Last week I had an incredible adventure, marked with a few moments of—well, “terror” is probably too strong a word. But it’s fair to say that I was well out of my comfort zone and nose-to-nose with my own mortality.
In the process I learned something vital about my efforts to help others.
Sometimes being right is exactly the wrong thing.
Since my dad’s death in November, I’ve kept in close touch with my mother. My parents were married for 64 years, and one of the most significant things I can do for Mom is to give her steady emotional support.
A few evenings ago I failed in that respect.
This week marks the sixth anniversary since we lost our son Reid, our only child, in a car accident. It’s never an easy time for us. Thankfully, it was one of those mishaps in which none of the three drivers involved was entirely at fault. Each made the kinds of mistakes we’ve all made. That has helped Jeff and me absolve them from blame.
Many people have helped comfort us and prop us up. Some of those folks have asked the obvious question: Why did this have to happen? Reid was such a great kid—handsome, smart, funny, and compassionate in that I-want-to-be-nice-without-seeming-nice macho teenage way. From what his teachers later told us, he was just coming into his own.
I learned pretty quickly that asking why why why and other unanswerable questions did me absolutely no good. What did make sense, all the sense in the world in fact, was to focus on the most obvious question: What now?
It started as, “What do we do now that he’s gone?” That was unimaginably difficult to confront. Gradually it shifted and became, “What can we do to honor Reid’s life and memory?”
Now, years after I decided to remember Reid by learning to live in service to others, the question has settled into, “What qualities can I nurture within myself, today, that will help me be the person I want to be?
In losing Reid, I felt as if everything I had previously been and experienced had been burned away, leaving the empty shell of my body. Nothing existed of my original self. Although friends might argue with that description, to me it rings true.
But wait. If the searing intensity of grief really reduced my former self to ashes, then a unique opportunity awaits me. I can rebuild myself, carefully choosing what to include and what to leave out.
This is the most sacred and difficult of spiritual practices. I would never have volunteered to embark on it. Having been plunged into it, though, and having tried to embrace it and learn from it, I can honestly say that it is cleansing my soul.
There’s no need to tell you here about the qualities I’m trying to cultivate to become a practitioner of selfless service. I write about them in my forthcoming book, and I regularly post thoughts about them in this blog and on my Seva Facebook page.
The important lesson for today—the most important lesson of my existence—is that given time, even the most unimaginable loss can be an avenue to a new life. Six years later, I am well into the journey down that path.
Winter is the cruelest season for the homeless. This blog, from last winter, was the very first I posted on this site. Since then the numbers of the homeless have grown, after several years of decline. New York City now has an estimated 61,000 homeless, the most in its history. A recent survey by the U.S. Department of Education gauged the number of children living without shelter or in crowded houses with two or more families to be nearly 2.5 million. That's also a historic high. I wanted to post this blog again to remind us all that those bodies huddled on the streets are people who deserve our compassion.
The woman sat on a rolled-out sleeping bag beneath the protective awning of an office building, just barely out of the cold winter rain. Her hair, brown and curly, seemed bouncy in a way that she did not. She was perhaps 30, dressed in jeans and a pretty, if frayed, pink fleece jacket. She might have been a backpacker ready to embark on a weekend camping trip—except that she wasn’t.
Click here to read more
Renate Macchirole knew she had to do something. In her job as the director of our local Home Health Respite Care program, she kept meeting young men and women with intellectual disabilities. They were too old to be in school, but they weren’t capable of living on their own. So they lived with their parents, completely isolated from their peers.
Years earlier Renate had worked with similar young people at a facility in New York. You’ve seen some of these folks. They’re the ones that elicit double takes in public, followed by a quick turning of backs. The ones society normally keeps hidden away. But Renate has a special place for them in her heart.
