He whisked away the debris, and last week returned with a brand-new pane of glass. After he fitted it into the cabinet’s frame and stepped back, sunlight streamed through the living room window, painting a vibrant rectangle across the wood floor and glimmering on the new, freshly cleaned mirror in the china cabinet.
Francisco and I both exchanged a smile before he packed up his things and left for the day. I wanted so much to believe that like the new pane, our lives too had the capacity for renewal. Of course, unlike the mirror, I couldn’t replace my personal cracks and chips or the inevitable wear and tear, but did the flaws erase the inherent beauty? Or did they add a layer of character, a testament to the full-life lived? Was I, I wondered, a human version of Kintsugi – the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold.
In that moment, I felt a shift. Perhaps it was the undeniable symbolism – the brokenness replaced by something whole and new – something solid like gold. Perhaps it was the inherent optimism of spring, a season that whispers promises of renewal. After the quiet slumber of winter, those first few hyacinths were already poking out from the ground in my backyard while the robins ribboned around our premises, dancing in their warm orange coats.
A surge of wishful thinking swept over me. Briefly, I donned the familiar rose-colored glasses, picturing the year ahead. Perhaps the persistent bad luck plaguing our house would finally dissipate, carried away by a spring breeze. Perhaps sunshine would outnumber the storms. But even with that hopeful vision, fragments of doubt remained. Still, the point was to hold onto faith, a force both internal and external, that could guide me through life’s uncontrollable twists and turns.
So, as I stood there, facing down another battle with depression and PTSD, I chose hope. Hope that transcends the cycle of good luck and bad, setbacks and triumphs. I chose moxie too. After all, isn’t that the spirit of spring? A belief that even after the harshest winter, new life, new beginnings, and a whole lot of sparkle await me.
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We’ve all heard that broken mirrors bring bad luck. Seven years to be exact. Well, six years ago, a stray mattress shattered the mirrored back of our small china cabinet. I shrugged it off at the time, preoccupied with other matters.
A few months ago, my dear friend Michelle recommended a wonderful handyman. Recently, while he was working on some odd jobs, our conversation turned to the china cabinet’s broken mirrored back.
“My wife won’t allow any broken mirrors in our house,” he said, his voice heavy with an unspoken worry. His words clung to the air, making the shattered reflection before me appear ominous. The cracks seemed to mirror the fractures in my own life, the hardships I’d endured, and the raw pain of our family’s tragedy.
Even though I was raised in a superstitious family, I didn’t really believe a piece of glass held any power over my circumstances. Fortunately, I do have a little more faith than that — but just in case — I didn’t want to take any chances.
“Maybe the broken mirror brought the bad luck into the house! I want it out as soon as possible!”
A few weeks later as the mirror came out, there was such a lightness in its place. I felt this sense of renewal – not in a superstitious “now things will be perfect” sort of way, Instead, it felt like a chapter had closed and getting rid of the broken mirror felt incredibly liberating.
During a conversation with Michelle, she mentioned something a friend, who had recently retired from the corporate world, had shared: “Hope is not a strategy.”
The wisdom resonated with me. I realized that removing the broken mirror was the true strategy. In doing so, I found hope. Perhaps the real power lies not in the shattered glass itself, but in the courage to choose change and embrace hope.
We all hold on to things, physically and otherwise, that no longer serve us. Whether it’s an old teacup with a stain, an item of clothing with a tear, or even a situation or person we can’t seem to move on from… sometimes letting go is the most cleansing and rejuvenating action we can take.
What are you holding onto that it may be time to release?
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If I wake up each morning reminding myself that I am not the creator of the world, I will have the balance I need to meet any circumstance, no matter how far the forces beyond my control tip the scale of my life.
This Sunday, October 29, marks 39 years since I began learning this simple truth through a 12-step program, which I believe is the greatest healer of modern times. As a 20-something-year-old with a big ego, I embarked on a humbling journey. As I approach the final chapter of my life, things did not turn out as planned, but the upshot is I am grateful for the opportunity to be a small part of a much larger universe, over which I have little control. As others have shown me by example, we can learn to appreciate the miraculous gift of embracing our limited human powers.
Cornelia is an example of one of the mentors who taught me how humility and empowerment coexist. I met her when she was in her late 60s or early 70s, and she lived into her mid-80s. Let me put it this way: when she walked into my brother’s wake as the first guest, the trembling floor beneath me turned to steel.
If it wasn’t a solemn occasion, Cornelia wore bold colors that didn’t blind you, but kidded you into believing you had a jolt of caffeine. High heels, tights, plaid skirts and crisply ironed tops, she dressed up, without fail, as if she were a presiding member on a garden club committee.
