny the truth; that they didn’t really matter, I was leaving no matter what.
Stage 2: Anger. Maybe you were mad that your friends are leaving for a different place after graduation. Upset that you didn’t have more time with your favorite people. Irritated by teachers and adults asking you “Where are you going to college? What are you doing after high school?” Annoyed that it feels like you just started to find your people and place in the world, but now you have to start over. Angry that it was coming to an end when it felt like it was just getting back to normal again.
Stage 3: Bargaining. I would have conversations with my classmates where they talked about how if they could go back and do it all over again they would. While that wasn’t an opinion I shared I did do my share of bargaining. Just one more week of vacation, one more day until exams, one more hour of prom, one more minute until I have to move my tassel right to left, one more second of the only life I have known thus far.
Stage 4: Depression. Depression is a form of fear and anxiety turned inward and I think we all experience fear and anxiety about the future. The future is scary, it's unknown, and anything can happen. We spent so much time apart and now that things have just returned to “normal” we are leaving each other once again and it’s sad.
Stage 5: Acceptance. Hopefully, that’s where you are now, if not then you have probably about another 20 minutes to get there so good luck. Graduation, this right here right now, is the ultimate acceptance. There’s no going back. We will never again hear Pete shout “hats and hoods”, count the seconds until the bell rings, or walk these halls as a student. High school is over. This is a heavy idea, but there’s beauty in it. The acceptance of an end is just the realization of a beginning.
Grief is painful. Grief is hard. Grief means you had something to be grateful for. Whether you loved every moment here or counted the seconds until the last bell, I’m sure there is at least one thing you will miss, one thing you are grateful for. Here are some of those memories. Color wars for spirit week, spirit weeks in general, lunch with friends, sports practices, music lessons, crazy conversations with substitute teachers, Wiffle ball, sea shanties, plastic babies, first loves, first heartbreaks, old friendships ending and new ones beginning, pep rallies, stromboli days, homecoming on the tennis courts with Mr. Mo being an awesome DJ, Steve’s dance moves, whatever teacher’s room you go to during your free period, and the little freshman version of yourself who has grown into the accomplished class before me.
I want to thank the people who made it possible for these memories to exist and for me to be standing here on this stage about to get my diploma, and not just me, but the rest of my class as well… Khan academy and quizlet. But really, none of this would have been possible without the Troy High faculty. Thank you Mr. Robinson, Mr. Hurley, Dr. Parker, Ms. Witt, and Mr. Mariano. I’m sure it’s not easy to run this place and I have to admit you have done a pretty good job of it so thank you. Thank you Pete, Vick, Shaun, Ice, Steve, Deb and the rest of the monitors. Without you guys this place would not have been as enjoyable. I know you don’t always get the credit you deserve, but I hope you know we really do appreciate everything you have done for us, everything you have done for me. Thank you to Michelle and the rest of the secretaries for chatting with me every morning before morning announcements and keeping the whole school running smoothly. Thank you teachers, you are the ones who make connections with us. I don’t mean just the English and Math lessons, I mean the life lessons. I have grown so much, perhaps not physically, but as a person. I’ve not just learned, but seen the importance of kindness, compassion, understanding, and patience, I’ve seen it when you’ve worked with me and so many of the other students. So thank you Mr. Mac for more than I could ever say with the words you taught me how to analyze, Mr. Kennedy for introducing me to so many powerful women in history, Mr. Von for the corn, Mrs. Szakmary for teaching me math is fun and better standing up, Mr. Haviland for all of the fun labs, Mr. Mo for the hard conversations and DJ lessons, Mr. Chap for the merging onto the highway lessons, Ms. Sabogal for putting up with my orange juice highs, Ms. Gorman for the egg babies, Mr. Robinson for the animal factoids, Ms. Buckley for the debates, and all of the other teachers who I haven’t mentioned but whose impacts haven’t gone unnoticed. Thank you to the principals, administrators, teachers, monitors, librarians, substitute teachers, janitors, nurses, secretaries, guidance counselors, and everyone else whose official title wasn’t encompassed.
I would also like to thank the out-of-school support, the coaches, club leaders, family friends, relatives, siblings, and especially the parents and guardians. Coaches and trainers have provided so much support, you haven’t just taught us how to improve physically, but how to never give up. I would like to thank Coach Burns for showing me that 4 am runs through the snow can actually be fun and that I have so much more potential than I thought. So thank you coaches. Along with coaches are club leaders, which in many cases are teachers. So to the club leaders, especially Mr. Noonan, who stayed late and woke up extra early, just so we could explore our out-of-school interests, thank you. To the family friends who aren’t related to us, but love us and feed us as if we are, thank you. To the two families that have treated me as a daughter for longer than I can remember, thank you. Now families, I don’t even know where to start for saying thank you. I want to start off by thanking the siblings. There were plenty of nights that the stress of school and life in general made me not the most enjoyable person to be around, sometimes our siblings get the short end of that stick. So to my sister and all of the other siblings, thank you for putting up with us and supporting us, despite how annoying we may be. Another influential figure for me was my stepdad. While we may not share blood you’ve always loved and supported me as if we did. I know we may not always get along, but I want you to know I appreciate everything you have done for me. To the step-parents, fathers, and father figures, everything you have done for us does not go unnoticed, so in case we don’t say it enough, thank you. Now, I don’t know about all of you, but my mom is pretty amazing. Truthfully speaking I wouldn’t be here without her. She pushed me, and while sometimes it felt like the pushes were too hard, it was never more than I could handle. She’s been a role model for me and shown me the kind of woman I can become. So mom, thank you. To all the moms and mom figures listening today, thank you. Families, your child up here is a reflection not of just their hard work, but yours also. I want to end this thank you section with one last thank you. A thank you to each of my classmates, a thank you you should give yourself. You can have all the support in the world, but no one can make you do the work and get that diploma for you. So take a moment to thank past you for the work they did to get you here.
One thing I haven’t really mentioned, but I’m sure has been in the back of many of your minds is COVID. After all I am talking about grief and there was a global pandemic. I’m going to keep this short because frankly most of my classmates don’t want to hear more about it and neither do I. All of us have had to grieve these past 2 years, whether it was for a death, simply the loss of normality, or anything in between. The class of 2022 has been congratulated many times on surviving high school during COVID, but I disagree. I don’t think it was high school. I don’t think sitting on your bed half listening to a teacher on a google meet while you're on your phone or half asleep is high school. High school is seeing your friends every day and giving them hugs, high-fiving your teacher, sitting at a desk. So today we not only grieve the end of high school but also our lack of it.
Change is bittersweet. The bitter part of that is the grief. I have one more lesson to share which is that grief is not a linear process, nor does it have a distinct endpoint. Rather it’s a cycle, waves that ebb and flow. Someone once said that the only thing constant in life is change. I hope you learn to take that change and grow with, recognize the bitter, find sweetness despite it, and grow from that grief.
While this may have seemed like a sad speech I want you to remember one last thing: you cannot know life without loss. We have lost something, but that means you have lived. If you grieve then you know you have touched greatness. So to my classmates of 2022 I wish you a life of change, a life of bittersweetness, a life of greatness. Go out into the world and live.
wow, excellent speech! very touching and raw and awake.
Thank you for sharing this.