What you want is to turn back the clock, to make it Tuesday morning again, early, and make the accident not have happened, to change the confluence of things - the rain, the timing, a car being where is was? A few seconds sooner, a few seconds later and what is would not be. What you want is to give three dead children and one broken one back to their parents, whole…
Read MoreFive weeks after she had her second leg amputated the doctors sent her home with health aides coming in just a few hours a day. I was terrified for her and for me. How could this 85-year-old woman live without constant help? How would she get from the bed to the wheelchair, from the wheelchair to the bathroom? How could she maneuver the wheelchair through an opening so small that I had trouble when I pushed the chair? Where would she get the strength and the patience to perform such a task?
Read MoreWaiting. That's what we've been doing. Waiting for the drugs to work, for the infection to abate, for the pain to go away, for the snow to fall, for Christmas to come. Waiting. That's what we continue to do. Monday we heard the forecast: a major winter storm. Monday we heard another forecast: my mother-in-law’s foot has to be amputated.. Silence then, and terror, too. Not the artificial kind buoyed by hysterical newscasters who caution people to bottle water and stock up on batteries because of some potential danger. Butl terror fueled by the inevitable…
Read MoreThe poster has been hanging on my office door for nearly two years now. It's an angel poster. I've read it a hundred times. "Angels are the guardians of hope and wonder, the keepers of magic and dreams," it begins. Angels, as in spirits, heavenly visitors who keep you from harm's way; phantoms, shadows, apparitions, guardians from another world. That's what I've always thought…
Read MoreI don't know why it felt so important to find the exact spot. She isn't there. I recognize this. And yet it didn't seem enough just to ride around and lump her together with DICKSON and HARRISON and WHITTENBERGER and all the other people I never met. I knew Amy - knew her for too short a time, too long ago. But I knew her well. She was my daughter's best friend; because of her, her mother and I became friends…
Read MoreToday is her birthday. She would have been 10. At school they would have sung to her. At home there would have been presents and cake and a party. But she died in June so there is no celebration. In the house not far from Wollaston Beach where Leanne lived with her mother and grandparents, though there are photos of her smiling on the walls and shelves, there are few real smiles anymore. Her absence fills the place. There are no feet pounding up the stairs. No books flung on a chair. No "Mama! Nana! I'm home!" Two women who loved and raised a child are empty without her. They try to put into words their loss, their love and their pain. But words can't hold these things and so as they speak, tears fall…
Read MoreI think of it as myth, now, as a fairy tale I once believed. Truth has been downsized to fit a package I can carry around with me. The whole truth grew too heavy and cumbersome with age. The whole truth demanded a responsibility I continue to shun.
But I remember the child who accepted the whole truth, the child I was, who knew that life on Earth was only a test, that Heaven was the reward, not anything we might win here on Earth, and that the sole purpose of existence was to love God in this world and be happy with Him in the next.
Read MoreThe youngest just got her driver's license. Another day. Another benchmark. They come so regularly lately that I have trouble keeping up with them. The oldest graduated and moved to Florida. Then the middle one turned 21. Then the youngest turned 16 and got her driver's permit. Then the middle one graduated and moved home. Now there is this. The birds have grown up and have all flown away…
Read MoreI don't know if an ambassador can do this. Probably not. It will probably take divine intervention on a grand scale. An edict by the pope or something. But maybe Ray Flynn can get the ball rolling. Or put a bug in the pope's ear, to coin a cliche or two.
"Here ye, here ye, Catholic Americans. Get your act together. Learn how to open your mouths, raise your voices to Heaven and praise the Lord."
We're bad at this, you know. Catholics do not sing. Protestants belt out hymns with the passion of converts, but we Catholics don't even bother to mouth the words. We stand silent in our churches and let the organists and the one vocalist who substitutes for a choir do all the work.
Read MoreMy favorite Bible story when I was growing up was the Tower of Babel. The tale intrigued me. Here were all these people working together, co-operating, pooling their talents and energy to build a stairway to Heaven, which I thought, was a brilliant idea.
I still remember what the page looked like in the book we used: people of all different shapes and sizes and colors were stirring mortar, gathering bricks and smiling.
Read MoreIt happened again a few weeks ago.
