Kelly Amberger

I learned last Monday that Kelly Amberger died five years ago.  I've found myself overwhelmed with tears since then, intermittently and without warning.  There's no thought or logic behind it; I don't remember enough about Kelly to put a story behind my sadness.  I only feel a tremendous gap, because I know the world is a colder place without her.  How unfair and random that I should still be here, adding new chapters, when Kelly's are frozen in time.  She was a true child of God.  I rarely feel that way about anyone because most of the time God is remote to me.

I've wanted to find her for a few years now, and I would Google her once in a while (Kelly or Kellie?  Amberger or Amburger?).  I realize now I never clicked the right link did because I couldn't consider, even for a moment, that the obituary might be hers.  Kelly was the first girl who showed me sincere and selfless kindness when I needed it. It was fourth grade, I was plunked into a class of fifth graders with no friends, I spent my first recess hiding in the bathroom crying, and and I withdrew from being a reasonably well-adjusted kid to a traumatized loner.  I remember feeling like I was too uncool to be around anyone, and I hated my awkward arms, my childish dress, and my sparkly shoes.  Kelly stood behind me when we were lining up outside for something.  I knew she knew how self-conscious I was feeling, because there was something so gentle, so superfluous in the way she said, "Your shoes are really cute."  I think she just wanted to give me a hug because I was feeling so miserable.

Kelly didn't have to talk to me - the walking leper colony - at all that day; but her Christian soul took her one step further and she became my real friend.  She let me hang out with her other friends, and her funny mom would come around sometimes and say funny things ("We should call it Maid University" she would say about her Butler University sweatshirt), and she preemptively called herself Kelly Hamburger when the kids tried to make fun of her name.  I remember she came boating with my family, and ice skating at my birthday party.  I always loved her.  I always admired her so much that I never got tired of her or annoyed with her, like I sometimes do with other close friends.


Kelly moved away when her dad got a job transfer to Pleasanton.  I assumed I'd find her again when I was all grown up.  It's devastating that I'm too late.  I would have liked more than anything to tell her that I think she's the bee's knees.  I would have liked to have her in my life again.

I thought of Kelly often over the years as the one person who was nice without having an agenda.  Perhaps it speaks more to my cynicism now that I would believe everyone else was nice because they wanted to be liked, or because they wanted others to be nice to them, or because they planned to reap even more insidious benefits of goodwill later.  Even those who acted with a "Christian spirit" seemed to be motivated by a self-serving goal of congratulating themselves about their moral superiority.  The best people who were nice to me - my family and friends - were nice because they loved me.  But Kelly didn't owe me anything, and I didn't mean anything to her, that day she reached out to me because she wanted to make me feel better.  She taught me something ineffable about human warmth that stayed with me for years and years.


Being mean to people is so easy that it's almost the default.  It's how we show that we're witty and funny.  It's how we assert our power over people.  It's how we express that we're honest and no-nonsense.  But it alarms me sometimes, how reluctant we are to say something nice and complimentary when there's no necessity or occasion for it.  The thought of making a someone feel good about themselves, just for the hell of it, is so foreign that people are almost embarrassed by the suggestion.  I admit that most of the time I can't resist going for the snarky jugular myself when it presents itself.  But every once in a blue moon, an unaccountably soft influence will come over me, and I'll say something nice from the heart.  The effect it has on people is a little stunning.


On more than one such occasion, I remember distinctly thinking to myself, "Pay it forward.  You got it from Kelly Amberger once."


It crushes me to know that she's gone, though I'm happy to see that she had all the full happiness of love and family and motherhood during her life.  It reminds me of that old religious sentiment that God manifests his grace through pain.  Did she have such a sweet and beautiful heart because her life was meant to condensed into an incandescent youth?  Did her special sensitivity to the pain of others come from her proximity to the divine source that brought her the pain of illness?  Was her gift for bringing joy to everyone a converse to the tragedy of her early departure? It's baffling to me that one of the few bright spots in the world can't linger with us, when the rest of humanity is peopled with clods.  I wish I had more faith in humanity.  I did once, that day when I wanted to climb under a rock because my shoes were too sparkly.  I hope her daughter understands how memorable her mother was.  Over twenty years later, I still think of Kelly as a lighthouse of the kind of person I'd like to be.