Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines in Pieces on the Ground

This post may sound melodramatic.

It's not intended to.

It's just that when someone dies, the thoughts that come flooding in and take over everything are big, rhetorical, and dramatic. I'll take what comes today because I'm too tired of censoring myself.

Jennifer is dead.

Her body was recovered from the helicopter crash site in Nepal. There were no survivors. The flight was only supposed to be 20 minutes and they didn't make it 5. Bad weather. Probably a bad decision was made - a risk was accepted because the distance was short, or maybe there was no place for so many people to sleep that night, or maybe it was something as stupid as they had to get the helicopter back to the army and someone was 'just following orders. Anyway, they hit a mountain.

The cliche things that come to mind are to do with the pointlessness of it, how desperately sad and tragic it is, and that it makes me think about my own life. The conclusions I'm drawing about it aren't entirely compatible with how I currently find myself live it. Another cliche: words can't express any of this properly. I'm experiencing the news of her death as a physical, emotional, spirtual melancholy. These words... are nothing much.

Jennifer was lovely and amazing. She was the sort of person that I want to be. She lived her life in a way that, if more people lived like that (myself included), we'd have a lot more gardens, well run schools, species walking around the planet, clean air, healthy food, and healthy people. Her obituary from the WWF website is here:

Jennifer Headley

Jenn worked as the WWF-UK’s Coordinator for Himalaya/South Asia Programme.

She joined WWF-UK in August 2003. Prior to this, Jenn had worked with the Canadian government in Alaska, and in Nepal for two years, one of which was with WWF-Nepal supporting species conservation.

She was based in Nepal in her current role, focused on community-based conservation in the Eastern Himalayas,
since November 2005.

Jenn had a Bachelors Degree in Political Science & Philosophy from McMaster University in Canada, where she was the recipient of the McMaster Chancellor’s Scholarship and Director’s Award for Dedication to Residence Government. She also held a Masters Degree in Public Administration (M.P.A.) from Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada, 1996, where she received the Queen’s University Graduate Award.

Jennifer was an important part of the WWF Nepal family where she lent her
expertise and supported important initiatives in the region.

She was a Canadian national who is survived by her parents and two sisters.

What it doesn't say is that she danced with an air of freedom, that people were drawn to her because of how good it felt to be with someone so kind and comfortable, that she lived the moments of her life, that she had a really neat way of clapping, and that she had a warm and wonderful smile and laugh that I'm sure so many of us who are mourning her death have a clear image of right now. As for me, I will always imagine Jenn the way she was the last time we parted... young, beautiful, healthy, wearing an indian cotton shirt, hair clean and shiny, smiling broadly, and saying 'travel safely. See you somewhere in the world'.

The helicopter that crashed was carrying some impressive people. They were the sort of people who thought about a world well beyond themselves. The sort of people who express their care for the world in a way that people like, well, most of the rest of us, don't. They were the sort of people this world needs a lot more of.

Today a friend from Canada said this:

Reading the bio's it makes me sad that we have lost such a remarkable group of people.

Sometimes I wonder what I am doing with my life that my main focus is trying to help a bunch of old geezers in Brazil and Belgium make a whole lot more money than they made last year.

And Christine said this:

Maybe she had already fullfilled her goal in life.

This really makes me think. The idea that Jennifer may have already fulfilled her goals is the only way that any of this makes sense to me.

There's more to say but it will have to wait.