I saw him in a crowd, at a graduation, a boy I used to date in high school. I recognized him right away: the dark blond hair, just a little too long to be a crew cut; the thin face; the high cheekbones; the wide-set eyes. Even his clothes looked familiar: blue sportscoat, white shirt, striped tie. I started to wave to him and almost shouted, "Tom? How are you? How've you been?"
But then I realized it couldn't be Tom because Tom would be 49 or maybe even 50 by now and this Tom was just a boy, not even 18.
Read MoreI expected him to be larger, a Paul Bunyan in clericals, because a man of average height and build couldn't carry the burdens he carries.
I expected him to shimmer, like a glossy photo of a saint, because of the things I carry.
But there he was, a latter-day Pat O'Brien in a white golf sweater, strolling around the sprawling grounds of his church before Mass on a flawless September Sunday, looking remarkably calm and untroubled as he greeted each of his parishioners by name.
Read MoreWilliam Safire, the New York Times' resident expert in the use of the English language, made a mistake last week. He wrote: "The last time a dying man ran for president of the U.S. was in 1944." This is not true. Franklin Roosevelt WAS dying when he ran in 1944, but so is every man who is running for president now. We are all dying from the moment we are born. We don't like to think about this, but death is our destiny. None of us knows when or how or where we'll die. We don't come with guarantees or promises. We simply are until we are not. To quote an Elton John’s song, we are all "candles in the wind."
Read MoreThe ad has been running in newspapers for more than a month now. "Rediscover the Catholic Church." It isn't a bad ad. The words are all in the right places. The intent is clear.
But the message is strained, because the tone is formal and distancing. "More than anything, we can show you how to rekindle your relationship with God. We can show you an approachable God, a merciful God, a God who gladly welcomes those who come back to Him."
Read MoreWhy? That's what you want to know. You look at the list of names divided into those killed and those who survived the crash of USAir Flight 405 and you think, why?
Why one person and not another? Why does a man die and his wife survive? Is there something that connects the survivors?
If a woman with tickets for a different flighthadn't insisted that her tickets be exchanged, she and her husband would still be alive. If a couple coming back from a cruise had spent an extra day, even a few extra hours, in Florida, they would be alive. If an Ohio surgeon had sat where his wife sat, he would be alive, but she might not be.
Read MoreThey're in there but you don't know how to reach them. You know it. You believe it. You cling to the fairy tale that a kiss - or something like a kiss - will wake them. You cling to everything.
You bring in a stuffed animal, a favorite thing, and you take it and rub it up and down against a cheek.
"Do you know who this is? Can you smell it? Can you feel it?"
And you pray that they can.
Read MoreAt the end of the dinner, after hundreds had approached him to shake his hand; after tears and hugs and dozens of "Thank yous" and "We'll miss yous" and "We love yous;" after speeches by colleagues and friends; after joyful applause and a standing ovation; after hearing himself described again and again as good and warm and selfless and kind, he stood at the microphone and looked out over the crowd and smiled and said: "I'm nothing special. It's all you people working together who've made me look good. "I only pray I become something like the priest you good people have described," said the Rev. John Mahoney, pastor of The Family Parish of St. Martha's in Plainville for 18 years, to the crowd of 800 who had come to honor him.
Read MoreThey talk about these things in whispers if they talk about them at all. The act of describing diminishes, trivializes, what they hold dear. "It sounds strange, I know, but it happened. When I was at my lowest, she came to me. I wasn't thinking of her. I wasn't thinking of anything except that I couldn't take it anymore." And then someone who this woman had loved, who had cared for her as a child, and who'd died a decade before, came and sat beside her. "I didn't see her. Not with my eyes. I felt her with my heart. She was in the room with me."
Read MoreI didn't know him before the accident. Not his name. Not his face. Not his words. The accident is what introduced me to him. A man, a writer, had been seriously injured while stopping to help two people whose car had broken down on the highway. The man was a hero. He had saved a woman's life.
Read MoreThey drove from New York, New Hampshire and Vermont, and from cities and towns all over Massachusetts. They came after soccer games or before football or on their way to the supermarket. Some came directly, on a glorious September weekend, when they could have been anywhere else - visiting friends, golfing, shopping, watching the Red Sox. Dozens came, alone and in pairs, young and old, male and female, to the gymnasium at Brockton High School to fill out a form and wait in a line and have their arm pricked and blood drawn, when they didn't have to, when no one forced them.
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