NOVEMBER 2
Living on memories, clinging to relics and photographs, is
an illusion. Like the food offered one in dreams, it will not
nourish; no growth or rebirth will come from it.
—ANNE MORROW
LINDBERGHMany of us know of people who, years after the death of a
loved one, will preserve a room “just the way it was,” leav-
ing decades-old clothes hanging in a closet, old eyeglasses
lying on a table by an open book.
We want a few things that recall a loved one. Better if they
are things that have a current use—a mother’s favorite teapot
in which we now prepare tea, a pen or letter opener that sat
on a father’s desk and which we now use, a cherished doll
that can be passed on to a child who never knew its original
owner.
And, of course, pictures. But beware that pictures of the
lost loved one aren’t the only pictures we display—or that
they’re present in such numbers that they convey a message
that the family’s life is back there in a lost era. Shrines have
their place, but they are poor backgrounds for life in the
present moment.
Lord, grant me the strength to change what can be changed, the
grace to accept what cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know
the one from the other.