Celebration of Life

“My wish for the new year is for humanity to discover it’s great capacity to heal one another, and, therefore, choose to love rather than hate.”

– Ashton Clatterbuck, Lancaster News, December 2022

“Making it ‘illegal’ to be transgender does not stop people from being born transgender. Closing your eyes doesn’t make us go away. The anti-LGBTQ+ political stunts we see around the country—masquerading as religious liberty and moral piety—are doing real harm to queer Americans.”

– Ashton Clatterbuck, Lancaster News, May 2023

“Only about 1.2% to 1.8% of Americans identify as transgender, according to a study done by the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Public Policy. This makes for an easy target, and the GOP knows this.”

– Ashton Clatterbuck, Lancaster News, May 2023

“Restricting access to gender-affirming care and other protections won’t make kids ‘less transgender.’ It will only exacerbate their emotional and mental distress. These laws do not protect children. They kill children.”

– Ashton Clatterbuck, Lancaster News, May 2023

“It has long been known and supported by medical and psychiatric professionals that being transgender is not a choice. It is not a phase. One does not suddenly decide to be transgender, nor can they opt not to be, no matter how much you wish for us to magically disappear.”

– Ashton Clatterbuck, Lancaster News, May 2023

“To politicians advocating and propagating hatred against the LGBTQ+ community, I implore you: Why are you so scared of us? Why do you hold so much hate? America is a country of diversity, inclusion, strength and liberty. How does my very existence challenge, in any way, those values — your values? Your actions cannot change who we are. The only thing you can change is your own attitude toward us.”

– Ashton Clatterbuck, Lancaster News, May 2023

“James Dobson is the evangelical founder of the fundamentalist organization Focus on the Family, which is based in Colorado Springs. Dobson once said that a man ‘with any gumption’ would protect his wife or child against a transgender woman using a women’s restroom. Dobson falsely painted transgender individuals as dangerous and added, ‘If this had happened 100 years ago, someone might have been shot. Where is today’s manhood? God help us!’ This is a man with tens of millions of devoted followers, and he seemed to condone the cold-blooded murder of transgender individuals.”

– Ashton Clatterbuck, Lancaster News, December 2022

“Televangelist Mark Burns — a Donald Trump enthusiast and South Carolina congressional candidate (he lost in the GOP primary) — called for parents and teachers who support LGBTQ children to be prosecuted for treason and asserted that those found guilty should be executed. While these individuals might play off their words as harmless, queer people are victims of violent hate crimes every day.”

– Ashton Clatterbuck, Lancaster News, December 2022

“The biggest way you, as an ally, as a friend, as a co-worker, as a neighbor, as a person of any faith, can respond to [anti-LGBTQ violence] is to offer love. Offer a safe presence to those who have lost the hope of ever finding a place of security or comfort, to those who enter every space with the expectation of facing hate and violence. Reach out to your gay friend, your transgender colleague, and let them know you care; tell them you love them. Be the beacon of relief they need in this dark, dogmatic world.”

– Ashton Clatterbuck, Lancaster News, December 2022

Solstice & Fire

To Ashton • Love, Dad • March 16, 2024

Part One: Solstice

Born of lightning and solstice,

child of fire and planetary transition,

the stars marked your path at birth.

Riding a not-quite-spring and not-quite-summer storm,

landing between seasons, you were destined to explore

wild places and occupy in-between spaces others feared.

You transgressed lines of boring ordinary

gendered ways of being in this world so freely

it took our breath away. You asked:

Why not wear shorts in winter, become a pole vault

sprinter, bring a bird to dinner, reimagine what makes

a winner? Conventionality had no hold on you.

Through the years, your questions gained more weight.

Why billionaires as kids despair with millions ensnared in debt?

Why love war, ignore the poor, and hate the un-straight?

It never crossed your mind to stop imagining

a different world.

Pushing 9 four times to reach that “z” was worth the wait

in golden time for you, tapping old-man flip phone texts

to a world so glazed by glowing mini-screens it failed to read

your Morse Code plea, for the sake of intellectual integrity,

to stop the frantic rush to lose our minds over Chat GPT.

As antidote, you moored yourself to earthy mundanity.

Making tea. Biting Hannah Lee. Walking woods with Zaphy

at your knee. The precious curving jerky lines of ink on briskly

moving pad as letters poured from fountain fingers sunrise

walking with some lucky friend at the end of your pen—

you loved the patient wait of lettering cramply scribbled

pages for a tactile moment that email could never deliver.

You despised generative AI and the uber-techy

shortcuts your peers pursued, not because it

made life harder, but because it felt more true.

The only twenty-something in America hand writing

checks at BB’s bargain discount store while others

swiped their sterile plastic credit micro-chips

at soulless sensors never glancing for a moment

at the smiling cashier worker hungry for an ounce

of tech-free mutuality far too seldom registered.

Intuitively you understood

that the kingdom of God is nowhere

but among us.

You lived and loved the edges everywhere you went:

tent camps on city streets, overlooks on Susquehanna peaks,

rotting floorboards on caution-taped building sneaks.

