Death Is Not "The Worst Thing About Life"

On this most difficult day I am thinking about death.

Last night, on my way out of my graduate class in Jersey City, a friend texted me to let me know our next door neighbor's infant son had died suddenly. I spent the long drive home talking to Ruth. When I got home at 11 p.m., I sat in my car in the driveway, crying and still talking with her and noting that all the lights were on in the family's home and all the shades drawn. My friend and I were grieving, trying to make sense of the unimaginable.

Walking: Grieving And Rejoicing

I've spent many hours walking this summer - through my neighborhood, along a canal in Indianapolis, down a mountain in Vermont, and through many, many parks in New Jersey. By the time summer is over, I will have logged nearly 300 miles. This is happening in part because my husband and I are training to walk a half-marathon in December and in part because I have been grieving. And so I walk and I pray and I grieve.

I've walked with my husband, and with my friend Meredith, but most of those miles I have walked alone. Something is soothing about being out in nature, using my legs and my arms, hearing my own breathing and feeling the sweat pour down my face. It's a reminder that every breath is a gift from the One who loved us into being.

Overheard in a Retirement Community Dining Room

Some moments lodge deep inside one's heart. That happened to me today, as I ate lunch with my parents at a retirement community they wanted to check out.

When Words Fail: Pray for Sarah Harkins and Her Family

When I was in high school, I had the role of Laura in Tennessee Williams' play The Glass Menagerie. I remember our drama teacher, Mr. Stewart, discussing a scene with us, a scene in which Laura's brother, Tom, does not say a word. "Why isn't he speaking?" Mr. Stewart asked us. "Because he is so full of emotion he cannot speak."

And so it is with me, following the sudden death Monday of Sarah Harkins, 32, of Fredericksburg, Va., a friend I never met face to face, but a woman who has helped to guide my journey for several years. Sarah, who was carrying her unborn child, Cecilia, died after an allergic reaction to many stings from a yellow-jacket hive disturbed in her backyard. She is survived by her husband, Eric, and four children.

The Fault in Our Stars: Heartbreaking and Beautiful

Perhaps I am the last English-speaking person on the planet to read The Fault in Our Stars, the young adult novel about two teens with cancer who fall in love.  But I am glad I got around to it. This beautiful book will break your heart.

Well, I haven't actually read the novel; I listened to it on my iphone yesterday and today as I drove from Indianapolis back to my home in New Jersey. I had spent the week in Indianapolis, attending a conference called "Teaching Teachers to Teach Kurt Vonnegut."

A Painter's Journey with Multiple Sclerosis: "Everyone Has a Yearning to Make a Mark"

Our older son's godmother just posted this video on her facebook feed. It is the story of a man, Brett Weber, a neuroscientist and painter. He died today of complications from multiple sclerosis.

photograph by Frank Wiese

"There's a Circle in Everything:" A Granddaughter's Tribute

Here is a story, told through song, by a little girl who grew up to be a songwriter(at left). She sings from her heart about
her grandmother, (at right) who died a month ago at age 74. This is a reminder that our lives our fleeting and that the One who called us into being also calls us all home.

Carrying the Cross of Cancer with a Heart WIde Open

My friend Frank Simmonds continues to share his suffering and his faith in the face of cancer as he "walks toward the Infinite." He shows us how to live suffering with meaning.

One of my favorite comments is: "Where were you when the Universe was created?"

A Friend Faces Death: "I am Surrendering to Something"

Two weeks ago, I published a video my friend Rita had put on youtube. Her husband, Frank, (pictured holding the cross) suffers with from advanced-stage neuroendocrine cancer. Today Rita put up another video, one that shows her husband continuing to bear witness to the Mystery that called each of us into being and the Mystery to whom we all are destined.

A Father is Dying: A Lesson in What Faith Looks Like

This is what faith looks like.

I just got off the phone with Jane, one of my dearest friends. Her husband is our younger son's godfather. Jane had emailed me to let me know her 85-year-old father, Richard, is dying. He has had a massive stroke. She is sad; my usually stoic friend has been shedding tears. Her four daughters and her husband are comforting her.

Jane told me this. "God loves my father more than I do. He is more God's child than he is my father."

A Life Lived Small and With Immeasurable Beauty

When I checked my email this morning before work and opened the attachment from a colleague, I burst into tears. My colleague Mary, with whom I co-teach a Natural Science class, had put as the subject to the email "Aunt Eileen."

"Aunt Eileen" was Eileen Jaqui Kuhn, 88, of Metuchen, who died on Holy Thursday at home with her family by her side. My husband and I have lived in this corner of New Jersey since 1995 and our lives have intersected with the Kuhn family's ever since. Tonight, Easter Monday, my husband and I attended Mrs. Kuhn's wake, which gave me a glimpse into the beauty of a life spent from start to finish within a three-mile pocket of friends, family, work and parish.

Warriors' Watch: Helping a Wounded Soldier to His Final Rest

When I pulled up to the funeral home after school, I was greeted by the sight of several solemn-faced men holding American flags. I learned from them later they volunteer with a group called Warriors' Watch and that they were on an "Honor Mission."  Most of these men are veterans. They planned to stand outside the funeral home all afternoon and evening today.

This group had been part of the welcome home celebration for U.S. Army Sgt. Derek McConnell, who was wounded in Afghanistan in July 2011. He lost both his legs and had other serious injuries when he was hit by an improvised explosive devise. He spent 14 months in rehabilitation, including nearly three dozen surgeries, at Walter Reed National Medical Center. The group welcomed him to his New Jersey hometown for his 23rd birthday last fall. Sgt. McConnell was engaged to be married soon to his high school sweetheart. One of his four siblings is a student of mine.

