Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(14)
The offspring of two artists, Thomas Merton is arguably the most influential American Catholic author of the twentieth century. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, sold more than a million copies. He wrote more than sixty other books and hundreds of poems and articles on topics ranging from monastic spirituality to civil rights, nonviolence, and the nuclear arms race. Merton lived a raucous and challenging life, fathering a child while studying at Clare College, Cambridge, in the UK, and joining the Communist Party before finally confirming to the Catholic church in 1939 when he was in his mid-twenties. In 1941, he joined the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, where he gained a reputation as a monk who was a spiritual seeker, not a settler, a man who did not recognize absolute truth but saw the grand ambivalence, the contradictions and duality of existence. In later life he explored the similarities between Buddhist and Christian monks.
For the average American sixteen-year-old weaned on an academic diet of short sentences and multiple-choice questions, Merton is a complex and demanding character.
In her 1997 theology class, titled Experiencing God, Meghan examined the teachings of Father Thomas Merton and other mystics. Her teacher, Maria Pollia, recalls that Meghan was not daunted by the intellectual challenges posed by Merton’s work, embracing concepts that demand considerable maturity and considered reflection. For the first time in their school career, students were thrown into a subject without obvious answers, the course requiring more than an ability to memorize pages of a set text. Pollia recalls: “As we become more mature in the adult life, we understand that there are many inconsistencies, many dichotomies, and that life is a continuing encounter with mystery.
“For a young person to feel comfortable with that conversation is very unusual. They get there in the end, but rather than fear these concepts and backing away, Meghan was already interested in pushing deeper and deeper into these questions. She was remarkable. Someone said, would you have remembered her irrespective of Prince Harry? Absolutely. She is one of the top five outstanding students in my career, and I promise you I am not just saying that.”
During this philosophy course Meghan and her classmates were faced with a real-life paradox: How could a young mother, a glamorous humanitarian in the prime of life, die in the cruel banality of a car accident. She and her friends watched the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in early September 1997, tears coursing down their cheeks at the poignant moment when the cameras zoomed in on the royal coffin. Perched among the white flowers was an envelope with one word, “Mummy,” containing Prince Harry’s last note to his beloved mother. Meghan was not the only one to ask how this tragedy could befall a living icon; dozens of conspiracy theories sprang up on the internet and elsewhere as millions tried to make sense of the senseless.
Nor was she the only one to feel Diana’s loss in a keenly personal way. After she heard about the tragedy, she and her friend Suzy Ardakani had sat and watched old videos of the 1981 wedding between Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. According to family friends, she was intrigued by Diana not just for her style but for her independent humanitarian mission, seeing her as a role model. Inspired by the princess, she and her friend Suzy collected clothes and toys for less privileged children. In fact, such was her interest in the princess that Suzy’s mother Sonia even gave her a copy of my biography, Diana, Her True Story, which remained on her bookshelves for the next few years. As her childhood friend Ninaki Priddy observed: “She was always fascinated by the Royal family. She wants to be Princess Diana 2.0.”
Diana’s death was a painful reminder for the Ardakani family, who had just two years previously also experienced the life-changing force of a random act of fate. One afternoon in 1995, Matt Ardakani, Suzy’s father, was working at his downtown car body shop when a deranged Vietnam veteran who had murdered his family came into the garage and started shooting at random. Mr. Ardakani was hit in the spine and lung and rushed to hospital. When Suzy was told about the shooting, it was Meghan who was the first to console the sobbing teenager and the one who accompanied her to the hospital, where they kept vigil for hours.
Suzy’s mother, Sonia Ardakani, recalls: “She and Suzy sat beside Matt’s bedside for many hours, praying he would pull through. We feel sure those prayers helped him survive.” Though permanently paralyzed by a random act of madness, Matt did survive and is still working.
Meghan’s instinctive empathy with others and her interest in giving back—a central tenet of Immaculate Heart’s mission—as well as her evident maturity, thoughtfulness, and positive attitude made her the clear first choice to be a group leader at a Kairos retreat in the fall of 1998. Like hundreds of Catholic schools across America, Immaculate Heart regularly organized Kairos (Greek for critical moment) retreats for students, which were designed to help teenagers contemplate the place of God in their lives.
During the four-day retreat, which was held at the Holy Spirit Center at Encino, six girls were chosen to lead groups of eight in various discussions to encourage participation and debate. As a leader, the most daunting assignment was to make a thirty-minute presentation dealing with a challenging list of issues including self-image, trust, core values, and finding yourself.
Christine Knudsen, who has been organizing the Kairos retreat at Immaculate Heart for twenty-three years, described the qualities she watches for in the girls chosen as leaders. “You are looking for a girl who’s been through something and who has a certain amount of depth to her. The kinds of insights and comments Meghan made gave her a depth because she had had to struggle with her own issues.”