Compulsively building, balancing, racking, stacking,

you raised a thousand holy Babels Jenga-ed into existence

by an imagination unencumbered. Stretching to the heavens

from kitchen counter stadium to your sister’s patient cranium—

pens on pans, spoons on cans, Swedish fishes and after dinner dishes,

worn out shoes, playing cards, and baubles from our sitting room niches—

you cobbled together breathtaking obelisks to teetering possibilities,

ever willing to risk another inch, add another layer, take another step,

believing we can always reach a greater height when fear is laid to rest.

Unsurprisingly, contradictions suited you. They downright

saluted you. The misanthrope at every crowd’s center,

an elite ultra-runner who’d rather run alone than races enter,

the reclusive Tucquan dweller who landed in The New Yorker,

bringer of impossible joy and now unspeakable scars,

the five-foot-three kid who touched the stars.

Part Two: Fire

When a massive MAGA rally rolled into Spooky Nook

arena in our neighborhood not long ago, a phalanx

of famous transgender-hating preachers came parading,

berating families like ours as traitors to God and country.

We begged you not to go. You said you had to face the fight;

you wouldn’t hide your light. On site you shook the hostile hand

of General Michael Flynn, capturing the medaled soldier unaware

in a classic Ash trap of queer irony, forcing him to face

your full humanity, subverting his patriotic photo-op with the

fittest buzz-cut warrior he’d ever met, oblivious to your trans

grip in his, a strong young man the US Army refuses

merely for the pronouns that he uses. Flynn never knew

the difference—which proved your point exactly.

But these battles took their toll, strong as you were.

Churning mind, swirling pen, your thoughts roamed

day and night to grasp the source of so much fear.

Turns out bigotry and bad theology

sing a deadly colloquy.

CMCL Sunday School teacher, Silver Sneaker

water aerobics leader, street shadows hungry

neighbor feeder, YMCA morning greeter,

legal rights protest advisor, twice-arrested

eco-justice up-riser, academic dean’s list

maker, stranded kittens on the highway

taker, uncanny birdsong whistle faker

in casual conversation with a loon

while holding space locked-down at

Vanguard’s house of fossil doom—

talk about a man redeeming time!

Your values and life were a perfect rhyme.

Front lines Standing Rock water protector,

Atlantic Sunrise pipeline rejector, gun safety

school kids’ life respecter, transgender rights

advancer—how did you do so much so young?

Time turning Hermione had nothing on you, son.

Campaign mode was your happy abode,

your casual pace, your natural resting face.

Passion pounding pavement, door knocking,

stoop gabbing, street chatting, a maestro

of social change, striking elusive chords

of hope in ill-tuned times of disillusionment.

Bernie and Jess, Warren and Crystle, Izzy and Janelle,

you rallied and stumped, knocked and jumped hoops

to craft a future that works “for all of us.”

Moral clarity and fearlessness were your twin superpowers

born of lessons learned from a rural Galilean rabbi radically

dismantling an empire one blessed beatitude at a time.

Abba Joseph, ancient monk of Sinai Desert fame,

was asked by earnest seekers how to live a mattered

life amid the daily grind of moral strife and anxious mind.

He stretched, the storied tale unfolds, his bony frame

to starry sky and cried, his fingers now ten burning fires:

“If you truly desire, my friends, you can become all flame!”

You, Ashton Myles, were a soul on fire.

You were also wonderfully weird.

In second grade, dabbling in disability rights and chasing

ambidexterity with all your might, you tightly tied your right

wrist to your side, refusing to release your hobbled limb

even when our family went refrigerator hunting

at the local appliance store. Quick question: How many

one-armed refrigerator sales representatives do you suppose

work America’s showroom floors any given hour of the day?

Well, Ash found him. Mom and Dad were mortified as child

and man exchanged uneasy scans at one another’s hands.

“He just wanted to see what it was like,” we poor parentals stammered.

“Perfect timing,” quipped rep. And the universe hummed round in symphonic

synchronicity for this quirky creature atuned to cosmic coincidence,

your comet tail filled, from birth, with a million magic moments,

star dust floating in your wake. Prankster, trickster, dancing eyed

mischief maker—you would never rest without the last laugh.

Even in death.

Ferrying your mortal ashes across Washington’s Delaware Styx

your parents’ scorched hearts brought you home to fix our rest.

We wept for 150 miles, you boxed and cradled in our arms.

Except, it wasn’t you at all. Not in the metaphysical sense

that souls in ashes can’t be found, but in the literal sense

that it was Robert in that box, aged 88 at time of death,

a stranger wrongly landing in our hands by errant funerary plans,

just some lucky dusty bastard enjoying one last joyride in my

weeping wife’s lap all the way from Newark, New Jersey

to Tucquan’s mournful shores. Ash’s ashes: wordplay was

never wasted on you, a jokester from the other side

rib-prodding us all to keep on living, loving, laughing.

