He can't talk about it. Not now. The pain is too new. Harry Hewitt saw his wife killed last Saturday night. "I was right there," he says.
Right behind her as she traveled home from a dinner the two had shared.
rRight behind her, driving his car because she had cashiered at Wal-Mart that day and he had met her after and taken her to eat and then dropped her back at her car.d
Read MoreOf course he had to die sometime. He was 86 and much as we wish it could be, people don't live forever. But it seemed that he would. It seemed as if he would always be sitting in his rocking chair on his front porch, his wife beside him, or making his way down Chapman Street to the L'il White Store, Cassie's now, but always the L'il White to him.
Read MoreMy mother's birthday was yesterday. She would have been 76, not old by today's standards. But she died when she was 63, and I lost her many years before. I should be used to not having a mother by now.
But you never get used to it.
Read MoreHelen 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…
Read MoreThe warnings are posted on every piece of gym equipment, at the bottom of a long list of carefully written instructions. They are in clear, dark print and are easy to read: "Attention users: Failure to comply could result in serious injury or even death." Nothing new here. We live in a world full of warnings…
Read MoreTom Lehmann, 48, was buried last Friday after a three-year battle with cancer. It was a fierce battle. When he was diagnosed, the cancer had already spread from his colon to his liver. A succession of experimental therapies bought him time, but at a big price. The treatments slowed the disease, but slowed him down, too...
Read MoreGrief 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.
Read MoreI met Bob Cormier in the fall of '81, nearly 20 years ago. Hard to believe. I drove to his house in Leominster to interview him, not knowing how to interview, winging it, freelancing for The Patriot Ledger, but what did I know? I wasn't a real writer. Bob Cormier was. I'd spent the summer reading his books, one right after the other, while my kids played, while my husband drove, while whatever was cooking on the stove burned. I loved his work. Could I come and talk to him? I wrote.
He answered on the thin, shiny, erasable bond paper that I will always associate with him. "I'd be happy to meet you and talk and be interviewed. I write at home. My telephone number is" and there it was.
He was that accessible.
Read MoreFor most of my early life, I never thought of Memorial Day in terms of remembering the dead. Memorial Day was, in my untroubled youth, simply the celebrated beginning of summer: time to polish white shoes, iron the seersucker suit (there was always a seersucker suit), dig out last year's shorts and sandals, stock up on suntan lotion and get ready to soak in three months of sun-filled days and moonlit nights. When I was even younger, Memorial Day meant that the amusement park at Nantasket Beach and the drive-in at Neponset were finally open. But what you see depends upon where you're standing and what you're looking at. ..
Read MoreI cut her some slack, the not-so-young woman who gave me the finger and mouthed the companion epithet. I thought, OK, maybe she's from another country and doesn't know the rule about funeral processions having the right of way. Maybe this cortege of cars with headlights on in the middle of a sunny day, funeral flags on each roof, was a new experience for her.
Read MoreRobert 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.
Read MoreWhat 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…
Read MoreWhen I asked the priest to pray for Beth's mother and he said, "What's her name?" I answered, "Mrs. O'Connor."
Her first name, Mary, didn't come to me until hours later because, it's "my mother" that Beth always calls her.
"My mother's on the other line. Can I call you back?"
"My mother and father are here. My mother's staying a few days. "
"The twins are with my mother."
Read MoreWhat Grandma would say on this morning after her funeral is, "It's over now. I know you're sad but tears are a waste of energy that don't get you anything but tired. So dry your eyes and go do what you have to do. I had a good life and it's time for you to get on with yours." Something like that…
Read MoreORLANDO, Fla. - We met Tuesday in the hotel lobby on our way to somewhere else. It took a minute for me to match a name with his face because I hadn't seen him in a couple of years and then we were in another city in another hotel lobby. He was smiling, extending his hand, saying his name and when he did, I thought: of course. And it all came back then, the details of our last conversation.
Read MoreThe present tense dominates the conversation:
"Brian's the most organized, disorganized person I know."
"He's my best friend."
"He's the kind of guy who, when there's an event coming, you hope he's there."
"He bought me a corsage. He called me up and asked what color my dress was. That's how he is."
They have come to talk about Brian Cody. They crowd around a conference table at Saint Patrick's rectory in Stoneham on a hot Sunday night. Some talk about Brian as a friend, teacher, brother, son. All talk about Brian as a man they love.
Read MoreI 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…
Read MoreI haven't seen him in years; I haven't thought of him in a long, long time. And yet the news of his death saddens me. The world feels changed, somehow, knowing he's no longer in it.
He was a tall, lanky, Ichabod Crane kind of man, a lawyer, not a teacher, but as curious as a child and as unconventional as a child too.
Read MoreToday 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…
Read MoreIt was sudden. A small heart attack had been a warning, doctors said. Slow down. Take it easy. His wife was to pick him up and drive him home from the hospital late on a Saturday morning. He died before she arrived.
I knew him only a short time, for a few years as my boyfriend's father, for a few years as my father-in-law. I never called him by his first name. I was too young and he was too old for that informality…
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