Cornelia was an expert on turning a frown into a smile. She had a compassion and love for others that was truly inspiring. This woman embraced everyone and never allowed her tragic circumstances to turn her into a victim. After losing her husband, she became a young widow. Her first son died in a freak car crash, and her second and only son, a pilot, perished in a plane crash caused by mechanical failure. These were just two of the many trials she faced throughout her life. Despite it all, she spent her final years volunteering at a local bereavement and critical illness support community center.
Don’t mistake being humble, loving, and compassionate for being a pushover. Cornelia fought for justice in her life and rarely failed to obtain it when it was due.
Cornelia’s example taught me to stand tall. After one of her endless pep talks, I approached my nemesis head-on, armed with her grace, dignity, humility, and an unbreakable sense of empowerment.
“Hold your head up. Always. Carry the program with you,” she said. To this day, I align myself with her advice, for that is the legacy of love she left me.
I remember the last time we went out for dinner. The sun was setting, and the sky was ablaze with color. We reached out and held hands, and we reveled in the silence of the miraculous creation around us. I felt her steel side holding me up, as it still does when I need it the most.
You can’t possibly spend nearly two decades with someone like Cornelia and not grow small in a miraculous way. Recently, my watching a sunset brought her back to me. The sky radiant with the colors she wore to celebrate life, even when she was maneuvering through a personal swamp of grief and loss.
I took a breath and closed my eyes. Recalling the warmth of Cornelia’s palm in mine, I felt peace envelop me. I opened my eyes and looked around. The trees were tall and majestic, and the sunny-side up marigolds were still in full bloom, past the halfway mark of October.
I reminded myself that I was a part of all this wonder. I was a part of nature. I was a part of the universe. I shrank in size. My problems and my concerns were not the most important things in the world. But I also felt connected. I felt loved, humbled by it all. Empowered to know that it is possible to find gratitude in the rubble, and all I had to do to gain this great insight was to step outside, stop and settle down long enough to take it all in.
Just before indigo bled into the the sky’s mighty pageantry, I heard Cornelia’s final earthly words to me that help me keep the faith:
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I can do a million different things at once, most of them trivial, such as dusting. I’ve never been one to procrastinate, but doing nothing at all stumps me every time.
When I’m not actively engaged in a task, my mind is always working. I might be analyzing a character arc, figuring out a past perfect tense, or projecting things like financial ruin because of my paranoia from working in a non-essential and highly competitive field for my entire life.
Over the past two years, I’ve had the good fortune to collaborate with my dear friend on her heartfelt grief memoir that is finally ready to take flight. It’s complete, at least on my end, and I’m so proud of what we’ve accomplished.
My heart swells with gratitude as I recall my collaborative journey with Michelle, the beautiful and relatively young widow behind the story. In the early months, writing her memoir felt like an Impressionist painting: a blur of colors and emotions, akin to our own personal lives, with no clear definition. But over time, like a Realist painting, the memoir and our worlds became sharper and more focused.
Through my encountering her grief, my own perspective on life and tragedy has widened and deepened. I’ve learned that even in the darkest of times, there is always hope. And that love is the most powerful force in the universe.
Thank you, my dear neighbor, colleague and friend, for your faith in me and teaching me so much about what it means to be human. I am truly blessed to have shared your “voyage.“
Almost every goodbye is a hello in disguise. Therefore, as I celebrate the completion of this project, I’m scheduling only ONE thing on the to-do list — spending downtime with the most important person in my life: me. It’s high time we reconnect and get acquainted again, even if it is only to say, “Hello! I’m here.”
In exchange for this kind of surrender, I will find peace, joy, and gratitude. It’s a paradox, but the more I let go of my need to control everything, the more I find that I am truly in control. (Michelle’s memoir really drives this point home.)
My soul is my compass, and when I don’t procrastinate, take the time to “do nothing” and listen to its gentle guidance, I am always led to the right path, because I have opened my heart to the divine.
Remembering Mom: October 10, 1925 to December 29, 2015
My mother was a constant traveler, but not in the traditional sense. All day long, she traveled from her stove to her refrigerator to her sink, and then back again.
“Stove-refrigerator-sink,” she once described her three-step life to me matter-of-factly. She loved the normalcy, the predictability and the routine — most of the time. But sometimes, when she was irritated with her children, her husband, or a church parishioner, she would break her sour mood and look afar, her eyes penetrating the kitchen walls. Her longing gaze belonged to someone standing on a community theater stage, hungry for a Carnegie Hall audience.
I didn’t pay much attention, if any at all, because her expression was too painful. The reality of her life washed out any grandeur dreams she had, such as crunching numbers in an accountant firm, one of her long-standing dreams.
