A giving heart takes a worrisome pause

A giving heart takes a worrisome pause

watch him all the time. He is my entertainment and my muse. For years, I'd come into my office, glance out my window and across the street and there would be Al, buffing his car, scrubbing his gutters, mowing his lawn, trimming, digging, raking, painting, hammering, hosing, chipping, shoveling, season after season, always doing something. Or he would be walking Dante, his wife Katherine's big black dog, smiling and talking to everyone he met along the way…

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Memories, a faraway laugh, in a birthday phone call

Memories, a faraway laugh, in a birthday phone call

`It's Janet’s birthday," I tell the person who answers the phone, expecting her to say, "It is? I'm so glad you mentioned this." Or "I know. We're having a little party this afternoon." But she says, "Oh." She says it flat, without inflection, in a way that means "I don't care. What difference does it make? Why are you telling me?"

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I'm sure she knows I loved her

I'm sure she knows I loved her

She died on a Monday in September between a weekend when my son was home and a Tuesday night pizza party. The sun didn't blink; the world didn't pause. Nothing happened - there was no presentiment of change, not even a flicker of feelings to make me think of her, my long ago friend, a woman I loved, a woman who was good to me, passing through and by and on. Flo Grossman died on Sept. 25 and I didn't know until Dec. 19. How can this be? The world should have felt different that Monday - slighter, duller, because the space filled by a vibrant life was suddenly left vacant.

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WE'RE HOPING ALL OUR FEARS ARE WRONG

WE'RE HOPING ALL OUR FEARS ARE WRONG

I am on the phone with Rosemary, my best friend since second grade. I used to talk to her on the old black phone in the kitchen of the house I grew up in. And she used to talk to me on the old black phone that sat on a table to the left of her front door.

"Want to come over?"

"I'll ask my mother."

Fifty-two years. At least a million conversations. This one is hard. They've all been hard since her son, Mark, left for Iraq.

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FRIEND'S LOVE CAN'T CALM MOTHER'S FEAR

FRIEND'S LOVE CAN'T CALM MOTHER'S FEAR

It's not something we talked about, and we talked about everything. But not this. Not then. Not now. Not ever. Our imagined husbands might go off to fight a war someday, we said, and our sons, if we had sons, might someday be called to fight. We were, even as small children, familiar with battle. We'd read the poetry my father had written in combat. We'd watched "The Fighting Sullivans." But we never imagined the kind of war we're mired in now. We never anticipated raising a child and seeing him grown and married and settled, then suddenly unsettled and terrifyingly vulnerable. We never expected that at 35 he'd be called to serve.

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WORDS ESCAPE HER BUT LAUGH IS STILL THERE

WORDS ESCAPE HER BUT LAUGH IS STILL THERE

She has lost her words. Last year, I could feed them to her. Fill in the blanks. "How is . . . the bald one?" she said when I came to visit. She exaggerated bald, drawled the word, made a joke, covered up. I covered up, too. "How is Bruce? He's great. Definitely bald, but great."

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SHAME ON ME WHEN IT COMES TO THANK-YOUS

SHAME ON ME WHEN IT COMES TO THANK-YOUS

The thank-you notes arrived less than a week after I brought over two small presents to the twins who live next door. They are 8 and in second grade. The notes, one from Albert and one from Melody. were written in little-kid print and addressed the same way, carefully, in neat straight letters. I read them and thought that with all their mother has to do - she works full time and takes care of a house, a husband, two kids, and a recently widowed father - she did this. She bought the kid-friendly stationery, sat down with her children, directed them ("Do we have to do this now, Mom?" at least one of them must have said), then made sure the letters got stamped and posted.

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Antonio earns American dream

He arrives at the door on a perfect spring day wearing a helmet, riding shorts and a grin that is his signature. With some people, you notice their hats, ties, scarves. With Antonio, you notice his smile. It's after 5, after work, and he has pedaled from Brockton to Canton, a distance that takes 20 minutes to drive, without traffic. ``It's a beautiful day,'' he says. ``So warm. So nice.'' And I look at him and think, he's right. It is.

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Friendly circle grows sweeter

Francesca filled them with chocolate this year. Not all of them. Just some.

They were small and round and hidden at the bottom of a plate, underneath the thin strips of sugary fried cookies that she makes and brings to my house every fall. Francesca bakes her special cookies and Liz makes her special salad and I order pizza and everyone brings wine. It's a tradition, a small party we had for the first time eight years ago when our children went off to college.

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Friendly circle grows sweeter

Francesca filled them with chocolate this year. Not all of them. Just some.

They were small and round and hidden at the bottom of a plate, underneath the thin strips of sugary fried cookies that she makes and brings to my house every fall. Francesca bakes her special cookies and Liz makes her special salad and I order pizza and everyone brings wine. It's a tradition, a small party we had for the first time eight years ago when our children went off to college…

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Friendship reveals the depth of trust that belongs to God

 Friendship reveals the depth of trust that belongs to God

The piano sat in the living room for 33 years. A baby grand, it took up a lot of space. It was old, it didn't hold a tune, it needed to be refinished, but I loved it - not just for the notes that filled the house whenever it was played, but for its history. It was my in-laws' piano before it was mine. My sister-in-law played and my father-in-law sang and strummed a ukulele, and friends would come by to visit or to have dinner and inevitably end up around the piano. For years, it made music for parties that seemed to run one right into the next.

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A sign from above via the phone

 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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Spare yourself some change

Spare yourself some change

It's strange what your brain decides to remember, what it puts in first place and shuffles to the head of the class. It's not rule-bound like a teacher. The brain doesn't select the smartest or the best looking or even the cleverest memory to take out of mothballs. It's almost as if it reaches into a grab bag of life and pulls out whatever it finds. A snippet of conversation here. A splice of an afternoon there.

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Foundations remain constant

The house I grew up in has changed hands again. I saw the new owner standing in the yard as a friend and I drove past. I do this sometimes, drive by to look and to remember. My father paid $ 10,000 for this house in 1954. The new owner paid $ 280,000. But the house isn't just more expensive. It's changed in many ways. It's bigger. One of the owners built on and up. And because of this, the yard is smaller. The trellis is gone, along with the rose bushes my mother planted and coaxed to grow. And the sprawling, silvery spidery things that lined the front walk have disappeared, as have the shrubs that separated our yard from the neighbor's, my mother's rock garden and the green awnings she scrimped and saved for.

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A fellow traveler by chance enhances train ride of life

A fellow traveler by chance enhances train ride of life

If life is a train ride, with all of us on our own, each in individual cars, bumping and chugging and sometimes careening down the tracks, then my time with Wilmha was a series of quick but welcome visits that happened many miles and many years ago. We were in the middle of our ride when we met, the theoretical middle, miles of life already lived and, barring cataclysm, miles more to go.

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Her heroics were simply a way of life

Helen McLean died the way she lived, trying not to inconvenience anyone, accepting what she couldn't change. The diagnosis was cancer and the prognosis was bad. But she didn't fight it or the doctors who gave her the news. She simply went ahead and did what she had to do, the way she did what she had to do her whole life. We build statues of men who, under the gun, stand and fight when they could have run. We call them heroes for their valor, and we honor and respect them. Their images adorn our capitals and parks. Their life stories fill our history books. We even write songs about them. The bravery of men is legend…

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