This Star Won't Go Out

She had a tremendous sense of humor. Were you touched by that? She was funny; she was funny and she was quirky and different and unique and alive. She liked chocolate milk, all kinds of food and culture, video games, colors and scents and people from different cultures. She liked . . . just the other day she was looking up . . . she said, “Dad, look at this, a website devoted to words in the English language that we no longer use.” She described them for me. She said, “Maybe I can just string them together and make a paragraph or a sentence out of words we no longer use?” That’s where her mind was.

On her Facebook she has a list of things she likes; you know, the ‘Happy dance’ by John Green, Skittles, and Wizard rock. You can see it—the list goes on and on. She liked boys. When she was sick and various friends would visit and crawl into bed with her sometimes—because she was, you know, she needed that connection. But one day I walked in and saw Arka next to her and there was a girlfriend on the other side and I said, “You know, if I ever caught a guy in bed with my daughter, that would be it, but I’ll be graceful this one time.”

She never kissed a boy (she said). But I was reading her journals this week, hmmm. And she, uh, where’s Alexa? Okay, Alexa got her connected up with somebody named John and this John and Esther went off into the bushes at eleven years old, or whatever, and she said that was her first kiss. But then Alexa came back and disturbed them. That was a good thing.

We got to love her. We got to be loved by her. She also loved, loved so well. She loved so well and so deeply. She was passionate about all kinds of things, and passionate about, in Saudi Arabia, about stray cats. She and her sisters would bring in these abandoned cats that were just a mess of fleas and bugs and who knows what else! And, in fact they would say, “Dad, can we keep them, can we keep the cats?” “Yes, you can keep them outside, far away.” She grabbed this big empty bottle of beetles and she filled it, she and her sisters filled it up with bugs and they came into the house and they said, “Mom and Dad watch” and they poured them on themselves and watched the beetles crawl all over them. “Isn’t this cool how they crawl all over you?!” We were not humored.

She loved causes, she loved things that mattered. I didn’t realize this, but she had on her wrist—I’d seen it before—but I didn’t know she still had it on, but she passed away with a “Save Darfur” [wristband] that she had been wearing for a very long time. I don’t know, maybe a year, and also the wristband that was made for her here. She loved her friends, she loved her friends, and she had so many for someone who was housebound and didn’t get out.

She recently started this advice-opinion giving column. People would write her, they would say, “You know I’m struggling, my parents are really getting on my nerves, any advice for how to live with insufferable parents?” And she would write back, “Well I know what you mean, let’s talk about it.” And some of you have seen those entries; she did them personally for each person that would write in. It was becoming more and more common for her to get those kinds of questions.

She loved nerdfighteria and the last eighteen months that brought her alive. Are there any nerdfighters here today? Come on! There are those over here, okay, all right. If you loved Esther, then you are now an honorary nerdfighter, okay? She was a Welcomer. She believed there were no outsiders. She said everybody should be welcomed, and they were welcomed into her heart and into her room. I mean, she knew the difference between brokenness and people who were not real and all of that, but she just invited you in. I would just be amazed at how welcoming she was. It didn’t matter if you were confused or depressed or perfect people who were confused about their sexual identity; whatever it was, she said come on in, I want to love you. I want to be your friend. I want to care for you. I want to understand. She didn’t believe that there were insiders and outsiders.

And she also had this unique capacity for making you feel like you were the most important person in her life. You know, I could say I was the most important person in her life until somebody else walked into the room. And they just went out feeling great. And it wasn’t that she agreed with you. I’d walk in and dump my stuff out and say, “Oh, this is driving me crazy . . .” And she would listen. I realize now that she never said she agreed with me. But she made me handle it. And that’s what grace is: being there. She was there.