That was the thing with my mom: her frustrations, disappointments and inner pain often led her to be emotionally wound up, but if you could step back and let her unravel, she would eventually find her equilibrium. It took me a long time to figure out her usual modus operandi, but when I finally did, I was able to love her fully.
Before I gained a wider, wiser perspective, adolescence was particularly rough. I had yearned for a different mother, one who wore dainty tennis skirts and crisp white sneakers, and who had a feminine sway in her hips. A mother who would come to pick me up from middle school in her shiny Ford Mustang, instead of the one kid whose mother was never there.
My mom (or dad) never stepped inside my middle school until my graduation day. (Grammar school was another matter, but that’s another story.) When I saw them, I hid behind a corner in the hallway, trying to catch my breath outside the suffocating layers of shame that had been dumped on me like stinky sludge.
Even though my dad blended in with the crowd, all I could see from my vantage point was my mom, standing there in her multi-colored dress, a tent-like garb that concealed her petite body and was as baggy as a beekeeper’s protective suit.
Her kitty heels, straight out of a 50s black-and-white TV show, clicked on the tiled floor as she paced nervously back and forth.
A hairnet captured her dark, old-fashioned ringlets, like bait worms. Her face was an expressionless doll with vacant eyes.
“Is your family here?”
“No.”
“Without family,” I felt different growing up. But I learned that while Hollywood love may be custom-made, ordinary love is not.
As I mentioned earlier, my love for my mother matured with me — especially after my young children taught me how genuinely unique and fun she was. It was then that I also fully understood why my mom rarely spoke to “Americans,” silenced by the embarrassment of her own foreign accent and awkwardness.
The upshot of the realization was that I walked tall next to her, my head held high, despite her size 4 Barbie body hidden in size 12 dresses, the unconcealed sheets of tissues lining her shoes, and the stale bread slices stashed in her purse’s side pockets (in case the food chain failed!).
My bulletproof mother didn’t believe in illness, and her passing from a stroke on December 29, 2015, showed me the perfect irony of life: we’re not in control after all.
When my mom fell ill in the spring and early summer of 2015, I felt bewildered and flummoxed (love that word!). In the process of her deterioration, I did the “next right thing,” as my program had taught me to do many years prior. Her gradual decline was a roller coaster that I became so used to and for nearly seven months, it felt like tying my shoe in the morning. But the exhaustion was unlike anything I had ever experienced, even when I got eight or ten hours of sleep. I was groggy, walking a foot behind everything that moved in my world.
When my mom landed in a nursing home, a feeding tube had been inserted into her, and it was clear she would never return to her three-step appliance shuffle, but the regular rhythms of our lives, like playing rock-paper-scissors, remained in my memory, like the whiff of Pond’s cream on her face that warmed my childhood particularly on bitter cold evenings. She had taught me well, and I went on with my old life, with familiar music playing in the background.
Three weeks before Christmas, my own “rock-paper-scissors” household routine escalated. I was a single mom and had to work, write and send holiday cards, purchase and package holiday gifts, not to mention cook and clean. I rationalized that since she was semi-conscious, she wouldn’t notice the stretch of time since I had last seen her. I certainly planned to visit after the holiday. Of course, after the holidays seemed just as frantic too, and I was driving my daughter to Massachusetts to visit a prospective graduate school. I figured once we accomplished our mission, I’d definitely see Mom again, the first week of the new year.
Unfortunately, Mom never lived to see 2016. But on December 28, in Massachusetts, my daughter and I had a terrible time finding appropriate lodging, since the first hotel room we had reserved was a dump. Luckily, we found mediocre accommodations just in time, because a terrible ice storm had made the outdoors look frozen in time.
That night, two weary travelers collapsed into bed and slumber found us easily. I opened my eyes at 5 a.m. to see the digital clock glowing in the dark room. I also knew without doubt: Mom had passed.
Her presence filled the room, every bit of her, including her lingering scent of Ponds face cream. I realized that instead of my visiting her, she had come to visit us one last time to let us know that she was okay.
Sure enough, I woke up to hear the news over the phone.
Thank you, Mom. I love you more than words can say. You taught me about faith, love, and even the power of love to transcend time and space. I’m grateful for the gift of your life.
My mom spent decades reading the obituaries, and the memoriam section, in the local daily newspaper with a keen eye, curious about what made each person unique and how their story was woven together. It were as if she tried to make sense of the world by connecting the dots between people’s lives.
My mom alerted me to anything she found interesting in that particular newspaper section, and we would end up discussing the deceased stranger and how, for example, she had outlived three deceased husbands. Or, as another example, how another deceased stranger traveled to every continent three times. Every time we reflected on these strangers, it felt like delicious gossip. Through these obituaries, and the occasional memoriam, we were able to appreciate the stories of strangers who had passed away and reflect on our own lives in the process. Paradoxically, reading and sharing our insights about the deceased kept mom and me alive!