Your final Christmas gift a stony hand-laid labyrinth for your

beloved Mupo, a path of inner transformation in our hollow,

an invitation for our feet and aching hearts to follow

your tireless example to keep moving, to keep proving

love prevails. You made the world a brighter place for friends

and haters, too. “We the people” failed to make it safe for you.

Ashton, may you rest in hard earned peace.

And may the rest of us work like hell to make a world

where souls like yours live long enough to tell your story

and join us in the work of justice this side of glory.

It is true that, as a family, we recited the Beatitudes every night for years – probably thousands of times we said it together, and talked about what each "blessing" meant. We then sat in silence to meditate every night at bedtime, our routine up until the kids were in High School.

Matthew 5:1-12

“When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets who were before you.’”

____________

Ash was born at 9:16 PM on a Friday night June 22, 2001 during a lightning storm. Truth is, he was two weeks late and the midwives decided an inducement was necessary. He did not want to come out into the world, we joked. And maybe he didn't, but from the moment he took that first breath he lived fully.

I don't know anyone who embraced life more than Ash. Spending his first two years on a college campus surrounded by so many bright, curious, God-fearing young adults, he developed a full language by 18 months and had no fear of anyone. He was always laughing, precocious, daring, and had trouble going to sleep at night because he didn't want to miss a thing.

When Hannah came along, he embraced his sibling, sometimes a little too hard, and with a shit-eating grin (as my father would say) that communicated the mischief behind the smile.

Our little family was close, tight, rich with love and simple things, marked by rituals and routine. We ate dinner together every night—and the dinner table was a time of sharing, reading aloud as a family, playing games. We got firewood together, cleaned together, and always said we weren't doing chores; we were just doing the stuff required to live together, having fun in the process. We ran together—first Mark and I pushing the kids in a baby jogger, but later they would ride bikes with us while we ran, and later still we regularly had family weekend runs together.

After my dad died in 2005 and we moved back to the hollow in Tucquan, the woods and animals around us were always a part of our daily lives. Rabid raccoons. The return of the Phoebe in spring. Flying squirrels in the attic. Bats in the Great Room. The heavy rains that rose the Tucquan Creek out of its banks and into our yard. Mowing. Poison ivy. Hammocks in trees, zip lines, and trails, trails, trails. So many trails to hike and run and explore and repeat. And books, books, books. The other constant in our daily routine was reading. Reading alone. Reading aloud together. Ash and Hannah both used to ride roller blades in figure eights in our driveway reading a book for hours in the summertime.

That's not to say there weren't also challenges. As many of you know, our work and movement to try to stop the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline took up years of our children's childhood. Yet, through that, they learned to live out their values. To stand up and do the right thing. To speak out against wrong. Ash was raised to see the injustices in the world, because to not see them would lead to complicity in them.

And we strove to counter the injustices with truth and love. In so many ways, Ash's life is a full testament to that goal.

As an adult, Ash took on that theme in his own way. “How do I love a world that hates?” I think that was one of the most challenging struggles he grappled with.

Not only how do I love a world that hates, but: “How do I love a world that hates ME, because I am a trans man? How do I love a world where innocent people are constantly being hurt by those in power?”

I won't pretend I understand.

I won't pretend to have answers I don't have.

But I will cling to what I do know.

We loved a boy.

And he loved us.

We loved a man.

And he loved back.

We loved a human being full of love for others.

And they, those others – you – loved him in return.

I know that each of us who met that child was changed by him.

By his kindness.

His playfulness.

His passion for justice.

His presence.

His words.

His SMILE.

His notes of encouragement.

His goofy humor.

I know – actually, I believe and hope, and want to know – that love will overcome hate some day, in some way. And that love will replace the hate of the world. But history hasn't set much of a precedent for that.

I also know that I, alone, can't change the world.

I can only work on me. And on those around me.

So I'm gonna work on this right here – myself – and, I caution you to beware, because you are in my circle of influence, so I am probably going to work on you, too.

I think the most important message I hope you take with you from this life celebration of our son, who left this world way too soon, is for all of us to love.

To love more.

So love.

Love widely.

Love broadly, profusely, unconditionally.

Love always, everyone, until it hurts.

Choose to love.

And Love means rejecting fear-filled hate of "that other," of the one you don't know or understand or relate to.

Love without judgement.

Love means speaking up for those in need,

and speaking out against scapegoating,

speaking up for the marginalized,

speaking truth in a world of lies.

Love deeply.

Say it.

Don't be shallow or inconsistent.

Don't be superficial or fickle.

Love when it is hard.

(And know that eventually Love is always hard).

Still, LOVE.

Recently a dear friend of mine sent me the words: “Grief is Love Persevering.”

My love for Ash is going to persevere for some time.

In her poem, “Uses of Sorrow,” Mary Oliver says…

“Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.”

I don't know that this darkness will ever feel like gift. But I know the life of Ash was all gift. The light of Ash was gift. And I trust that light still shines in each of us. Let's celebrate that life and light together and show it to the world.

Thank you for being here and celebrating with us the life of Ashton Myles Clatterbuck.

To Ash.