OCTOBER 31
All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing
shall be well.
—JULIAN OF NORWICHAt a time when I thought my world had all but ended, when
the realization was hammering at my heart that my daugh-
ter’s death was not some nightmare from which I would
recover but was for all time, a friend came into the room,
put her arms around my neck, and said, “Everything’s going
to be all right.”
I thought she was crazy. And yet...and yet...was it pos-
sible that she was right?
I had occasion, some years later, to be the consoler of a
young woman whose son had lapsed into a coma from which
he would not recover, and my words to her were the same.
“Everything’s going to be all right.” And I felt my friend
from that earlier time standing beside me, nodding—See,
that’s what I told you.
Improbable though it seems when grief first assaults us,
we do come to learn, though the surface of our life will often
be in turmoil, that on a deep and unshakable level there is
indeed a confidence that all is well.
Until that happens, we cling to the testimony of others
and take hope: if for them, why not for us, too?
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing
shall be well.