While some may find delving into obituaries morbid and sad, in my solitude, I find it an opportunity to examine a few dozen strangers’ lives while I reunite with my mom, sync with her vibrant emotional range, and inhale her Pond’s facial cream, which she wore every night of her life. The memoriam to Mary Jane that I read earlier this year would have really lit up her world.
MARY JANE. MEMORIAM To Mary Jane It was late in the morning, It was early in spring, When I took that picture, Of you on the swing. It was so long ago, It was just yesterday, The years go so quickly, The time slips away. We should have returned, At least once a year, But we never came back, Now alone I stand here. The swing is long gone, From the top of this hill, But that doesn’t matter, For I see it still. I still hear your laughter, Feel the touch of your hand, And although that is true, Where ever I am. It was here at that time, In this place that we knew, What we had was forever, It was true then, it is still true. Rest in peace my love. Ed
One reader’s response to the memoriam, stated, “So very sweet and heartfelt. I do not know Mary Jane or Ed … but that was beautiful and I’m sure Mary Jane is pleased.”
Yes, I agreed fully. I could easily picture Mary Jane swinging in heaven somewhere on her swing, carefree and forever young and in love.
Memories can be a balm for grief. We hear the laughter, the excitement, and feel the fluid joints and hefty muscles of youth. Ponds-scented memories are like a warm blanket that wraps us up and protects us from the cold world, whispering, “Have faith. You are safe. Alone, but safe.”
They are reunion celebrations where love and faith reign supreme. Faith that we are never truly alone. Faith that there is more to life than what meets the eye.
Mary Jane is pleased. And if Mom gets to share her swing, she will be pleased too.
This year, one of the retail business owners commented on the local news station how meat and other food products are flying off the shelves as compared to last year. As many of us turn the corner of COVID-19, people feel a need to compensate for the celebrations that the pandemic erased from 12 calendar months.
Calendars serve a lot of other purposes than just tracking special dates, holidays and appointments. For one thing, they can signify importance. When I was an adolescent, I was a recluse. Long before the days of personal computers in the 70s, I spent my lonely days updating my wall calendar, tracking holidays, birthdays and school projects in different colored markers, pens and embellished the days with a variety of seasonally themed stickers. In actuality, whether weekends or weekdays, rarely did I get invited to parties. The process elevated my life. Apart from gifting myself with a false sense of importance, my calendar also offered me a true sense of organization and control during the fragile coming-of-age period in my life.
In the 80s, as I started taking responsibility for my actions and allowed people, some of whom became lifelong friends, into my life. I “grew down,” becoming less self-centered, and reckoned with the fact that I didn’t have to color my life by bringing a false sense of significance to it. My fellow, Allan, aided the process. Some of his favorite sayings were, “Out of all the grains of sand, we are one mere speck!” and “In a hundred years, what will it matter?”
My calendars reflected my new maturity, and they became black-and-white, practical pages that kept track of appointments and reminders.
When my first child, a son, was born in 1993, ironically, at the beginning of the year in January, my calendar-keeping bug not only revived but sparked into an inferno. I purchased a new calendar and an array of stickers and markers and recorded every little hiccup, smile and gained ounce of weight. This practice continued with my second child, a daughter, in 1995. For years, it were as if I wanted to freeze both of them in time, like butterflies under a glass display case to admire them like an over-enthusiastic curator.
I’ve learned, especially through my son’s untimely death, that curators belong in museums. Life has a divine curator, and I can’t tell you all the particulars, but I have full faith that it is not me. For the most part, I ceased my over-indulged calendar-keeping duties when the children grew older. Sure, I noted appointments, assignments and important dates, but, as the stresses of daily life elevated, the new teeth and height spirts became too time consuming to commemorate.
Today, I continue to update my calendar with the bare minimum. In addition, I now have another calendar displayed on the wall downstairs that I turn on the 15th day to the following month, which happens to be today, because instead of chasing behind time, I want time to accelerate and move faster as if I will reach a finishing line for my grief.
The grief that tracks me month after month, season after season, is mine alone to process, not micromanage nor deny, but, wow, somedays its weight can cover me 10 feet deep in cement. I can’t turn the clock back, but I can turn the calendar ahead to give me some sort of symbolic reprieve.
Thankfully, after knowing such influential people like Allan, I can step aside and not allow my jaded vision to dilute others who have faith that their upcoming milestones, celebrations, commitments, important dates and special days ahead will come to fruition because they are marked in permanent ink.
WTF? (Where's the faith?) 