Buttermilk & Molasses

Best of 2007: Letting Grief Linger, and Fade

Grief should linger like gentle mist. It should have a light, but noticeable presence. It should lessen over time.

That's from an early January of 2007 post that pointed readers of this site to a transparent and caring story by Scott Bass in Style Weekly that revisited the emotional, spiritual and community spirit that erupted from a city split wide open with fear and grief, and then just grief, a year earlier as details emerged about the brutal deaths of two South Richmond families. It was the loss of the Harvey family -- Bryan and Kathryn, and their young daughters, Stella and Ruby -- that touched some of the deeper chords in the collective subconscious of the broader community, and that cut deeply into the hearts of the broad, eclectic community with personal connections to the Harveys.

Grief has lingered, and it has diminished. Those closest still hurt, and those at the farthest periphery have released the memories of the first few weeks of 2006. Those of us in between discover reminders as we move through our own lives, and pause to reflect on the nature of loss, and of hope.

Just before Christmas, my wife and my mother and I were visiting my grandmother's grave in Hollywood Cemetery. We drove by the Harvey family plot, which fittingly overlooks Oregon Hill and the William Byrd Community Center. Nikole and I stood at the graveside quietly for a moment, thinking of our own daughter due to arrive into our lives in May. As we drove off, we noticed the Lennon/McCarthy quote on the back of the family's memorial stone -- "And, in the end, the love you take/ Is equal to the love you make."

(Painting by Richmond artist Laura Loe.)

Remembering the Harvey Family: Running Ruby's Run

The title of this post is a bit misleading. We didn't run at the second annual Ruby's Run event. We did, however, join sixty or seventy kids and their parents at the Carillon to raise money for scholarships and to remember the Harvey Family. In the process, we bumped into lots of friends and enjoyed a spectacular afternoon.

Remembering the Harvey Family: Sunday's Big Run

I posted about Ruby's Run last week, and tonight I got an email that simply made my week. Maybe my year. It was one of those rare moments when I felt like this website has a purpose larger than I ever anticipated.

Remembering the Harvey Family: Ruby's Run

It's hard to believe that it has almost been two years since I woke to news that Bryan and Kathryn Harvey, along with their two young daughters Stella and Ruby, has been killed in their Richmond home. Out of that loss, and all of the grief that followed, there have been so many new connections and so much positive emotional investment emerge from the Richmod community.

One of the most inspirational examples of that has been Ruby's Run, an event that is more about community and children than it is about the fundraising aspect. Nikole and I went to the first Ruby's Run last November, and were struck mostly by the energy -- hundreds of people gathered to celebrate life, champion community, and remember a family that exemplified creativity for many in Richmond.

I got an email from Sunny Matheson, the race organizer and friend of the Harveys, that describes Ruby's Run prefectly:

Unlike other "runs" in the metro area, it is not a competition, as you saw yourself last Nov. It is an event for all kids - an afternoon of activity, fun, silliness and kids being kids. Some of the children have engaged in the pledge-collecting, fundraising aspect, and that's terrific. Community service can't begin too young, and understand that working together in a community can accomplish a lot is an important lesson for a child to learn. But we don't care if a particular child doesn't raise a dime - if they come out, have fun, and help us all remember and honor a sweet little life, then we have indeed reached our goal.

It is the fervent hope of those of us who put together this event, that the rising generation of Richmond kids associate Ruby's name not with the last two hours of her life, but with how she lived, and how much she was loved every day of her life.

The second annual Ruby's Run children's race will be held on Sunday, November 18, on the Carillon grounds by Dogwood Dell. The race is open to all children ages 4 to 14, and pledges and donations will go to a scholarship fund created in Ruby's memory at her preschool, the Second Presbyterian Child Care Center.

More than 150 children participated in last year's race, which raised $6000 and sponsored two children for six months at the daycare. Races start at 2:00 pm and details -- on the race and accompanying events -- can be found at the Ruby Harvey Memorial Children's Run website. If you are interested in volunteering, click here.

