Every Precious and Fragile Thing

by Barbara Davis

None of us knows for sure what’s out there, but hope makes the unbearable bearable, and so I’ve chosen hope.

You learn it early when you’re different. How to cloak yourself in sameness, how to hide in plain sight.

But the first step in healing after any tragedy is to look our pain in the eye and accept the fact that it’s a part of who we’ll be going forward.

sometimes love wasn’t enough. In fact, it almost never was. Not when the marital scales were so grossly unbalanced.

“For most of us, there’s someone—one person—whose soul we know as well as our own. The one we’re meant for. The one who’s meant for us. We know it the minute we meet them. We feel it. A recognition we sense in our bones. And it never goes away

I never know what to say to the priest and find myself wondering if the things I confess are actually sins against God or just sins against my mother.

“A burden shared is a burden halved.

We’re reminded to spend the time we have left on what’s truly meaningful, to lay down the things we can’t control—things we finally realize we’ve never controlled—and live in the moment. We start looking back instead of always ahead, and feel a profound sense of gratitude for all we’ve been given. The acceptance has to come first. Then comes the grace. And sometimes, even joy.”

Beauty—and the vanity that sometimes comes with it—is often confused with dignity. But that kind of beauty is never more than skin deep, while dignity is rooted in our humanity, in our very soul, a birthright we either cling to or surrender.

This is the business of dying well. The sorting out of what’s worth the fight and what’s not. The peeling off of old resentments. The laying down of arms. It’s a time of reckoning, of balancing our books and paying those we owe.

That’s the thing about seeing people stripped of their pride—it humanizes them in ways we’re often not prepared for. We suddenly see our sameness, our connection, our ties. And once seen, they can never be unseen.

Motherhood doesn’t come with a set of instructions. Sometimes, the box arrives damaged and some of the pieces are missing. But you own it now, this job you weren’t ready for, and so you muddle through. You make mistakes, sometimes horrible ones, and there’s nothing to do but live with them.”

Life hands us all our share of regrets. Don’t live with the ones you don’t have to. Mend your fences while you can—as soon as you can. If someone needs you, be there, whatever it costs. Because you might not get another chance.”

“Mothers are complicated. You grow up thinking you know who they are. And then something happens and you realize they have all these layers, pieces of themselves you didn’t know were there—because they’ve been carrying around stuff you knew nothing about.