It had been several years past high school graduation when I found myself at a Christmas party with a few familiar high school acquaintences.  One of the guests was the former first violinist in the high school orchestra. She was one of the smartest kids in school and was a class ahead of me. I had admired her.  She had a younger sister my sister's age, also smart and accomplished.   We had all known each other in high school, but had not really been in touch after we graduated.

At the party I said hello to my former senior classman. After we chatted for a few minutes I asked about her younger sister.  How is Paulette?  There was a brief silence and maybe even a slight gasp.  Then, very calmly and graciously she said, "Oh, you don't know that Paulette was killed in a car accident a few years ago." How sorry I felt.  I felt a little awkward at not having known this. But how could have I known?

Paulette's older sister then smiled and said, "It makes me feel good that people still ask about her.  Thank you for remembering her." I've carried that gracious statement with me for decades.  And I remembered it again last night when a parishioner's mother whom I don't see very often leaned over to me at dinner and asked, "Didn't your husband want to come with us?" She was asking about a museum tour in the City that a group of us had traveled to from Plainfield. She met us there and joined us for dinner afterward.

I felt myself grow silent wondering how I could answer her kindly since John has been dead for almost two years. I was still working out what to say when her face lit up and she remembered. Instantly we fell into each other's arms tearfully. Then I told her that her question reminded me of how John would have done it.  He would NOT have wanted to join us for the museum tour. But he would have loved to have met us for dinner and a glass of wine, maybe two. And then I said, "Thank you for asking about John.  It's good that you remembered him." 

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change." This part of the Serenity Prayer has recently become my special companion. The most important thing it is teaching me is to recognize "the things I cannot change."  All my life I lived under the illusion that I could do anything if I worked hard enough and smiled at enough people. Years ago, a boss of mine in pharmaceutical sales wrote on one of my evaluations something that fueled my hard work ethic, "Carolyn, has a 'can do' attitude." I translated that into, "There's nothing I can't do" and proceeded to work very long hours and smile the whole time.

John was part of that equation. The two of us loved a challenge! His ingenuity and hard work coupled with my smiles and hard work got us through lots of challenges. Challenge for us was adventure.  We had amazing life experiences together that we called "adventure. Neither one of us would look at a challenge and say, "this is a thing I cannot change."

Now it's two years after his death and my singular challenge is to adjust to this thing I cannot change. It's humbling and it's heartbreaking. The heartbreak might be a thing I can change - over time, through prayer and community. Some very wise people promise me that I'll eventually hurt less.  But right now, I wouldn't mind a little serenity in my life as I navigate forward.

I haven't posted here since before John died nearly two years ago. The second anniversary of his death is coming up the end of February. I'm remembering that two years ago at this time we learned that his pancreas and liver were full of cancer. We were hopeful that chemotherapy might give us at least a year. He was dead in less than two months. It just took him. And I watched, helpless to do anything about it. We couldn't even really manage his nausea, his pain or his dramatic weight loss. It was even too much for the oncologists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. So, he became an in-patient there for the last 12 days of his life and they worked tirelessly to give him relief.

I'm remembering all this, re-living the desperation, grasping any thread of hope we could find. We went to see "True Grit" together on our 27th anniversary, December 31, 2010. I fixed his favorite meal to celebrate, but he only took a few bites. He was full, a sinister side effect of pancreatic cancer. It simulates the feeling of being full before you can eat enough to be nutritionally sustained.

John wore his Marine Corps baseball cap as they wheeled him into the MSK emergency room for the last time. I'm hearing the van driver's voice call him, "Captain" reverently, respectfully as he carefully lowered John into the wheel chair, trying not to cause any more pain.

"Captain" "O Captain, My Captain" Whitman's poem and another respectful and reverent use of the word associated with death and dying. I'm feeling a calm sorrow today as the end of Christmastide approaches. Yet, I'm taking the advice of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who even at the end of his Nazi imprisonment encouraged his loved ones to "Be joyful in the Lord..." And so that is my prayer and my psalm today. It gives me hope and lifts me up - this reason for joy - God's love for us manifested in the child we call Jesus.