Category: Grief

Friendship Forged of Steel – In Memory of Jean Buker

Published on by Marilyn7 Comments

At nine pm on October 11, 1954, as tugboats slowly pull a freighter away from the docks in Brooklyn, seven passengers stand together on the deck, watching the lights of the city and the Statue of Liberty fade into the distance. Four more are sleeping peacefully below deck in their bunks and portable cribs, blissfully unaware of how the events of this day are shaping their lives. On the dock where our family members and friends had waved their last goodbyes, a lone man walks to the end. His voice echoes across the harbor waters, over the noise of tugboats as they move the Steel Recorder out towards the open Atlantic: “Grace and peace…Pray without ceasing…Preach the Word.”

Pauline Brown in Jars of Clay

My mom called me yesterday and left a voice message. It was about a dear friend of hers from Pakistan days who was dying.
“It’s not that I’m sad for her,” she said through tears. “It’s that I’m sad. Just so, so sad.”

Mom’s friendship with Jean Buker goes back to early days when the two young families were embarking on a journey that would affect them and their children in unquantifiable ways. Their first forays into friendship began at Hartford Seminary where the two couples, along with a few others from my parents’ mission were enrolled for missiology classes. Those early days of dreaming and planning for their life overseas propelled them forward onto the Steel Recorder – a freight ship that left out of New York Harbor.

I picture my mom and Jean, both in their mid-twenties, beautiful with not a wrinkle on their skin, dressed as one did in that era – in skirt suits with hats and perhaps a strand of pearls at the neck. Jean and Ray Buker had three children while my parents had my oldest brother. The journey by sea to this newly formed country was four weeks long. Four weeks of walking the deck to get exercise, keeping tight rein on their toddlers so they didn’t fall through the huge gaps on the railing of the ships deck, trying to make it through seasickness and the beginnings of homesickness, playing scrabble with a competitive edge in the evenings, singing and praying to a God they loved, then at last seeing the shores of Karachi Harbor in what was then West Pakistan.

How young and naive they all were! And yet – how very brave! They watched as their family members became little dots on the shore, finally looking at each other knowing this was it. There was no going back.

Then those first months in the Sindh region of Pakistan, three couples and six children sharing a two-bedroom house in a questionable area of the city of Larkana because no one else would rent to these foreigners.

Those early days built a solid foundation of friendship. Friendship forged in shared language learning, learning how to cook with unfamiliar ingredients, and all that comes with a cross-cultural move to the other side of the world.

The friendship continued through the years, made stronger as more people joined them. Websters, Roubs, Addletons, Pittmans, Johnsons, Dobras, Salmons, Elkins….names that I don’t think I could ever forget, so much were they a part of our family’s srory.

The Bukers moved back to the United States at one point, Jean’s husband Ray taking a job at the mission. And though the proximity of their friendship changed, every time my parents were in the U.S. they visited the Bukers. Updating each other on life in Pakistan, their kids, what was going on in the mission and sharing joys and discouragements continued to be a part of their friendship.

Jean Buker didn’t stop with my parents. She was Aunt Jean to us, more a relative than any blood could possibly create. Her friendship and love continued on to us kids as she extended her table to feed us too much at every Thanksgiving so we knew there was always a place where the turkey and pumpkin pie would be offered up with friendship and understanding. She provided a home base where we and other members of our family and TCK tribe could stay. Aunt Jean was the one who hosted a graduation party when I graduated as a proud nurse. Aunt Jean was the one who gathered people from all over the Chicago area to shower me with gifts a week before my wedding.

I knew where my mom’s tears were coming from as she cried over the phone. They were coming from a place of sweet saudade, that wistful longing for what no longer exists, no matter how much you mourn or long for it. They were coming from a place of memory, where young hearts and bodies with the world at their fingertips go out to the unknown, and friendship is a necessary ingredient. They were coming from knowing that earthly loss smacks of pain and grief because our hearts are created for eternity.

They were coming from a place of a beautiful, God-ordained, orchestrated, and formed friendship and they reflected the heart of God.

