• Library Love
• Giving Thanks for Grief

In every move I've made, my first local connection is the library. 
Before I find a bank, an internet provider a good route to the post
office or grocery store - I get my library card.  This is my first step
towards belonging to a new place.

My mother was a true believer in libraries.  She offered us books in the
same reverent voice she offered us chocolate.  We made our weekly
pilgrimage by walking through the park and up two short blocks to the
library.  The children's room was big and quiet with high ceilings and a
low wooden bench in front of wide windows.  Somehow, sunlight always
streamed over my left shoulder to illuminate the open book before me.
My ritual was always the same.  First, I went into the stacks where the
"Jenny books" were shelved.  My books.  Stories of a black cat with a red
scarf.  I went there to orient myself.  All exploration began from that
place in the library.

Recently, I fell in love with a man from Kentucky.  We planned a week
long visit at his home.  It was a long drive.  I rumbled down the coast,
flew through the tolls on the Mass Pike, flashed past hundreds of cows in
Pennsylvania, grew impatient through Ohio. When I finally arrived, he
still had two violin lessons to teach.

"Is the library in walking distance?" I asked.  "I could stretch my legs
and ease my mind at the library till you're finished."

He said, "I don't know if it's in walking distance or not.  I don't know
where the library is."

I stared at him.  He'd lived here for ten years.  Ten years and he didn't
know where the library was.

Unbelievable.

Still staring, it came to me that not being familiar with his library was
not only unbelievable but unforgivable.  I said good-bye and left.
The library wasn't hard to find. The "Jenny books" were  on the shelf. 
The sun shone through the windows. After a few hours restoring myself, I
headed home to Maine.

The way back didn't seem so long.
 

Giving Thanks for Grief 

 I am standing in the circle of friends surrounding Melanie by the tiny, newly dug grave.  I have wept with her as she and her husband looked their last on their baby, Magnolia, lying in the small homemade coffin.  Dead at three days old, she looks like a perfect porcelain doll.  A tiny, stuffed bear is beside her and yellow, spring flowers placed by many loving hands.  I could hardly breathe as the bereaved parents cradled the coffin in their arms and gazed on
the still face.  At last they closed the coffin and lowered it reluctantly into the earth.

Now Melanie is gripping a shovel in her trembling hands, readying herself to throw the first shovelful of dirt over the coffin.  She can't bring herself to do it and no one comes forward out of the circle to help her.  We all hold our places and will her to be strong.    My own knuckles are white as I watch her clinging to the shovel, weeping. Her legs are buckling and her body presses against the shovel as though it were the one thing keeping her from falling into the abyss of grief.  We are a circle of love and grief around her, holding her.  My mouth is full of silence.  We wait.  I feel the moment she is ready.  I feel her deep shaking breath through the soles of my own feet as she straightens, digs the shovel into the loose earth and sends the first clods of dirt over the coffin.  A clump of earth strikes the wooden lid and we all hear the final,
hollow tone and are caught once more in the passage of time.  One by one we come forward then and throw handfuls of earth into the grave. 

One by one we struggle to let go of the need to understand. Walking back towards the house and the community meal, my ten year old daughter, Georgia Rose, turns and asks, "How old were you Mommy when you lost your baby?"

"Nineteen", I tell her.

Nineteen.   Nineteen years old, six months pregnant and three weeks
married I awoke one morning to terrible pains and a gush of blood from
between my legs.  As if in a slow motion dream we went to the hospital,
then home to sew a shroud and build a coffin and then to the cemetery. 
Twelve years ago I was standing in a graveyard on a May afternoon like
this one throwing handfuls of dirt over my infant son born three months
too soon.

I am called back to the present by my daughter's voice asking, "Mommy, who was with you when you buried him?"

I say, "Your father and I were alone."

"Oh" she says, "Oh, Mommy, that must have been so hard."

The compassion in her voice wraps around me like loving arms and I sink
down into my own grief to feel myself standing where Melanie was standing
only moments before.

Where I thought I was alone, I find the whole world encircling me whispering, "This is the bread of life.  This is the cup of faith."  Is this what Melanie just experienced when she took that deep breath?  Is this what happens when we contract down to the smallest point of ourselves?  When we are drawn into our deepest darkness the world suddenly opens up and there is light pushing it's way through the darkness like grass breaking through pavement?  In our darkest hour, the barren ground comes alive with new green.  I want to hold both my girls.  I open my arms to Georgia Rose and... where is Suzannah?  Turning, I re-trace my steps and find her placing green sods over the raw, black earth of the grave, tears streaming down her cheeks.  Her nine year old face looks both painfully young and as old as the earth her hands are smoothing over the grave like one smoothes the  covers on a bed of a child being tucked in to sleep.

"I wanted to make it beautiful", she says.  "I couldn't leave the ground
looking so ugly."

I wait in silence as she fits the broken pieces of sod over the wounded earth and tucks them into place.  When she is finished, we walk together, all three of us toward the house and the meal.  Our wounds are beautiful, I
want to tell them.  Fierce testimonies to joy, for it is where we are broken the light can shine through.  Would they understand that?  Do I?  I say nothing.  It is enough to walk with their hands in mine under the arching trees above us and then out into the warm afternoon sunshine of a Spring day.

by Jennifer Armstrong
Published in HOPE Magazine
May/June issue 1997 and in
Best of Hope, Pushcart Press