WDCE REMEMBERS THE HARVEYS

Tomorrow's Times-Dispatch reports that WDCE will broadcast a musical tribute to Bryan Harvey and his family this Friday night from 9:00 p.m. until midnight. WDCE is the student-run radio station at the University of Richmond, and broadcasts at 90.1 FM:

To honor the memory of Bryan Harvey and his family, WDCE (90.1 FM), the University of Richmond radio station, will offer a Harvey musical retrospective tomorrow.

From 9 p.m. to midnight, Harvey's music from the early days of Skateland to the nationally known House of Freaks to The Dads to his last musical collaboration in NRG Krysis will be played.

Listeners will be encouraged to make a donation to the Harvey Family Memorial Endowment to help provide enrichment for children and families through the arts.

Harvey, his wife, Kathryn, and their daughters, Ruby and Stella, were murdered in their South Side home on New Year's Day 2006.

This is the second year that WDCE is paying tribute to Harvey's musical contributions. The special will also be streamed on the station's Web site.

ONE YEAR LATER: JEN LEMEN REMEMBERS THE HARVEYS

I've written before how much I love the poetry that resonates deeply within Jen Lemen's weblog. When I get tired of the news of the day, I find myself wandering to her site (among others) for calm sensibility, and consistently beautiful reflections. I can count on Jen Lemen to break my heart -- in very good ways -- with her observations about her children, her sister, her art, her world.

That world of hers overlaps mine in one of the saddest possible ways -- our peripheral and tangible connections to the Harvey family, who were murdered last New Year's Day in Richmond. She recently wrote about Richmond, and its loss:

I learned the news through my sister Patience who does kindness work with the nurse midwife who delivered Kathryn’s babies in a local hospital. Nancy was in over her head trying to calm the women about to deliver. In the birth world, the sanctity of your house is everything, especially for mothers planning to deliver at home. Patience was having trouble sleeping at night along with so many other young mothers in Richmond. The fact that something so atrocious could happen anywhere, let alone to people as caring and creative as the Harveys, was hard to fathom. “It’s not that they were some symbol of the perfect family or anything like that,” my sister says. “They were just the kind of people who were living their best lives–their dreams. And they knew how to create community. People loved them for knowing how to do that. Knowing how to make that kind of loving, joyful space.”

My sister and I talked on the phone constantly that week. I wanted to know how the women in the neighborhood were faring. Every few days Patience would pack up baby Lucy in the car and take someone a meal or leave flowers on someone’s doorstep ...

... That day I sat on my porch and did the only thing I know how to do when there seems like all hope is gone. I lit one of my little candles and wrote out blessings. Only this time, I tried to imagine there was a Divine Mother watching over the whole mess. I asked for words to bring about healing. I asked for peace to fill every dark and fearful place. I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up the kind of love that can face up to that kind of horror. I prayed for Patience and her wide, loving heart. I thought about Gray killing those little children and tried to remember what it was like when he was a baby before he lost the warmth of his mother’s arms. I tried to not think about something like that ever happening again ...

... I’ve spent days trying to write this story, and I’m still not certain why it’s so important to me that I do it. All I know is that everytime I work on it, my tears are right there on the surface of things. In this moment, after hours of pouring through articles and news reports, I’m overcome by how fragile we are as human beings and how completely in need we are of love and careful care. I close my eyes and try to imagine each person in this story as a baby in my arms. Bryan. Kathryn. Ruby. Stella. Ray. Ricky. Mark. I try to hold this sadness and all the joy of each tender life, even though it’s impossible in so many ways.

I go over these words over and over again, spoken by Bryan Harvey while he was still on this earth:

“I don’t really believe in God. However, I think I’m a pretty spiritual person. I have a lot of faith in humans. I believe we’re capable of incredibly beautiful things (as well as incredibly evil).”

May incredible beauty be our hallmark. May peace, strange and unexpected, come to all who suffer this loss, like an unexpected rainfall. And may I meet every human eye with kindness in my own, remembering where we each began.

Thanks, Jen. You rock.