“The shifts of time unearth our longing for a permanent residence, unshakeable, immovable, wholly given and wholly ours. Scattered across this great globe, now and then, we stumble across gifts of happiness from a God who, kindly, with an absolute patience that the trees themselves were taught to imitate, guides us up into the security of his own life”

Laura Fabrycky

This post is dedicated to Pauline Brown, Bettie Addleton, and Grace Pittman – the remaining originals from CBFMS.

Earthquakes & Stories Matter

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The sun is crazy bright today, reflecting off the wooden floors in our house. It is beautiful – a reminder to me of hope and warmth and spring coming. I think about this – the contrast between the safety and warmth I feel and the ongoing crisis of the three earthquakes that Turkey and Syria have endured.

I have been quiet in this space about this tragedy, not due to lack of care, but because what can I possibly do or say that could help? I am far removed from the area and get my news the way most of you do. But I do have a deep love for that part of the world, family who live in Istanbul, and friends who are well acquainted with the area. So today, I’m posting a piece I wrote 10 years ago but never published. A piece that will remind all of us that before the crisis, there was already a crisis. A reminder that these stories that we know and those we don’t know matter to God. A reminder that earthquakes and stories matter. When they are far away, they interrupt our lives for a short time through crisis news reports. But long after the front-page news ends, the crisis, the stories, and the people within those stories matter. At the end of the piece, I have included two places where you can donate. They were recommended to me by my brother and sister-in-law and you can trust that the money will go to those most in need.

And now, back to 2013….

I am sitting in a sun-filled room in Uskudar – an area of Istanbul on the Asian side of the city, occasionally staring out at the tops of buildings. I am tired in the best way possible. I heard the Call to Prayer a half hour ago telling me that it is late afternoon, and we will soon be getting ready for the evening activities.

The day began in chaos. It was the first night since arriving that I did not sleep well. Carol (my sister-in-law) and I were heading to a refugee clinic on the European side of the city, and we knew we would be late. We ran to catch a ferry from Uskudar to Kabatas, breathlessly sliding into seats by the window.

The morning was beautiful, partly cloudy but sun spilling through at odd moments, reflecting off a blue-gray Marmara Sea.

“This is a beautiful city” – the same words came to mind that I had been saying both internally and aloud all week. Beautiful. Breathtaking really, with Topkapi Palace and Hagia Sophia on a hill, the Blue Mosque back a bit creating the picture-perfect skyline that is Istanbul. And the ferry rides were ideal places to slow down and experience the view and the city.

Arriving at the dock, we headed to an underground cable car, taking it the rest of the way to Taksim. As we set off in search of the clinic, Carol remembered that Google maps doesn’t do construction. This is fact.

 But no matter – we were determined. And determined won, as it usually does.

We found the building and after walking down a dark hallway, trekked 4 flights up a set of stairs. Istanbul is not a city for the short of breath. The room we entered was full of language. Turkish, Farsi, English, Arabic – it all melded into indefinable verbs and nouns, participles and dangling. It was a gift to my ears. One of the side rooms was designated as a nurse’s room and we did a quick survey of medicines and equipment. It was quick because there was none (apart from Sarah Goodwin’s 2-year expired antibiotics from Michigan). No blood pressure cuff, no stethoscope, one thermometer, and medicine that fit into one 8 by 11 plastic container.  

Our first patient was an Iraqi refugee. With rusty and wanting Arabic I asked her what was wrong. I barely made out the words ‘headache’ and ‘chest pain’ when the interpreter came to my rescue. And the story came out. Bit by bit by bit. The headache – but really the heartache; the chest pain – but really the stress and a heart broken. The words gave a  picture of a family exiled. Refugees. Forging a new home in a new place.

What is the remedy for a broken heart?

We had so little to offer. A small packet of Brufen (Ibuprophen), and encouragement to drink a lot of water, an offer to come back if the headaches worsened, if the headaches were accompanied by blurred vision or dizziness. She was followed by more people, children and moms, more symptoms and more stories. And these were only the tip of a Titanic size iceberg of stories.

