Every now and then I hear a story that breaks my heart and then mends it.
I recently heard from a woman, a reporter who had interviewed me many years ago. She wrote about what has happened in her life in the years since our paths had crossed and mentioned substance abuse, suicide, cancer.
I emailed back telling her how often Hillary and I reflect that no one escapes grief and loss and no matter how a life appears from the outside, it always contains some measure of loss and heartbreak. No one escapes. I shared that my sister and Hillary’s nephew both had committee suicide.
In her next email she told me more of her story. She wrote about a daughter - frequently institutionalized - and the horrific cost of substance abuse on a family. She told me that she and her husband had adopted their young grandchildren and said her husband is currently in treatment for cancer. Then she wrote that her son had committed suicide. “How does a mother ever recover from that?” she asked.
But here is the part of her letter that struck me like a lightning bolt to the heart.
“I still make quilts,” she wrote. “And enjoy eating popcorn out of a wonderful red bowl while watching movies with my grandchildren. I plant flowers. God is still good.”
This is a woman tested by the fires of unimaginable loss and still she finds the courage to continue, has the grace to find forgiveness and the ability to remain grateful for life’s simplest pleasures. A red bowl. A bed of flowers. The stitching of a quilt.
In the Edgar Lee Masters play, Spoon River Anthology, there is a line by a character named Lucinda Matlock. “It takes life to love life,” she says.
The former reporter’s letter reminded me of Masters’s line and how he recognized the courage required to celebrate life in all its riches and pain.
"It takes life to love life."
And it does. And it does.