International Contest, Spring 2003

Though I "only" made it to Area, taking 2nd place, I copnsider this possibly my best speech ever. I received tremendously positive feedback from friends and I know that I achieved my goals: to deliver a creatively powerful and moving story that allows me to talk about the death of my brother.

Elephant Bones

I am an elephant! My pachyderm skin appears hardened and impervious to outside pains. The biting flies are easily ignored, but there are greater pains which pierce even this hide - such as losing my brother.
Some animals think grief is a fast thing, racing through their life like a cheetah. But elephants know better. Grief takes time and it takes memory. Elephants visit their burial grounds. They visit the bones and remember. Now I march to my elephant burial ground.

As I walk, I think back to when I was a young calf, grazing, and I found a four-leaf clover. I had two sisters so I wished for a brother. The next year Kenny was born, on February 29. That was many years ago and my memories are faint…There was an elephant game where I would grab Kenny's trunk with mine and swing him around like a soaring bird. I was also eight years older, so when I left the herd he was still young. The time with him after that was even more sparse. And now the times are no more.

As I travel the grief heats inside me until it boils over. I trumpet at the sky, demanding the heavens to know where my brother is? Why he is no longer with the herd! I hear no response, but perhaps it is lost under the angry stomping of my feet on the dull ground.

I arrive at the burial ground, and I remember.

I had left the herd to find my own savanna and I saw my family infrequently. But we kept in touch. Elephants communicate over long distances, rumbling our messages through the ground by stomping.

In late Summer the rumblings reach me: Kenny is having a problem. It seems minor, numbness in a leg. But it doesn't go away. The elephant doctors escalate their tests until they find the cause: Kenny was been bitten by the crab Cancer. This one, named "Astrocytomas", attacks the brain.

I am staggered. I can't wrap my trunk around it. He is a young bull, only 18. Elephants live long lives! But he's also a rash bull. He causes problems for other herds and is disobedient. We fear he might become a rogue elephant. Perhaps this affliction is necessary to turn him around. Better redemption than health.

More rumblings, another update. The cancer cannot be cured. It could be deadly, but it can be maintained, controlled. My sisters don't yet know the full truth. I carry a terrible secret. I am in emotional quicksand, being sucked down, unable to move. I'm exhausted.

I reach out to my herd - my friends - and tell them. The news, my fears. The small graces.

Three days later: The cancer is untreatable. Kenny has a few seasons, perhaps just a few moons, to live. Elephant medicine is no match for it. I want the quicksand to take me away, into the darkness.

But Kenny is broken of his rebellion. He tells dad he has repented, turned around emotionally, spiritually. I wanted this, but never appreciated the cost of salvation.

I return to the herd a month later. And I see how sick Kenny is. I had no idea. The numbness has overtaken his entire left side; it is useless. He is more quiet and listless than in the most sullen of teenage moments. And it's clear that our lop-sided elephant only has days.

Four days later I am at Kenny's side. He is in the sleep from which you don't awake. Each breath more ragged than the one before; each one frighteningly far apart. Until there is no breath to follow. I watch my brother die.

I trumpet out for my family! They come to me, knowing that Kenny has passed. Great elephant tears flow down our faces, enough to make a river. We embrace, our trunks curled around each other, holding tightly. The rest of the herd, Kenny's friends, our friends, came together - and the river grows.


At the burial ground I grasp the elephant's bones -- the physical remnants of a life now gone. I have a picture of Kenny at Niagara Falls, wet on the Maid of the Mist, dour in his teenage years. And memories of a family vacation skiing. Kenny was growing up and I hoped to forge a new relationship with him, to overcome the age difference, my time away from the family. It was a good vacation, the beginning of knowing my brother. That was the last time I saw him healthy.

Anguish strikes. I thrash my head, carving the air with my tusks. A friend who would draw close risks being speared by my pain.

I grasp them tightly, my ears flapping to cool me down, though the air is not hot. I linger, fondling the bones with my trunk. I do not understand: These once were life and now they are rocks.

It passes, replaced by weariness. It is heavy work to shoulder this much sorrow.

I put the relics down. This is not Kenny. He's not here. He is in a new Savanna, where there is no pain, no tears; where the grass grows high and ripe fruit hangs low.

Drained, feeling a moment's peace, I turn back. It is time to leave the burial ground and return to the herd. I am an elephant. I have remembered. I have visited Kenny's elephant bones.