For years I have said that stories matter; stories give us a bigger picture, a narrative into which we offer our hearts. And these stories – they matter. They matter to the clinician who attempts to distinguish, with no equipment, symptoms that need physical medicine, those that need emotional, those that need both. They matter to the interpreter who skillfully takes the words and decodes them for the listener. Most of all they matter to God; a God who needs no interpreter and no storyteller, a God who was present in the room with us, caring for all who were there. A God who gives eyes to see and ears to hear the cry of the heart.  

 The sun has almost set and the Call to Prayer was now over two hours ago. As I close my computer and type the last words, I whisper a prayer for the people I met, and those I never will; for stories I heard, and for the millions I will never hear.

Here is a message from my brother who has lived in Istanbul for 10 years with info on two organizations that he would recommend donating to for earthquake relief efforts:

Two organizations you might want to consider supporting are Medicins Sans Frontieres / Doctors without Borders which works on both sides of the Turkey – Syria border, and İLK UMUT DERNEĞİ / First Hope Association a small Turkish NGO that has a good record of working in close cooperation with government and non-governmental organizations. 

Please keep in mind that support for survivors of this tragedy will remain urgent for many months and years to come, long after the attention of world media has passed on to other things.

In Memory of a Friend, In Memory of a Community

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The news came, as it does these days, over the waves of social media. It was the death of a childhood friend, the news posted by her brother. Within minutes, a community of us, some who hadn’t seen Ruthie for many years, others who saw her this past June, and still others who were with her recently were collectively remembering, collectively grieving.

Ruthie was three years younger than me, a classmate and friend of my younger brother, Dan. She was petite and pretty with a smile that radiated from her bones to her face. She came from a dynamic family, all of them uniquely gifted musically and relationally.

I had the chance to see Ruthie in early June at a reunion for those of us connected to Pakistan. It was the first time I had seen her since 1993 when she visited Cairo with her boyfriend Mark, the man who would later become her husband. We had just left our beloved Maadi community and moved to a different area of Cairo. I was getting used to a new flat in a new part of the city, the kids were anticipating a new school, and my husband was starting a new job. In the midst of all that new came the familiarity of an old friend. Every morning before she and Mark went off exploring the city we would laugh and talk. Every evening we would do the same. The familiar mixed with the new, a gift of memory and discovery.

As I talked to her this summer, I brought up the memory. I was delighted that she, too, remembered. I learned that it had been a key moment in her life with Mark. I knew as I was speaking with her that cancer cells were overwhelming her healthy cells, that she was fighting a hard battle with the tools of chemotherapy, gifted doctors, and prayers of “Thy will be done.” I saw the deep love that she and her husband had formed through the years, a love large enough to embrace four biological and twelve adopted children. But I knew that I only saw and heard a fraction of what her journey had included.

The service was at two in the afternoon, Albanian time. It was broadcast as a gift to many around the world who, through computer screens, could participate in honoring her life.

As I sat in my living room in Boston, miles away from Albania, I began to see others from my Pakistan family and community sign on. With each one, came a rush of memories and thoughts. Ruthie was little sister, mentor, friend, classmate, big sister, and more depending on who you were and how you knew her. Most of all, she was one of us.

In our small community we shared tragedies like they were our own. When a father or mother of one of our friends died, it was like losing a beloved family member. The limbs on our missionary community tree stretched wide and when one of them was gone, no matter how we lost them, it meant leaves and fruit, nourishment and love were gone. These many years later we still feel losses when we hear of the death of someone we loved, someone we knew. No matter if it was another lifetime, they were part of us, and we feel the ache. The names still come to me – Dale, Carolyn, Angela, Val, Joy, Roy, Stan, Tim….and these are only a few of the ones that we have lost. Some were long, slow deaths, others were quick, tragic accidents – no matter, the way they died, their deaths put another nail in a community coffin.

