Her life, like all lives, matters

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

We were months away from Christmas when she said it. There was no self-pity in her tone. She was matter-of-fact. "I've never done much of anything with my life. I'm just another face in the crowd. The world would have gotten along just fine without me."

She then went on to explain how ordinary she was. She was just a wife, just a mother. She worked in an office with a dozen other people who did the same job she did. There was nothing special about her. She didn't have a great mind or a great talent. Her existence was, she said, not necessary.

Sure it was necessary, I said. Everyone is special in some way, but she talked over my words. This description of herself was only background, not the core of her story. And so she hurried past it to get to what she believed was important.

Months later, I've forgotten almost everything else the woman told me that day. Only the assessment of herself has lingered and I regret not pressing the subject. I regret not interrupting and saying, "Wait a second. You're wrong."

But I hardly knew her. She wasn't a friend. She was barely an acquaintance. She had asked me to write a story, and her assessment of herself was not part of it. And so I didn't pursue the issue.

I wish I had. I wish I had told her about "It's A Wonderful Life" because this movie, which has become a Chrismtas tradition, is a reminder that every life counts, that every life has special meaning, and that all actions have consequences.

When the angel, Clarence, shows George Bailey what life would have been like without him; when George sees his brother dead, his wife unmarried, his children not even born; when he looks at the town he loves overrun by a greedy, evil man, he suddenly appreciates his life; he finally recognizes his own inestimable worth.

Angels should appear to us all. We need to be reminded that what we consider ordinary is important; that the things that matter most are the intangibles which can't be measured, but which cast their shadow over lives we don't even see.

"I've never done much of anything with my life," the woman said, and yet her walls were covered with photos of her children at different ages, in their First Communion dresses, in prom gowns, at their high school graduations, at their weddings.

On her credenza were pictures of a grandchild and on her refrigerator were that grandchild's crayon drawings, and a card signed with Xs and Os.

Her husband walked into the room twice. "Do you know where I put that jar of nails?" he asked the first time. "I'm going to the post office now. Where's that card you want me to mail?" he said a while later.

What card? Was it a birthday card, a get-well wish, or a friendly hello? Who was it for? Who would have sent it if she hadn't? Who would have helped her husband find his nails?

The phone rang and the woman answered. "Don't worry, I'll go with you," she said. "No, it's not out of my way. I want to go. I don't mind. I'll pick you up at 10."

"A friend of mine has to have a biopsy," she explained when she hung up. And what would that friend do without you? I should have asked. Who would take her to the doctor? Who would worry with her? Who would hold her hand?

The phone rang again. This time it was a charity. The woman agreed to canvass her neighborhood. Doesn't that count for something?

Yes, she was ordinary as most of us are. And yes, the world would spin without her, as someday it will. But in the meantime, this woman who phoned me to help someone else, was doing the ordinary, unexamined and unheralded things that make life better for everyone else.

I imagine she was there for her children when they were small, running to them in the middle of the night when they were sick and scared. I imagine that because she held them and comforted them they hold and comfort their own children today. I imagine she listened and supported and advised, not just her children but her husband and friends, too.

"The world would have gotten along just fine without me," she said.

The world might have. But it would have been different and the people she touched deprived if she had never been born.