The Heartbreaking Way We Learn Eternity Exists

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The Heartbreaking Way We Learn Eternity Exists

‘Why are we here?” I used to know. I used to be so certain.

“We are here to know, love, and serve God in this world and to be happy with Him in the next.” That’s what the Sisters of St. Joseph drummed into my 6-year-old head. That’s what I read in “The New Baltimore Catechism.” That’s what I recited day after day after day. So that’s what I believed. This life is temporary. The next is eternal. Sister said. Father Finn said. My mother said. So who could doubt…

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Every School Shooting Must Be Shocking to Us

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Every School Shooting Must Be Shocking to Us

If you look at statistics, you can convince yourself it isn’t so bad. What’s the chance of a child getting shot and killed at school? It’s less than getting hit by lightning. It’s less than being kidnapped. It’s less than dying in a car crash. So the numbers are with us, right? But it doesn’t feel right. And every time there’s another shooting, every time another child is murdered, it feels terribly, terribly wrong…

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A Childhood Bond That Recalls a Sweet Boy’s Smile

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A Childhood Bond That Recalls a Sweet Boy’s Smile

I don’t know if, when you’re in second grade, you can actually want to be someone else, erase who you are and become that other. Maybe what’s truer is that you want to stay who you are, but embellish yourself somehow, like store-wrapped chicken pounded and garnished, chicken still, but fancy now, dressed up as chicken piccata. Rosemary Jablonski was my chicken piccata…

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If only there were a way to bottle a child's pure glee

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If only there were a way to bottle a child's pure glee

I am looking at my grandson Adam's picture as I write this. His mother snapped it with her iPhone, an old iPhone so the picture is pixelated and a little out of focus. Still, you can see the joy in his face, a child's joy; unmasked is the word, I think. But it's the wrong word because Adam is only 11 and has nothing yet to hide…

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Nothing Gold Can Stay; In the neighborhood, as in all of nature, the only constant is change

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Nothing Gold Can Stay; In the neighborhood, as in all of nature, the only constant is change

I have known for months that she is moving. Late October, early November, that's what she told me all spring and all summer long. She's been fine with it. And I've been fine. Still, when November dawned and there was a moving truck in her driveway across the street and movers carrying out boxes of her things, my heart felt like…

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Every family loss is a part of yourself

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Every family loss is a part of yourself

My Uncle Frank died last week. He was 82, but he looked 70. He had thick gray hair and not a wrinkle on his face and he stood straight and he smelled good and he was solid and sturdy, inside and out, and I felt that strength every time I hugged him. I believed, I hoped, he would live forever. Decades ago, when he was in his 40s, doctors gave him six months to live. They told my Aunt Lorraine and she told her children and me. But she never told him.

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In Holiday Rush, Slow Down to Preserve the Love

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Every Wednesday night, at 11 o'clock, sometimes a little after, in a little room in a little club on Columbus Avenue in Boston, pianist Michael Kreutz plays his closing number, "What I Did for Love," a song from the hit musical "A Chorus Line." Wednesday is show-tune night at the Napoleon Room at Club Cafe, and for three hours…

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Once again, putting faith in a garden

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Once again, putting faith in a garden

Planting bulbs is an act of faith. You dig holes, take some dry, scaly ugly things out of a paper bag, place them right side up in the holes, cover them with dirt, watch rain and snow and ice entomb them. And you wait and wait and wait, believing they will transform themselves into things of beauty. When I was a kid, one of my favorite ``Superman'' episodes - the old black-and-white half-hour show starring George Reeves - showed the Man of Steel holding a piece of coal in his hand and squeezing it, turning the coal, in seconds, into a diamond. That's what the Earth does, Superman explained, only it takes the Earth a million years. This was magic to me…

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In praise of valor lost in cultural debris

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In praise of valor lost in cultural debris

How is it a woman can live for 98 years, be a war hero decorated by five countries (England, France, the United States, Australia and New Zealand), write a book about her experiences (``The White Mouse''), have many books written about her ( ``Nancy Wake: A Biography of Our Greatest War Heroine,'' Peter Fitzsimons; ``Nancy Wake: SOE's Greatest Heroine,'' Russell Braddon), inspire a movie (''Charlotte Gray,'' starring Cate Blanchett), yet die unrecognized by a nation full of people who know the most trivial things about the most trivial people? (Think ``Jersey Shore's'' Snooki.)…

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