Yesterday we grieved the loss of another. Yet, it was not only her life that we grieved. It was all of it – the loss of one brought up many other losses. In grieving for Ruthie, we had permission to grieve for lost community, lost time, and lost childhood. In grieving the loss of one of us, we once again felt saudade, that wistful longing for what no longer exists. In seeing her life, the adult version of Ruthie featuring a life lived large with joy and love, we perhaps questioned our own scarcity and unwillingness to live large, our inability to love with abundance and live generously.

“Everything precious is costly” were words that were said of Ruthie at the memorial service. Her beloved Mark, her children, her parents, her siblings, and her community are already experiencing the costly loss of wife, mom, daughter, and sister. And we on the periphery, we hear those words and know their truth, for we have lived and witnessed an extraordinary and precious community, gone but still glimpsed in memorials and memories.

But this much I will tell. What’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.

Frederick Buechner

Post Traumatic Growth through Re-Storying

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In some ways, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Boston is immersed in a heat wave. We lazily walk around in the evenings, speaking “weather” to neighbors. The conversations go like this “Wow! It’s hot!” “It sure is!” “Keeping cool?” “Trying to.” Then we limply smile and amble off. Of course, to my Kurdish, Pakistani, and Egyptian friends, 95F (35 C) is not hot. 120F or 49C is hot. And yes, there is much truth to that. But, let us wallow in our heat wave. I, for one, love it. All I can think is how much better it is to be hot than to be cold.

It was fascinating to see the response to my post on TCKs and Post Traumatic Growth. There were emails, texts, and messages that showed much interest in hearing more. One of the biggest things that came out of conversations that I had with people is the importance of story or narrative in post traumatic growth.

As a reminder, Post Traumatic Growth, or PTG is about “positive psychological changes experienced as the result of the struggle with major life crises or traumatic events.” So what does trauma do? It shakes our world, it confuses our lives, and it challenges our worldview. When we face trauma, the story we have been living is massively impacted. Our stories change. Our trajectory changes. Life takes on a narrative of before and after – before the earthquake, after the earthquake. Before the Twin Towers fell; after the Twin Towers fell. Before a death; after a death. These are, to use the earthquake analogy, tectonic plate-shifting events. When the losses have been so great, how do we not live within them? How do we move into new growth?

We learn to “re-story.” As humans we are wired for narratives. Most of us are more likely to remember the story than the chart, the illustration than the data. Whether we are the story teller or the audience, we make meaning out of stories. And when trauma has altered our stories, we fare best when we can find meaning within it. This doesn’t mean that we wish the tragedy and trauma hadn’t happened. I would give anything to have not experienced some of the stories I’ve lived through. But I don’t have that choice. The trauma happened. Now it’s about what I do with it.

Into these narratives of loss and trauma comes the idea of re-storying them by incorporating the loss into the new story. This is not about sugar coating the past; rather it is about self-reflection and coming to terms with how we have grown and things we have learned through pain. Research shows that when someone reflects on painful memories and experiences with the goal of making meaning out of them, they gain wisdom. This wisdom translates into making better decisions, more effective problem solving, and the ability to give better advice. This making of wisdom and gaining perspective is Post Traumatic Growth.

Joan Didion emphasizes this:

We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely… by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria — which is our actual experience.

Joan Didion

Practically speaking, how do we do this? There are many articles and books that speak to this, but a June article by Arthur Brooks in The Atlantic called “Making the Baggage of Your Past Easier to Carry” gives some easy practical tips. The first is to keep a data base of postitive memories, the second is to practice gratitude, and the third one is this:

“In your journal, reserve a section for painful experiences, writing them down right afterward. Leave two lines below each entry. After one month, return to the journal and write in the first blank line what you learned from that bad experience in the intervening period. After six months, fill in the second line with the positives that ultimately came from it. You will be amazed at how this exercise changes your perspective on your past.“

I don’t know what your re-storying looks like. What I do know is that it isn’t about finding answers, because in truth, there are few if any. It is about finding meaning within the trauma, and that makes all the difference.

[Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash]

TCKs and Post Traumatic Growth

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It’s high summer in Boston. Tourists wander, water bottles in hand, silently glancing at fitbits, observable proof that Boston is indeed a “walkable” city. Chalk drawn hopscotch decorates the sidewalks in bright blues, greens, and pinks. Jimmy, the icecream man, is parked by a large park where tourists and locals wander. His business is understandably booming. And my favorite café barely has room for me to settle with my computer and thoughts. I squeeze in and find my way, happy for the busy chaos after a couple of years of masked misery.

I’ve been thinking a lot about post traumatic growth, the specific growth that can occur after deep trauma. PTG or Post Traumatic Growth theory was developed in the mid 90s by two psychologists (Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun). They wanted to be able to explain how people can move beyond deep trauma with a deeper appreciation for life and a strength and resolve to help others.

The literature is careful to distinguish between PTG and resilience. Resilience is described more as the quality or characteristic of being able to bounce back and resume life. When someone has experienced an event that affects their core beliefs, they sometimes can’t bounce back. Their entire world has been rocked to the core by what often seems like meaningless violence or trauma.

In an old article called “The Post Traumatic Growth Theory: Measuring the Positive Legacy of Trauma,” the authors talk about being able to measure growth after trauma through a 21 question-inventory. The inventory looks at positive responses to questions that address appreciation for life, relationships with others, new possibilities that have emerged, personal strength, and spiritual change.

“People develop new understandings of themselves, the world they live in, how to relate to other people, the kind of future they might have and a better understanding of how to live life,” Richard Tedeschi.

Until very recently I never knew there was a theory or an inventory that identified PTG. What I do know is that I have watched some of my refugee, immigrant, and TCK friends live out this reality. I’ve watched them move from bitterness to using appropriate anger for positive change. I’ve observed them taking deep pain and loss and using it to empathize and work with others. I’ve benefitted from their joy and strength, the color they add to the world.

How are some people able to do this, while others remain in a place of post traumatic stress? I don’t think it’s always about the level of trauma, although complex trauma has many, many layers. Yet, even with complex trauma there are examples of people who are able to move forward. One important factor seems to be not being pushed into growth or a positive response. People need time to come to this on their own. For the caregiver or friend, this is difficult. We want to see any small signs that a person is coming out of their pain or darkness. We see every little movement as hopeful and then fall into our own traps of believing nothing will ever change for the person. But experts and counselors working with trauma victims are careful to stress not to push someone into discovering positive growth until they are ready. Healing occurs in stages and the stages are not linear.

I want to look at this in more depth, but I feel this is an area where TCKs can benefit. To know that childhood or adult trauma can be transformed, leading them into personal and professional growth is hopeful and encouraging. This is not rocket science, but when we are in the middle of the hard pieces of life, it feels that way.

So why look at this? I’m not a trauma expert, I am not a counselor. I look at this because in the past few years I have walked with more and more people who have experienced profound pain in life. In addition, I’ve had my own realization of profound pain. My practical theology and belief in a God who is good has led me to believe without doubt that God does not waste pain; that pain, when given to God, is a transformative gift. It doesn’t make pain and trauma easier, but it does make it less senseless.

If you want to take a look at the inventory to take it or have it for reference, click here.

Fractures

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I experienced two fractures in my life, both occuring when I was a child. The first was my leg. I fell off a bunkbed as a tender, evidently fragile-boned five year old. I won’t go into the details of how I sort of threw myself off the bed, angry at my mom, instead I’ll focus on the pain, the intense pain that followed. We were in the city of Jacobabad in Pakistan, far from good medical care. My parents weren’t sure how serious this was so we waited overnight. I will never forget that night. I came in and out of sleep, pain waking me up at every move, my pain medication that of my mom’s soothing voice reading to us from the book Rainbow Garden. The next day we drove along bumpy roads to get to a mission hospital in the city of Sukkur. I ended up with a cast on my leg from ankle to thigh.

The second fracture happened when I was 11 while playing the child’s game “Steal the Bacon.” I got the bacon, but I fell onto my left wrist. Again I felt the intense pain, the pain of a fractured bone.

