Marilyn R. Gardner's Blog, page 36

Sleepless Nights and Choosing Good

[image error]

2:30 in the morning and I can’t sleep. I sit in a chair, wrapped up in a blanket and lost in thought.

Are sleepless nights something that only the privileged experience? Do women in slums in Pakistan experience sleepless nights of worry, or are they too exhausted from the physical labor required that they grab whatever sleep they can?

I find odd comfort in the book of Kings. For those not familiar, these are books in the Old Testament. They are full of blood shed and violence, full of storie...

Death, Loss, and TCK Grief

[image error]

Yesterday I unexpectedly found myself by a lone bench on an empty ocean front. A boat was just off the shore, solitary but securely anchored in the sea. I ached with the unexpected beauty, the symbolic solitude of the boat. I felt like this boat. Alone, but securely anchored. As I stood there, a scarf wrapped around my neck shielding me from a chill wind, I thought about the last couple of weeks.

Loss is a curious thing. You lose someone, and suddenly all the unrelated losses in your life se...

The Funeral Cocoon

[image error]
November has come and the golden-red hope of Autumn is rapidly turning to bare trees and chilly winds. It is a cold time to lay a coffin in the ground.

We sat in a small chapel at the Massachusetts Veteran’s Cemetery in Winchendon, Massachusetts.  Winchendon is the town where I was born, where I took my first breath outside the womb. Now it is the town where my dad’s earthly body is buried. The chapel at the cemetery overlooks a sloping lawn going down to graves lined up like hundreds of lar...

In Memory:Ralph Edward Brown, June 7,1926 – October 24,2017

[image error]
On June 7th, in 1926, a baby boy was born to a family in the city of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He was fourth in the family, joining three sisters, a mom and a dad. Two years later his youngest sister was born and the family was complete. He was named Ralph Edward Brown and he is our father and grandfather. 

His mother–the original Annie Hall–struggled to nurse him. He seemed unable to take either breast milk or regular formula and almost died. It was the milk man, aware of the concern of th...

Empty Spaces

[image error]
I walked through the darkened living room just now and gave a little gasp as I looked toward your spot. 

Your chair is so empty. 

Gone is your big personality and sheer joy at being alive. Gone is the glass of water, the box of tissues, the tank of oxygen. Gone is your Swiss Army knife, as faithful a friend as an inanimate object can be. Gone is your wallet, your tums, all those things that helped ease some of your struggles in those last days. 

Gone. Empty. 

What once was full is now empty...

But Still – It Hurts

Dear Dad,

I’m up early and all is dark outside. They say it is going to rain and even now I hear the drops splatter on the pavement outside.

I woke up thinking of you – your life as it was before the last six months, your life as it was the last six months, your life as it was when I saw you a couple of weeks ago.

I heard the news from mom about 9 in the morning yesterday. “It seems that Dad has left us. Waiting for Sherry.” Short messages change our worlds in big ways.

I was at...

Soul Care and the Reconstruction Process

[image error]

When you live in a city you cannot avoid the ever-present construction/reconstruction process. Cranes, detours, iconic orange cones, and construction workers with yellow hard hats and vests are a part of the city landscape.

Healthy cities know that to continue to serve both residents and visitors, they need to repair, construct, and reconstruct. City planning has to allow for growth and change, and sometimes change comes through reconstruction.

The Longfellow Bridge connecting Cambridge to B...

A Fight to Live

[image error]

On Sunday afternoons we observe post liturgical nap time. It is a sacred time where the apartment is absolutely still as we go to our respective spots and either nap, read, or rest in general. We have done this as long as we have been married and I don’t believe it will ever change.

This Sunday I curled up on our impossibly soft couch with an article in the New Yorker called “The Death Treatment”. What is normally a restful time was interrupted by a chilling read.

The article centers around...

A Safe Place to Land

[image error]

A colleague phoned me early yesterday morning. “Do you have a minute? Can you come up and see me.”

The timing was perfect. We both get to work early morning and no one else was around. I walked upstairs to her office.

So much is going on in her life. She is overwhelmed. From a mother with dementia to a son stuck in a conflict zone; from changes in her department to physical storms – it’s all too much.

So many of us feel like this right now. It’s all too much. 

All around us physical and emot...

My Response to #Metoo

[image error]

Social media has been alive and active with the status “Me Too” – largely posted by women. Some have just typed the words “Me Too” or #metoo, while others have put a longer explanation under the words.

If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote “Me too” as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.

Followed by the appeal: Please copy/paste.

I understand it. I support those who have typed in the words and I am convinced that every one of t...