Harsh images distort our outlook on life

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Harsh images distort our outlook on life

They stood at the bottom of an escalator at T.F. Green Airport in Providence Thursday afternoon, three little boys and their grandparents, the oldest boy no more than 4. He was holding a sign that spelled out with different-colored crayons, ``WELCOME HOME, MOM AND DAD.'' The sign was bigger than he was. I wasn't the only one riding the escalator who smiled and then swallowed hard seeing this. A lady who'd been on my flight wiped tears from her face. Even the hardest faces softened. I didn't hear the grandmother say, ``Look. There they are!'' But I watched her point and saw the boys - all three of them - find their parents in the crowd and light up the way only children can, everything that matters to them on that escalator coming back home to them…

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Timeless dream for mom-to-be

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She wanted me to see the closet. "It's so cute, Mom," she said. "Scott did it." Scott, the husband and hero, still. The guy who turned a patch of floor into a kitchen. The guy who figured out that if you moved the bed this way and coaxed the dresser that way, you could fit - not a crib - but a Pack-and-Play into the corner of their bedroom. The guy who transformed what amounts to a tall spice cabinet into a perfect little niche.

baby clothes

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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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Parent's age is measured not in years, but in memories

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Parent's age is measured not in years, but in memories

My father was sick last week. The heat ambushed him. He has never been able to tolerate heat. He blames the malaria he had in the war for this. Before Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower marched him through Africa, he was fine, he says. After the war, he wasn't. The heat, since, has always slowed him down.

But it has never stopped him before.

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Growing up, growing together create a lifetime of memories

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Thirty-four years ago my husband and I stood at the altar at St. Bernadette's Church in Randolph and before God and friends promised to love one another until death did us part.

Death was something straight out of the movies back then, drama relegated to the final scene. So were the words: "To have and to hold, from this day forth."

I was 20. The groom was 21. Our favorite song was the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice" ("if we were married").

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Her heroics were simply a way of life

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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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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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Frankie's snowman built with love

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Frankie's snowman built with love

Michelle and Victor Clerico speak in whispers because sound hurts their son's ears and they touch him gently because pain comes with even the lightest touch. Frankie is 5 and handsome with thick red hair and smooth pale skin and a heart as big as he is small. He tells his parents that when he dies he's going to Heaven and that God is going to give him wings. He tells his little sister: "Don't be sad. When I'm in heaven you won't be able to see me but I'll keep an eye on you."

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A family grows yet forever stays the same

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For years our two families went to the same church. The Thomas pew was down front on the right and ours was in the row behind them. They filled an entire pew because even 30 years ago there were a lot of them. I can picture them as they were: George and Barbara, the parents, old to me then, but not old to me now, sitting in their place at the end of the pew. Caryn, their eldest, was beside them. Then came Cheryl, Susan, George and Pam.

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Still giving life to his father

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Still giving life to his father

Robert sits on a chair next to his father's bed. He holds his father's hand and talks to him just to talk. He tells him about the day's news, about a weekend they spent in Maine, about all the people who have come to the hospital to visit. When an aide arrives to take his father's temperature with a thermometer she has to put in his ear, Robert explains the procedures. His father motions and Robert understands. "You want some water?" he asks. The older man nods and Robert adjusts the bed and holds his father and puts a cup to his lips and says, "It's coming," as he tilts the cup so that just a tiny bit of liquid drips into his father's mouth. More than a little will make him choke and cough and struggle for breath. And he is struggling hard enough as it is.

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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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True love endures all things

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True love endures all things

I don't know his name or where he comes from or where he goes when he leaves the hospital. I don't know if he has children, a job, a house, a car, a life that's more than a vigil. I know nothing about him except that he sits in a hospital chair in the afternoons beside a wife who cannot walk or talk or reach out even to touch his hand, a wife who may not even know he is there….

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A place of her own - at last

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A place of her own - at last

She moved out the way she was born, in the midst of a crisis that overshadowed her. So her leaving was hardly noticed. She left home amid, "What's the prognosis on Gram?" and phone calls and tears.

She slipped into the world pretty much the same way. Then it was her other grandmother who was fighting for her life. She was born quickly, as if she knew there were other things to be done. We have pictures of her older brother and younger sister at their births. But there is not a single photograph of her.

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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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When did she really grow up?

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When did she really grow up?

Every night, after I tucked her into bed, I would sing to her, a silly song, a made-up song, our song. "Stay little, stay little, little little stay, little stay little stay little." She would giggle, and I would smile. The next morning I would say: "Look at you. You grew. The song didn't work." I sang that song for years, and every time I finished, she would cross her heart and promise she wouldn't grow any more.

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