(soft chamber music)
- We turned on a dime.
It hasn't really allowed a space for reflection,
psychologically, emotionally,
to think about what has happened.
As a primary care physician,
I've had many patients who have had many, many,
family members die of COVID.
My clinic's near the mausoleum,
where the Stanford family's buried.
And I frequently walk there at lunch.
And I thought, "What more fitting place
to have a remembrance and commemoration
and celebration of life?"
(soft chamber music continues)
- Leland Stanford Jr. was the son of the Stanfords.
And he died of typhoid when he was only 16.
He was their only child.
And so in their grief and heartache,
the Stanfords decided to create Stanford University
and said, now, all the children of California
will be their children.
They transformed that grief into something
so amazingly wonderful and positive,
that all of us have benefited from
and will continue to benefit from.
Dr. Lin and I had started talking about
a way to recognize the number of lives lost to COVID,
when it reached a hundred thousand.
And we thought about doing it at a concert.
And then we really hoped that we could do something larger
for the campus community.
And that's when I reached out to Tiffany Steinwert
in the Office of Religious Life.
(soft chamber music continues)
- We needed, as a community, a way both to honor,
and remember the immensity of the loss.
Both the individuals who have lost their lives,
the families and friends who've loved them,
but also the loss of what life was like pre-pandemic.
So in that moment, I knew we needed to do it,
I just didn't know how.
But Bryant Lin and Jackie Genovese and Chris Costanza,
actually did know how.
- In short order, we got some ideas going
and I started to compile a playlist of music
that the walker could listen to.
And I decided I wanted to feature
Stanford performers and composers.
And then the project started to develop
and it got more and more exciting and more involved,
in a sense.
- We had some brainstorming sessions and incorporated too,
what we were hearing from our friends and colleagues,
particularly those on the front lines.
- So right now, we have the Soundwalk,
which is a music remembrance.
We also wanted to have an opportunity
for people to contribute their stories,
related to COVID through an app or a website.
And a physical area of remembrance,
which will be designed by Lauren Toomer,
to allow a, and to create a space of reflection
about losses and changes over the past year due to Covid.
- I think the Soundwalk is an opportunity
for our campus to come together.
And it offers people a brief spot in their day
to think about what this pandemic has meant to them.
And to do so, surrounded beauty, of the campus,
of the landscape and of the music.
(chamber music continues)
- I think we, as a community, we as individuals,
will not be able to move on without a period of grieving.
Grieving empowers us, enables us to move on.
- We do have to move on.
I mean, you have to move on with your life,
but it doesn't mean you shouldn't grieve.
We learn to find a balance.
We learn to remember what we've lost.
We learn to grieve in the context of moving on.
Allowing ourselves to go through that process,
whatever that process is, however long it takes,
is fundamental to us carrying on with our own lives.
(chamber music continues)
- Grief and love are actually two sides of the same coin.
And so the grieving process is a way of honoring that love.
We can't heal if we can't tell the story,
and if we can't acknowledge and honor that grief.
(chamber music)