FEBRUARY 21
I’m for whatever gets you through the night.
—FRANK SINATRAWe all have our ways of dealing with our pain, and the range
of acceptable responses is wide. Reason sometimes doesn’t
have a lot to do with it. A woman whose beloved husband,
a cabinetmaker, died suddenly in the prime of life said she
began to accept his death when she told herself that God
needed the best cabinetmaker in the world. She would
never defend this on the grounds of reason. Who cares? It
worked for her, and it did no one any harm.
When our daughter died, a friend whose father had died
not long before wrote to us. “My dad will look after Mary,”
she said. It was wonderfully comforting.
Whatever images come to us in our grief that bring us
stability and peace are gifts—as welcome and helpful to
survival as the casseroles, the cards, and the flowers. They
might not stand up under the scrutiny of reason, but exper-
iences of death and grief call for leaps of intuition and ima-
gination. We have entered a new realm.
Before this mystery I open heart and mind to all leadings of the
spirit.