A sign from above via the phone

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A sign from above via the phone

He never believed in signs. When I told him about my mother and the bird, he just smiled. "It was more than coincidence," I would argue. And he would give me a look that may as well have been a pat on the head. My friend, Father Coen, had no trouble believing in the Resurrection, the Transfiguration, the Ascension, transubstantiation and eternal life. But he couldn't buy the simple fact that a lone bird flying in a barely open window on a cold November day was a sign that my mother was safe and that she had found a way to tell me…

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Evalyn has the gift to give

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Evalyn had her bone-marrow transplant a month ago. The words take a single breath. One exhale and they're said. Even their meaning fails to hint at all a transplant entails. The word is ordinary. Transplant evokes an ivy grown too big for its pot, upended and plunked down in a bigger, prettier container; or a sprawling bush dug up from the front yard and moved to the back. Transplants are a part of gardening. A little sun, a lot of water and transplanted things grow sturdier. Even a human transplant is just a person raised in one place who now lives in another.

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A Maine beach helps restore an aching soul

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A Maine beach helps restore an aching soul

I hadn't been back in more than two years to the place that feeds my soul. I went to other places and I thought, this is fine. I don't need one particular plot of earth where the sea meets the sky and I meet God. I found God in people and in landscapes: on my walks with the dog, in my small garden. And I convinced myself that this was enough. I thought I had become wiser. God is everywhere, I said. All I had to do was look and I would see.

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Sisters are truly a blessing to elderly community home

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Sisters are truly a blessing to elderly community home

At 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, two women, one in her 80s, the other half her age, climbed into a maroon Dodge Ram, bowed their heads, asked for God's blessing, then headed over to New England Produce in Chelsea to beg for food. It was a raw, cold morning, and icy underfoot, the mammoth dry dock where vendors sell fruits and vegetables to grocers throughout New England, crowded with men, crates, fork lifts and oversized trucks…

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Faith, love sustain a family

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Faith, love sustain a family

There are no feelings of doom and gloom in the sprawling ranch in Walpole where Debbie and Mark Bernabei live with their two sons, Nicky and Brett. No "Woe is me," or "Why us?" There is instead the sound of Brett's laughter, cartoons on TV, rays of sunlight pouring in from huge windows, photographs of the boys at different ages on the walls and on the bookshelves and flowers, or the feel of them, in every room…

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Teen's death senseless

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Teen's death senseless

Grief counselors came to Kerri Sullivan's school this week. Nearly a dozen adults, trained to listen, comfort and affirm, appeared at West Bridgewater Middle-Senior High School to help kids just beginning to live their lives deal with the sudden death of one of their own. Kerri, 13, died Monday morning on her way home from basketball practice. She was a passenger in a mini-van driven by her best friend's mother. The van skidded in snow and hit a tree. Kerri, who had unbuckled her seat belt seconds before to let another girl out of the van, was hurled forward and killed. "She had her seat belt on the whole time. When they dropped the girl off, she went to switch seats. It was that split second," her aunt, Shirley Sullivan, said.

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To save man, He became one

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To save man, He became one

My friend, a priest, tells this tale at Christmas. It is, after all, set on a December day. But I think it's a Good Friday story, too. It goes like this: A farmer lives with his wife and children somewhere off the beaten path. Picture Robert Frost country, a house, a field, a barn. It is Christmas Eve and the wife and two children are dressed for church. "Come with us," the wife says to her husband as he walks her to the car. He shakes his head. He's not a believer. "I'll see you when you get back," he replies. The man goes inside, pours some coffee, opens the newspaper. And then it starts to snow.

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We can't turn back time, but we can remember, move on

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We can't turn back time, but we can remember, move on

What you want is to turn back the clock, to make it Tuesday morning again, early, and make the accident not have happened, to change the confluence of things - the rain, the timing, a car being where is was? A few seconds sooner, a few seconds later and what is would not be. What you want is to give three dead children and one broken one back to their parents, whole…

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One more day to live in the sun

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One more day to live in the sun

Five weeks after she had her second leg amputated the doctors sent her home with health aides coming in just a few hours a day. I was terrified for her and for me. How could this 85-year-old woman live without constant help? How would she get from the bed to the wheelchair, from the wheelchair to the bathroom? How could she maneuver the wheelchair through an opening so small that I had trouble when I pushed the chair? Where would she get the strength and the patience to perform such a task?