You never forget the excruciating pain of a physical fracture. Medical professionals describe bone pain as deeper, sharper, and more intense than muscle pain. Yet, as hard as that pain is, emotional fractures in families, friendships, and societies cause far more pain. And unlike fractured bones, a cast or brace put on by a skilled physician is not available.

While many have never had fractured bones, my guess is that most of us know the pain of fractured relationships. Most of us know the pit in the stomach, the sleepless nights, the grieving too deep for tears that comes as a result of these fractures. We would give anything for a cast, anything for pain medication, anything to relieve the deep ache.

I’m in a season of fractures, fractures that I don’t know what to do with, fractures that cloud my vision and hurt to the bone. These are fractures that have few answers. In addition, I live in a society that has profound fractures. Fractures that, though they be societal, have shards that reach into families and friendships. These too are fractures with few answers.

And if the fractures are not difficult enough, the public response is deafening. So deafening that I find I can’t think for myself.

Layered in with all the fractures are people. Beloved, beautiful, made in God’s image people. People who on one hand drive me crazy and on the other fill me with compassion. People who come with profoundly difficult stories, people who are angry, people who are rejoicing, and many, many who don’t know how to show love.

I was walking by Boston’s Harbor yesterday evening with a heavy heart, thinking about fractures and about people. There is a public art display that has just been put up around the Harborwalk. It features the sculptures of Michael Alfano – a gifted artist. All of the sculptures are extraordinary, but one in particular hit my soul. A dove on one side turns into a hawk on the other. In between are two outstretched hands. The inscription says this:

In Peace Offering, the dove conveys the hope for peace, while its tail transforms into a hawk, representing hostility. The dove’s wings become open hands, which might be ours, in an asking, weighing, or offering pose. Or they might belong to a larger force that welcomes two people to dialogue.

Michael Alfano – Peace Offering on Harborwalk

“The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true but few can put it into practice.”

The Tao

I felt extraordinary peace as I saw this sculpture and read the description, for this is a piece that challenges me to keep my hands and my heart open – open to change, open to dialogue, open to listen, and above all – open to show love.

The battles and fractures in our hearts rarely take place in public. They take place in the dead of night, when noone is around to witness them. They take place in the early morning hours of begging for mercy. They take place in the wordless prayers of our souls.

I don’t know what your wordless prayers are today. We can only know our own, and that is enough. What I do know is that I long to be a dove in a world that rewards hawks. I long to open my hands in a peace offering in a world that asks me to close them. I long to see God and people first, and the pain of my own fractures second.

I long for the day where the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the broken are made whole, and hearts no longer break from fractures. Until that day I hold to the comfort that comes through the author of all beauty and art and I offer up my hands to the One who knows best how to use them.

[Image by Carola68 Die Welt ist bunt…… from Pixabay.]

[Sculpture Photo Credit – Michael Alfano website photo by Adrien Sipos]

Grieving and the Casserole Ladies

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Several years ago, a colleague at my work place lost her father to a tragic accident. It was right after Thanksgiving and the family was paralyzed with grief. Tragedies during holidays are a degree more painful as shock mixes with holiday expectation, creating a numb disconnect. A couple of day’s after the tragedy, my colleague’s roommate, a dear friend of mine, called me and said “I don’t know what to do! There are no church ladies. No church ladies means no casserole ladies! How are we going to help this family?”

Initially I responded in stunned silence. It has been years since my friend went to church, so why the church ladies, the casserole ladies? “What do you mean?” I asked. My friend went on to say that growing up she knew that whenever there was something hard or life changing, like funerals or births, there was a guarantee that the family would not have to worry about meals. Whether they knew the family or not made no difference, the casserole church ladies would show up like fairy godmothers with delicious and plentiful food. With everything else that a grieving family or community was going through, at least they wouldn’t have to wonder how to feed people. Like magic, casseroles, brownies, cookies, seven-layer salads, jello salads, rolls, bread, and Robert Redford cake would appear at their doorways. There was no expectation of conversation and no expectation of reciprocity. It was a “We are so sad. We are so sorry. Here! Have a brownie!” It wasn’t to minimize the grief, rather it was tangible support in the form of food.