ONE YEAR LATER: STYLE WEEKLY REMEMBERS

I had an opportunity to read Style Weekly's January 3 cover story just before it hit the streets, and admittedly inched into it with curious trepidation. The paper's annual "Richmonder of the Year," you see, is a family -- one that shaped our community with music, laughter, creativity and, ultimately, through their unexpected and untimely loss. The Richmonders of the Year were murdered in their South Richmond home on New Year's Day of 2006; countless thousands were touched, in small and large ways, by the passing of Bryan and Kathryn Harvey, and their young daughters Stella and Ruby. Their loss felt -- still feels -- immense.

My wife and I were out of town this weekend, quietly closing out 2006 on the top of a West Virginia mountain. We came home Monday afternoon to a slightly warmer version of the sort of rain that was falling on Richmond 364 days earlier when news that Bryan, Kathryn, Stella and Ruby Harvey had been murdered began seeping out into the broader Richmond community. I picked up some flowers while running an errand, then went home and put them in a vase; we went to World of Mirth just as we did last January 2, and stood before the store in the rain for a moment. I was a little surprised that there were no flowers, or candles, or heartfelt notes already there; that the Times-Dispatch's remembrance was limited to columnist Michael Paul Williams' fitting look at the sidewalk drawings brightening the sidewalk outside of the Harvey's home; that a brief year later, the powerful sense of community, the need for connection and support, had faded into the background of our daily lives -- still strong, but less visible.

Appropriate.

Grief should linger like gentle mist. It should have a light, but noticeable presence. It should lessen over time.

So, in allowing grief to linger, how does a journalist return to a horrible, heartbreaking story in a tasteful and meaningful way? Ask Scott Bass. His cover story in the January 3 issue of Style Weekly does exactly that. It's a reminder of the truths that we all face -- that we lose people without notice, constantly; that every moment, and every smile, is precious; that the best people in our lives leave us with far more than memories. Thanks for the reminder, Style.

ONE YEAR LATER: RICHMOND MAGAZINE REMEMBERS

Claudia Brookman pens a nice remembrance of her daughter's friendship with Ruby Harvey in the January issue of Richmond magazine. She concludes:

Ruby made a lasting impression. Her mischievous grin, her fiery spirit, are indelibly written upon our past and present. And it's doubtful she'll be forgotten. Ruby is immortal as long as we remember.

And I do every day. I sit at my desk, pull my eyes away from the computer monitor and gaze up at those two happy little girls, arms around each other. Best friends forever.

REMEMBERING THE HARVEYS: ALMOST A YEAR

A year feels at once like a sad surprise and a distant memory, an open wound and a faded scar. It will have been a year on January 2 that many Richmonders woke to one of the hardest, most painful losses in a lifetime -- the sudden and random murders of Kathryn, Bryan, Stella and Ruby Harvey in their South Richmond home on New Year's Day.

I've tried in the days, weeks and months since to stay current with news and remembrances of the Harveys, and continue to hear from people around the world who were touched through Bryan's music, Kathryn's laughter or the innocence of their children. In the past few days, several people have contacted me asking if there are any special memorials planned to commemorate the Harveys in January.

If anyone knows of any such events and would like to share details with the broader community, feel free to drop a comment on this post, or to email me at jsarvay[at]yahoo.com with details.

COLD RUN, WARM HEARTS

Nikole and I got to the Carillon just in time for the first race in what we hope will be an annual fundraising event. Ruby's Run (or the Ruby Harvey Memorial Children's Run) remembers Ruby Harvey, her sister Stella and her parents, Bryan and Kathryn; the family was murdered this past New Year's Day at their home in Richmond.

 

More than 160 children showed up in the early morning chill to run and to remember (including our young friend Felix Gotschalk, above), according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Sunny Matheson, who directed yesterday's event, was a friend of Kathryn Harvey. Matheson said she felt powerless after the murders and wanted to do something that would empower children.

"What we wanted to do was have kids not just come out and play, but have them understand how you change things," Matheson said. "When something bad happens in the community, what can you do to make things better? One thing you can do is help somebody else."

The goal of yesterday's run was to raise enough pledge money to send one child to Second Presbyterian Child Care Center for a year. Annual tuition is about $6,000.

"There are children there now whose parents are not going to be able to keep them through the rest of the year if they don't get some help," Matheson said.

The event also included a soccer clinic and an area where children could play dress-up, Ruby's favorite game.