After decades of darkness, light

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After decades of darkness, light

Her history is hospitals. They're where she lived, where she grew up and where parts of her died. They were the best hospitals, the Ivy Leagues of psychiatric care. Her father, a heart surgeon, trusted these places, with their names that overshadowed their failures. They had big reputations and bigger price tags. He took her to one after another. But his daughter slipped deeper into herself and further away from him. He wouldn't give up. He refused to accept the "We're sorry, but there's nothing more we can do" he kept hearing. "If you try something four times and it doesn't work, then you try it again," says Dr. Frank Spencer, now in his 80s.

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I'm sure she knows I loved her

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I'm sure she knows I loved her

She died on a Monday in September between a weekend when my son was home and a Tuesday night pizza party. The sun didn't blink; the world didn't pause. Nothing happened - there was no presentiment of change, not even a flicker of feelings to make me think of her, my long ago friend, a woman I loved, a woman who was good to me, passing through and by and on. Flo Grossman died on Sept. 25 and I didn't know until Dec. 19. How can this be? The world should have felt different that Monday - slighter, duller, because the space filled by a vibrant life was suddenly left vacant.

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Helping one family at a time

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Helping one family at a time

Terry Orcutt spends her days on the phone and most evenings, too, listening, taking notes, asking questions. "Where do you live? What do you need? How many children do you have?" Her concern is real. Her love for people she doesn't know is real, too. It's what drives her and what sustains her, call after call. "Love one another as I love you." This is Christianity's number one rule. Terry Orcutt lives this rule. She loves without question. She sees God in all people. So does her husband, Jim.

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Gifts we count on every Christmas

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Gifts we count on every Christmas

It stays the same. That's what I love about Christmas. In a world that is always changing, Christmas doesn't. It may get a bit grander every year, yes, and the season starts a little sooner. But the hymns and the colors and the lights and the gift giving, the baby in the manger, Santa at the North Pole - the crazy, religious, secular mix that is this holy day/holiday hasn't changed in my lifetime. "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" and "Here Comes Santa Claus" I sang as a kid and I'm singing now.

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Mourning the hidden tragedy in Iraq

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Mourning the hidden tragedy in Iraq

Adam is my prism. I look at life through his eyes. He is 20 months old, and everything is new to him. And so far, everything is good. He's loved. He's healthy. He sees the world as a safe place. I know the world isn't safe. And it scares me sometimes, the difference between what he sees and what I know. Life is fragile. It's why we swaddle infants, and put bumper pads in cribs and seat belts in cars and inoculate against disease. It's why parents don't sleep some nights, many nights, worrying about all that can go wrong.

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The loneliness of old age cries out for comfort

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`They're all so busy." That's what she says whenever I ask about her family. She insists that they aren't ignoring her, that they're busy with work and school and friends and shopping and sports and meetings. That's why she doesn't see them often. She understands. She's not complaining. She used to be busy, too, her door always open, people coming and going, the phone ringing, then more people stopping by. It was a whirlwind for 20, 30, 40 years, and she was at the center, in the kitchen cooking, baking, the teapot always warm. She was a joiner, too. She belonged to church and civic groups. She rang other people's doorbells. She didn't stand still, not ever. Life was always too full of things to do.

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When we compare, we lose

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I am trying not to compare. Not stuffing. Not apple pie. Not last year with this year. Not table settings. Not houses. Not family rooms or family dynamics. Not anything.

Comparison, I've come to believe, is the eighth deadly sin.

I used to compare myself with Rosemary. We met in second grade. She had straight hair. Mine was curly. She wore skirts and sweaters. I wore frilly dresses. She had her very own kitchen drawer, which was filled with paper, books, paints and crayons. I had to keep my things in a toy box in my room.

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Grandfather leaves a model of courage, duty

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The grandfather is the hero in this story, a humble, hardworking man who dedicated his life to his family, who had no dreams except theirs. "We didn't know," his grandchildren said. They'd heard the tales of his hardships - didn't all grandparents walk to school uphill both ways? - but they hadn't listened. One week ago, at his funeral, they listened and wept. Vincenzo Tagliarini was 13 in 1926 and living in Sicily, the oldest of four when his father died. He became a man overnight. He quit school and took over the family farm. He grew vegetables and olives, not just to eat but to sell. When his sister fell off a horse and died, he helped bury her, then returned to the fields to work.

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When memories are merely jogging in place

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When memories are merely jogging in place

We remember it differently. Anne says that we went to Story Land on a summer day not more than five years ago. And that we walked around, just the two of us, enjoying the scene. Going there was my idea because I wanted to revisit a place I had come with my parents and my grandmother when I was a child. I don't dispute being with my parents and my grandmother. I wore an aqua-and-white dress, which I hated. I posed with the Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe. I smiled for the camera. This was nearly 50 years ago.

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The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived

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The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived

A long time ago, when my daughter was 14, she had a homework assignment: Choose six people, dead or alive, real or fictional, with whom you would want to be stuck on a deserted island.I assumed I'd be one of them. Her brother was, and her godfather, and Mary Poppins and Matafu, a resourceful young boy in a book she was reading, and Doogie Howser, a TV doctor.

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Something new is reminder of something old

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Something new is reminder of something old

Is this what happens as you age? Does everything new always bring back the memory of something old? Is the past both a minefield and an archeological dig only to those who have lived 40 or 60 or 80 years? Or does this happen to 20-year-olds, too? A puppy makes you think of your old dog young. A birthday brings back other birthdays. A perfect October day makes you think of other October days.

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A LIFE IS LOST TRAGICALLY, BUT A FAMILY'S LOVE ENDURES

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There's a dogwood tree in her front yard in Randolph. "It's my Mama's tree," says Michaela, who is 6. "It has all the things my Mama loved. See?" Surrounding it are flowers and in it are Beanie Babies and under it is an engraved stone that reads, simply, Christine. Michaela doesn't remember her mother. She was a baby, just 16 months old, when Christine died. But she talks about her every day. And she prays to her every night. Last week she asked her grandparents who are raising her, "Do you think Mama would be happy with me?"

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FEARING THE BAD WHEN LIFE IS GOOD

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FEARING THE BAD WHEN LIFE IS GOOD

You try to teach them the eternals, that life is good, and people are kind, and nothing is so bad that you can't get through it. And most days you believe this. But then you replay history, or you watch the news, or you pick up a paper and see the face of yet another person maimed, killed, robbed, blown up, beaten, kidnapped, raped, sick and dying, and you think you're selling your kids a pack of lies.

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DAD GAVE ME THE KEYS TO LIFE

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DAD GAVE ME THE KEYS TO LIFE

My father was not overtly, nor even subtly, religious . He hardly ever went to church and I didn't have a sense that he prayed, though at the end of his life he told me that St. Jude was his good buddy. I imagine, though, that he talked to St. Jude in the way he talked to me, not often couching his requests with "please" and "if possible," but stating them directly and firmly as in, "I need you to do this for me." At the end of his life he handed me a crucifix, which he said he carried with him throughout the Second World War.

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IN DUE TIME, BIG BOY PANTS WILL WIN

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IN DUE TIME, BIG BOY PANTS WILL WIN

With the puppy, it was simply a matter of carrying her outside, plunking her on the grass, and letting her do her thing. She was 6 weeks old when we got her and was house-trained in a few weeks. No "how-to" books. No "Ten steps to housebreaking your pooch." And absolutely no guilt that she was too young to introduce to the backyard, or that our approach might cause her irreparable psychological harm.

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