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Wee steps and slow

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Waiting. That's what we've been doing. Waiting for the drugs to work, for the infection to abate, for the pain to go away, for the snow to fall, for Christmas to come. Waiting. That's what we continue to do. Monday we heard the forecast: a major winter storm. Monday we heard another forecast: my mother-in-law’s foot has to be amputated.. Silence then, and terror, too. Not the artificial kind buoyed by hysterical newscasters who caution people to bottle water and stock up on batteries because of some potential danger. Butl terror fueled by the inevitable…

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Some angels take human form

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Some angels take human form

The poster has been hanging on my office door for nearly two years now. It's an angel poster. I've read it a hundred times. "Angels are the guardians of hope and wonder, the keepers of magic and dreams," it begins. Angels, as in spirits, heavenly visitors who keep you from harm's way; phantoms, shadows, apparitions, guardians from another world. That's what I've always thought…

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Remembering Amy, ever 11

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Remembering Amy, ever 11

I don't know why it felt so important to find the exact spot. She isn't there. I recognize this. And yet it didn't seem enough just to ride around and lump her together with DICKSON and HARRISON and WHITTENBERGER and all the other people I never met. I knew Amy - knew her for too short a time, too long ago. But I knew her well. She was my daughter's best friend; because of her, her mother and I became friends…

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A birthday not celebrated

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A birthday not celebrated

Today is her birthday. She would have been 10. At school they would have sung to her. At home there would have been presents and cake and a party. But she died in June so there is no celebration. In the house not far from Wollaston Beach where Leanne lived with her mother and grandparents, though there are photos of her smiling on the walls and shelves, there are few real smiles anymore. Her absence fills the place. There are no feet pounding up the stairs. No books flung on a chair. No "Mama! Nana! I'm home!" Two women who loved and raised a child are empty without her. They try to put into words their loss, their love and their pain. But words can't hold these things and so as they speak, tears fall…

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Mother Teresa: Her message is love

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Mother Teresa: Her message is love

I think of it as myth, now, as a fairy tale I once believed. Truth has been downsized to fit a package I can carry around with me. The whole truth grew too heavy and cumbersome with age. The whole truth demanded a responsibility I continue to shun.

But I remember the child who accepted the whole truth, the child I was, who knew that life on Earth was only a test, that Heaven was the reward, not anything we might win here on Earth, and that the sole purpose of existence was to love God in this world and be happy with Him in the next.

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Letting go doesn't get any easier the third time around

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The youngest just got her driver's license. Another day. Another benchmark. They come so regularly lately that I have trouble keeping up with them. The oldest graduated and moved to Florida. Then the middle one turned 21. Then the youngest turned 16 and got her driver's permit. Then the middle one graduated and moved home. Now there is this. The birds have grown up and have all flown away…

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Catholics will sing when there's only one `Amen,' one `Alleluia'

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I don't know if an ambassador can do this. Probably not. It will probably take divine intervention on a grand scale. An edict by the pope or something. But maybe Ray Flynn can get the ball rolling. Or put a bug in the pope's ear, to coin a cliche or two.

"Here ye, here ye, Catholic Americans. Get your act together. Learn how to open your mouths, raise your voices to Heaven and praise the Lord."

We're bad at this, you know. Catholics do not sing. Protestants belt out hymns with the passion of converts, but we Catholics don't even bother to mouth the words. We stand silent in our churches and let the organists and the one vocalist who substitutes for a choir do all the work.

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The more we listen, the less we really hear

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My favorite Bible story when I was growing up was the Tower of Babel. The tale intrigued me. Here were all these people working together, co-operating, pooling their talents and energy to build a stairway to Heaven, which I thought, was a brilliant idea.

I still remember what the page looked like in the book we used: people of all different shapes and sizes and colors were stirring mortar, gathering bricks and smiling.

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Years melt away as stranger's face recalls timeless memory

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It happened again a few weeks ago.

I saw him in a crowd, at a graduation, a boy I used to date in high school. I recognized him right away: the dark blond hair, just a little too long to be a crew cut; the thin face; the high cheekbones; the wide-set eyes. Even his clothes looked familiar: blue sportscoat, white shirt, striped tie. I started to wave to him and almost shouted, "Tom? How are you? How've you been?"

But then I realized it couldn't be Tom because Tom would be 49 or maybe even 50 by now and this Tom was just a boy, not even 18.

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