If you need a laugh today, I guess you’ll have to go to another place on the internet. Today’s column will be a vain attempt to bring comfort to the part of the heart no one can ever reach but its owner and sometimes God.
Last Friday, June 4th, the Island lost it’s first son in uniform since the Viet Nam War. 1st Lt. Joseph Theinert, age 24, in Afghanistan. He warned away and saved twenty other soldiers from the bomb that killed him. In that moment, in my mind, he went home, home to a place of no pain where he was met by loving relatives already there, and entered into the peace of God. Today, Friday June 11th, his body will be laid to rest in Our Lady of the Isle Catholic Cemetery.
His body came home to the Island on Wednesday, June 9, to a hero’s return with all the dignity and honor the Island could offer. The rain was strangely appropriate because everybody else was crying, why not the sky too?
It’s odd, but once you’ve lived here, whether for a single summer or your whole life, you are always affected by whatever affects the Island. Doesn’t matter how far you move, or how long you go, part of you remains here. The irony is when you live here, you can’t wait for a chance to get off-island, and if you’re off-island too long, you can’t wait to get home again. I never met Joe, but I’ll bet he’d agree with me on that point.
He came from good people. I only knew his mom, Chrys Kestler. She’s a beautiful, hardworking and upbeat gal, always busy, I’d wave to her all the time in her van with the “Mamasita” license plate. With her as a mother, Joe was raised as right as any kid could be. I can’t imagine where she and Joe’s father, James, can find air to breathe since this happened.
It’s hard to comfort grieving parents. There’s a lot you’d like to say, but nothing would be adequate, and yet, saying nothing isn’t right either. I think sending a card is good because then they can open it when they can bear to. And if they never open the card, it doesn’t matter, because they can see your name on the return address and know you thought of them that day.
Sometimes, all we can do is stand and be counted. The people who stood by the dock that brought him home on the ferry. The people who stood along the road and faced the procession as it passed. The people who stood at the funeral, the wake, and the cemetery service. The people who embraced the parents, the people who sensed they needed to be left alone for a moment. The Islanders who are off island now, were counted as they called or wrote. Sometimes all we can do is say, I am here and I witness your pain. If there is any healing power in knowing that other people care, that is all we can offer the Theinert-Kestler family today.
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