Tag: Guest Blogger

 

“Do you hate him for abusing you all those years?”

I knew a woman who carried it with her, holding tightly to her hatred, for 90 years. She held it close in her heart until the day she died. I wondered if the same were true for everyone whose childhood memories of a leather belt extended beyond an accessory that held up their pants.

“No. If I were to carry around hatred for him then I would still have to live with being abused every day. I’d be abused by my hatred. I learned to let go and live the life I want for myself. That is how I made it stop. I learned to become the father I always wished I’d had. None of us can rewrite the past; what we can do is to make sure the life we create will some day be a past that our children and grandchildren look back on with love and happiness.”

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Police in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, received a call during this week’s ice storm. A man said his 90-year-old aunt could not be contacted, and could someone please check to make sure she was OK. He was not sure the name of the road on which she lived; he thought it was River Road, and she lived in a trailer. Power was out in that area, and she was alone.

Southern Regional Police Chief John Fiorill spent the next 4 hours navigating icy roads, downed power lines and fallen trees trying to find her. Areas near the Susquehanna River are dotted with mobile homes, which sit along winding, hilly, sometimes one-lane roads. Chief Fiorill checked all of the trailers in the township that he could find. Finally on River View Road, he saw a hand lettered, cardboard sign in the window of a trailer. It said, “Help Me”.

Inside he found the woman, no heat, phone or electricity, bundled up in heavy sweatpants and socks and gloves, scarf and coat and hat. She had also bundled up her little dog, who was waiting to be rescued along with her. The police chief said he doubts if she would have survived another day. He contacted relatives, who were anxious to take her in with them but who had no way to transport her. So Chief Fiorill loaded the woman and her little dog into his vehicle and drove them to safety with her family.

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A decade of pessimism. Polls have shown that for an entire decade, the majority of people have had negative attitudes about our country. Ten years of looking through the lens of pessimism. How sad. How exhausting. How habitual.

I think back over the past ten years. I have gone to 8 funerals. My husband lost his job of 25 years. Two of the most important men in my life struggled through life threatening illness. I’ve had exactly three mini vacations, overnights, in the past 7 years. And yet I do not feel this sense of pessimism that seems to be sweeping the country. I’m not a very religious person, not one of the faithful. And yet I see hope and beauty all around me.  I look for the good in people and refuse to focus on the negative. Why? Because to do anything less would, in my mind, be a waste of this gift of life that I have been given. Perhaps I choose to remain positive because of, and not in spite of, all of those heartbreaking moments.  We can choose to be pessimistic, or we can choose to be optimistic. For me, it’s an easy call.

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Why do some folks focus on what or who they don’t like? Why give attention to the things and people who upset them, when they could be spending that same time and attention thinking about things and people they do like ?

Notice what singer was given the most attention last year? When asked in an interview if she regretted her performance at the VMAs, she smiled and said, “No! People won’t stop talking about it!” Talk about free publicity. She’s laughing all the way to the bank. Smart girl, really. She knew exactly what the reaction would be.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if music legend Carlos Santana had gotten the same amount of attention for what he had done? Don’t know what I’m talking about? Exactly.

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On that unseasonably warm, 67 degree December afternoon, realization hit me just as I began my 4.3-mile drive across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge: The funeral we were returning home from had told me all I needed to know about him.

He came from a tiny town that sits on one of those little fingers of land hanging out into the bay. A waterman and a carpenter by trade, he was laid out to rest in his favorite red and black checked, flannel shirt. We arrived an hour into the two hour visitation and we had to wait in a long line. After we sat in one of the pews to wait for the service, we noticed that the stream of people was constant. When the time came to begin the line was still long and the time was pushed back. Looking around the room I saw white faces, black faces, brown faces, and a same sex married couple. Fireman showed up in dress uniform, as he had worked with them as a volunteer EMT. He had loved them all, and the grief on their faces showed they loved him back. The minister told of the devotion of his daughters, who put their lives on hold to care for him and his wife, who stood by him for many years. He said that last summer, when he first went to their house to visit, the yard and driveway were filled with tables of food and it looked like the entire town was there to spend the day.

Looking out over the Chesapeake, across the water where he had spent most of his life, I felt cheated for not knowing him better. I envied my husband for sharing his DNA. Just hearing about him made me want to be the best person I can be. I wondered; what would any of our final farewells say about us?

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