By Tabitha Bozeman
We lost many cultural, musical, and literary icons last month, in addition to local and community leaders.
On the world stage, Dolly Parton, Yayoi Kusama, Frank Beard, Tim Curry, Hayden Panettiere, Peter Cullen, Shelley Fabares, Michael Wright, Samuel Monroe Jr., and Wendell Berry each passed away in August. Actors, musicians, writers, and artists who shared their talents and lives with the rest of us, allowing us to create memories, form connections, and generally enjoy life more because of their work.
In Gadsden, these losses were sharpened when we also lost a local legend and champion for Gadsden with Jason Wilson’s passing. It is a collective loss and compounded grief when those who publicly share so deeply from their hearts and souls to make the world a better place leave us. Those close to us leave the deepest wound, and even those we never knew other than as celebrities can remind us of the weight of mortality.
As the news broke for each of these losses, I was touched by how many people openly shared their sadness, positive memories, and the various ways they were affected. The sense of community and shared experience has been strong on social media and the news. This reminded me who and what community is.
Jason Wilson told friends, family, and community members gathered at Back Forty a few years ago that “Y’all will never know how much this community means to me.” And, I hate to disagree with him, but I think he did an incredible job of showing us all what it meant.
He was always learning from the past, and looking ahead to the future, and never passed up an opportunity to encourage a young person just starting out on their own journey.
I will never forget my son calling me one afternoon in excitement because he’d reached out to Jason on a whim online, just to ask his advice. That message could easily have been one that was ignored, coming from a young stranger. But Jason did not ignore him. He responded, reached out, and it was a validating moment in a young man’s life.
I know that is only one of many stories because Jason Wilson did not just show his love and appreciation for Gadsden in an abstract way. He made sure to, as Dolly Parton put it, “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” He put his words into action every chance he had, working to make his community, our community, better than he found it. He put into practice Wendell Berry’s admonishment to “do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.”
This brings me to another loss last month: the death of poet and writer Wendell Berry. I knew him best as the poet, but Berry wrote essays and fiction, too. He did not shy away from sharing his views on the economy, ecology, politics, or community. He viewed local, small communities and infrastructure just as, and often more, essential to the world as the global economy and infrastructure. He lived his life in Kentucky, near where he was born, farming and writing, and defined community not only as a group of people or a place, but as “the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other’s lives,” reminding us that “essential wisdom accumulates in the community much as fertility builds in the soil.”
This summer, last month especially, there has been loss in our community, and in the wider, national and world community. There always will be. But there will also always be the potential for coming together as a community, for treating one another well, for drawing from accumulated wisdom, and for looking to the future while drawing strength from the past.
It can be tempting when we have experienced loss, setbacks, and frustration to settle into complaining about what we dislike in our community. But, as Dolly reminded us, “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.”
So, as we move into the autumn, may a new season remind us to take the opportunity to slow down, recognize and feel loss, celebrate the hope and wisdom gained from lessons learned and fights won, and put effort into doing one small thing each day to continue making our community the special place it is.
And, when we are feeling stuck, may we remember Wendell Berry’s words:
“It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
