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At the age of 100, with her birthday just one month from now. I wrote this tonight to express a little about how I feel with her passing, so if it's a bit disjointed, I apologize, as I haven't really done a good look-see to it.
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About ten years ago, when my niece was in her mid teens, she confessed she was getting bad grades in english because she didn't like to read, and didn't know how to spell very well. I was in shock--this was something foreign to me. I became an avid reader at a very young age, and the thought of my niece never enjoying reading didn't sit well. Too many times, I had followed along with Sherlock Holmes, Tom Sawyer, Rick Brant, and all my science fiction and fantasy authors, living vicariously through their adventures, and many more like them. Yes, there were sacrifices to be made, like reading a book for some class, but the sheer joy of reading something I wanted to read was unparalleled. From rocket ships to the moon, to steamboats and dastardly villains, there was a world outside my window that could never be erased, never be stilled, and never sent to bed early.
That very day, I bought my niece a copy of "The Diary of Anne Frank." I told her it was about a Jewish girl who had been hiding with her family during World War II, and who wrote of her day-to-day existence in the diary. I told her it didn't have what could be a "happy" ending, because Anne Frank was sent to a concentration camp and died there. But I told her that Anne's legacy was her diary, and how so many people in the world felt hope in their hearts knowing that she faced the prospect of death courageously and never gave up hope.
But my niece never did read it, and never caught the fire that is sparked in the imagination through reading. But perhaps for some, there is the "real" world and all that. The surely blinding speed of our world forgets that we have more to do than just face every day with a masque of indifference, just as long as the waiter got a latte order exact, or that we have new text messages, or even that we have to decide what to wear for a rave over the weekend. Once upon a time, we read of different worlds, of bad guys and good guys, of heroic acts which helped us know about honor and sacrifice, and helped us determine where we were in the scheme of life. We could brave a dragon and come out victorious, we could decide where we wanted to go next, and best how to get there. Books, of all kind, shape and form, were our transporters--we lived through so many others, whether they were imaginary, or real, like Anne Frank.
And now, Miep Gies has died, at the wonderful age of 100. And to this story, our last link between World War II and the horrors of the concentration camps is now mostly silent, we no longer have a direct voice to what was, and what is. The recollections in first voice will no longer be heard, and we must, from now on, only see the past through what is written down.
History is mostly that--recollections. We have no control what era we are born in, so most of what we know has come to us from books. If something happens in our lifetime, and we are somehow involved with it, we don't know at the time that we are "making history." Most of us know only at that moment in history that we did what we had to do, and acknowledge that who we are--and who we were--lead us to that decision, and that no other would have been considered. We can't know what we would have done if we knew the eyes of the world were on us, nor could we ever pretend to be better, wiser or more principled, because, doggone it, we can't change our thinking or our behavior just like "that."
We do what we have to do because of what we've been taught, or what we have been lead to believe, or because there is no other alternative. People are not born heroes. Someone doesn't wake up in the morning and say, "Heck, I think I'm going to rescue a kitten up a tree, or keep a child from getting hit by a car." We do what we are able to do, one minute, one second at a time.
Anne Frank is a hero. Miep Gies is a hero, whether she chose to accept it or not. "Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary."
While history might be written by the victors, it never can fully eradicate the actions of those who do things because they have to--because they are human beings. Because their story isn't that different from any other story which reaches our hearts. Because they will remain forever as part of our own hearts, because that's what memories really are--our hearts crying out for the ones we have loved--and lost.
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