Seven Quick Takes For Friday

1.  Please pray for the soul of my sister-in-law Barbara's father, who passed away Wednesday at age 71 of a heart attack. His name is Wilfredo Salvador and he and his wife raised their five children in Dumaguete City in the Philippines. You might remember I wrote about one of his grandchildren, Brennan Kyle Alcantara, who was miraculously rescued from flood waters during Typhoon Sendong.

 May the Angels lead him into Paradise. 
May the Martyrs receive him at his coming 
and take him to Jerusalem, the Holy City. 
May the Choirs of the Angels receive him, 
and may he, with the once poor Lazarus, 
have rest everlasting. Amen.

Unstuffed Shells and a Mother Lost

Mystery is always provoking me. Sometimes, it takes me a while to understand what is tugging on my sleeve.

Last week, I got the sudden urge to make stuffed shells for Friday night dinner. Around here, when Friday nights roll around, we all are usually so wiped from our work and school weeks, that Friday often finds us ordering pizza or Indian or eating leftovers. But this Friday night, I decided, we would have some homemade comfort food.

I found a great recipe on Pioneer Woman's website and then decided to triple the recipe. I did not know why I wanted to triple it. Maybe I'd freeze it for another Friday night? Maybe this would be our January tradition? I wasn't really sure, but felt compelled at the Stop n Shop Friday afternoon to buy three times of everything: the crushed tomatoes, the parsley, and the Italian sausage. The only thing I could not find were the jumbo shells.

Musings on September Despair and Hope

As September approaches I find myself in a reflective mood. September is full of meaning to me.

September isn't an easy month for me. In early September of 1996, we nearly lost our first-born son within days after his birth. Then in 2001, the day before that son's fifth birthday, my husband nearly lost his own life in the World Trade Center attacks. In both instances, I felt as if the ground beneath my feet had disappeared.

In the intervening years I also have come to see these experiences as a way for God to tell me to appreciate the precious, fragile lives of my loved ones, to never take their presence in my life for granted.

"Give Us This Day:" Unexpected Inspiration

Free. That's my favorite price.

That's why I headed straight to the back of the church after Mass when Father Joseph Domfeh Boateng announced at the end of 10:30 a.m. Sunday Mass at St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in Bedford, New York that there were free prayer books.

Liturgical Press, an apostolate of  Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota is giving free samples of its August issue of "Give Us This Day" a daily prayer  book. Already I have found some wonderful words inside its pages. My prayer life ebbs and flows and this booklet is proving a great midsummer boost.

The Gift of Maurice Sendak

I listened to all four of Terry Gross's radio interviews of Maurice Sendak, the fabled children's book writer and illustrator who died yesterday at age 83. I listened to them as I drove home from work and I kept listening as I drove our 15 year old to the dentist. The interviews moved me deeply. Sendak never shied from facing death, or from living life, or from creating the truth as he saw it. Although he was a man without faith, he was a gift straight from the Divine. I believe right now he is startled to discover himself in the embrace of the loving father of us all.

I was going to write a tribute to him, but I found a much better one than I would have written by Nancy Piccione, book page editor for the Catholic Post. Here it is:

A Gray Afternoon, A Sweet Tradition and the World of Souls

This afternoon, between work and errands, I stopped by a funeral home a mile or so from the high school where I teach. A young colleague's father had died at age 86 after a long, difficult illness. Along with dozens of my colleagues, I went to pay my respects and to pray for her father's soul before his funeral Mass. As I headed out of the funeral home, I was struck by the idea that such a beautiful and solemn tradition is precious and might one day be a rarity. 

Rachel's Challenge: Grieving the Death of A Child, Cultivating Hope

I wasn't familiar with the movement called Rachel's Challenge until recently, when the public high school where I work sponsored a speaker from the nonprofit organization. The father of Rachel Scott, the first victim of the Columbine High School shootings on April 20, 1999, started the group to promote his late daughter's two-page Code of Ethics, which she wrote a month before her murder. The code challenges people to be kind.

Priest friends and psychologists have told me that the death of one's child is a loss that is impossible to "get over." It is hard to consider how Rachel Scott's father feels, knowing his 17-year-old daughter was gunned down for no reason except she was sitting outside eating lunch in the sunshine with friends.

Seven Not-So-Quick Takes for Friday: Surviving Terror, Reading Books and Avoiding Gardening

Friday already! Thanks to Jen at Conversion Diary for inspiring this feature.

1. This is how our 11-year-old son regularly dresses this summer. He explained he has socks of all colors for various sports but would NEVER wear a blue with a purple sock because "that would so not match." We were at Subway when I took this picture. On our way into the grocery store, a concerned mom kept pointing down at the ground. She was not a native English speaker, so I was unclear as to her concern. Then it hit me (duh): the shoelaces!

2. As we approach the 10-year-anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, my husband and I are having those powerful anniversary-approaching feelings. He is a World Trade Center survivor. Yes, he was at work that day. Yes, he was in the building. And yes, he got out by walking with thousands of others (he from the 68th floor) down the stairs to safety.

You and your children don't "get over" this experience. You get through it with the help of kind friends, neighbors, family members, pastors and yes, mental-health professionals. And you get through it with prayer, lots of prayer.