I knew in that moment exactly what she was talking about. I’ve been a recipient of the goodness of the casserole ladies and have experienced this tangible comfort many times. One time it was an entire Christmas feast, another time a week’s worth of freezable meals. Just one long year ago during a family crisis, my son opened the door to a massive lasagna and huge container of salad, enough food to feed a family of 30. Words would have been ineffective and difficult, but food? Food was perfect.

Yesterday a friend sent me the cooking newsletter that comes out of the New York Times. It was a couple of paragraphs – simple and timely, titled “Grief and Cooking.” There it was – a perfect description of the role that food plays when there is a tragedy or crisis.

Food plays a central role in our reaction to tragedy, to death and grieving. It’s why casseroles appear on the doorsteps and countertops of those experiencing it, why we feel the urge to roast chickens or assemble lasagnas when the news is grim. Food is comfort of a sort, and fuel as well, for anger and sorrow alike. We cook to provide for those we love and for ourselves. In the activity itself we strive to find relief, strength, resolve.

Sam Sifton from NYTimes newsletter: Grief and Cooking

Right now, more than anything I wish I could make a casserole for the grieving families of Uvalde, Texas. where I imagine sleepless nights barely ending as nightmare days begin, an entire community forever changed. I wish I could make them a roast chicken and stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce and finish it off with my specialty apple cake. Or maybe a delicious lasagna with fresh garlic bread, because when you are grieving, carbs are necessary. Like many of you who are miles away, unconnected to the tragedy other than the human capacity of empathy and grief recognition, I still long for concrete ways to enter into their suffering.

I can’t make a casserole and a loaf of bread for the grieving families of Uvalde. But I can make a casserole and a loaf of bread for a neighbor who is hurting. I can take the heart and warmth of my kitchen and cook it into food. I can translate love, care, and prayers for courage into bread dough, delivering a loaf packed full of empathic goodness to someone in my world who is desperate for comfort.

And as I measure and whisk, I will pour my prayers for Uvalde into the mix, praying that somehow, as impossible as it seems, comfort will come.

[Image by RitaE from Pixabay]

Healing Through Beauty

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I may be biased, but Charlestown is the loveliest place to live in all of Boston. It has charm, character, and beauty all wrapped up in a complete package. It is a city space with a small town feel. Neighbors know and care for each other, people say hello as they walk their babies and their dogs, and the owners of the bodega down the street laugh goodnaturedly as I try my Spanish which is limited to Ola! and Gracias!

Though every season is lovely, springtime feels particularly so as forsythia blooms bright yellow, quickly followed by flowering trees, azaleas, daffodils, and tulips. An already friendly place becomes friendlier, the sheer joy of living is present everywhere.

Charlestown helped to heal my heart last spring. As half of me lay in a hospital bed not two miles away, the other half walked the streets of Charlestown with one of my sons, marveling at how beauty, joy, and tragedy could be so mixed up together. Tears that I thought would never stop dried on my cheeks, joy exploding like the blossoms around me.

The Russian author, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, wrote the words “Beauty will save the world” many years ago. Those words became my reality, for in the midst of the tragedy of last year, beauty was exactly what I needed. Beauty saved me.

Beauty healed my eyesight and my heart. Beauty called me into a greater reality than the one that I saw, the one that I lived.

Beauty healed my eyesight and my heart. Beauty called me into a greater reality than the one that I saw, the one that I lived. Beauty tenderly woke me to the Beautiful One and to a coming reality where there will be no more death, suffering, crying or pain.

As I walk the streets today, sun glistening off dew drops on newly sprouted buds, I am in a different place. The tragedy of last year has given way to the hard work of healing. The beauty all around welcomes me as I continue to walk in faith, faith that the pain of today and the fight to see beauty will someday give way to a forever that is far more beautiful and less fleeting than springtime in Charlestown.

Chaste and ardent eros for the Beautiful is the first task of human life, and falling in love with Beauty is the beginning of every adventure that matters

Dr. Timothy Patitsas in The Ethics of Beauty

And so I ask you: When has beauty healed your heart?