When I think of courage, I think of my friend M.  When I first met her she was a happily married woman with five beautiful children and a nice home, living what looked like the suburban dream. 
 
A couple of years later she had six children, was pregnant with the seventh, and had just lost her beloved mother to cancer.  And then her husband left her for the woman he'd been having an affair with for a couple of years.
 
These things happen.  They happened to her.  She fought hard for her marriage, hard for her family, and she lost. 
 
He quit his job and put his assets in his new partner's name so he didn't have to pay maintenance for his children.  He never paid a cent, despite being ordered to by the courts.
 
M. brought up seven children on her own.  She got up early, she went to bed late.  She put her creativity on hold, she worked as many jobs as she needed to.  She got sick.  She kept going.  She made good nutritious meals out of next to nothing, and she accepted charity with grace when every fibre of her being rebelled against it. She made her home a loving, welcoming place.  She got out of bed day after day after day when she was sick with grief and exhaustion and she did what needed to be done.
 
She has made heroic efforts to allow her children to have a positive relationship with their father.  She spent Christmas on her own every second year.  She never denigrated him to them, and she grit her teeth and attended school functions with him for her children's sake.  She negotiates with her ex-husband's new partner to make sure her children are cared for when they are at his house.  She feels sick and shaky and often cries when she puts the phone down, but she does it and she does it with grace and courtesy.
 
She has done this, suffering from depression and poverty and illness for more than 10 years now.  Her older children are out in the world and starting to understand her sacrifices.  Her younger children are still heedless and demanding.  Every one of those children has been clothed and fed and cared for and loved.  And every day M. gets up and does it again. 
 
I hope that I can help her to hang on, so that one day she will have the time and energy to write and paint, and make the children's books that have been burbling away inside her for a long, long time.  Because they're going to be very good and that courage and integrity is going to make them the books you'll want to buy for your children and your friends' children and children you've never met.


(name withheld by request).

 I feel things, I love people, I think I’m a decent writer…but when someone experiences a great loss, I’m mute. It’s awful. I let days and then months and then years go by, thinking of the person, framing things I’d like to say, or wish to convey in my head, and do nothing.  It’s really a horrible failing, because to me it means that I’m ignoring people dear to me, when they might need affirmation most. I’m working on it.  Two summers ago, my Aunt Ruth was killed by a falling rock. She had been hiking with friends. She was my Dad’s beloved older sister, and a glamourous intellectual figure in my young Southern Illinois childhood. Like: she had a degree in anthropology and traveled to Taiwan with her husband. Her daughters studied ballet and piano. And my Dad had nothing but glowing stories of her: she introduced him to everything fair and good.

I don’t really know my Uncle Barry, her husband. I think he and my Dad didn’t get along. And my family didn’t go to lots of extended family trips and things like that, so I didn’t see Ruth’s family, or those cousins. Maybe twice in my entire childhood. Barry, maybe once.  Facebook has meant that I am now in touch with my cousins, and that’s wonderful.  But when Ruth died, I had all of these feelings, and desires– I wanted to say something to my Dad, and my Grammy, and perhaps send a note to my two cousins, and Barry.  And I did, said, nothing.  It was overwhelming, to pare down the difference between what I wanted to say, and what ought to be said, and what one writes and sends off into the post…  Terrible.

Last week, I got a congratulatory wedding card, with gift, from Barry.  Mind you: I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to the man– I have one memory of him running on a beach from childhood, and the unfounded sensation that my own Dad didn’t get along with him. That’s all. But I had sent him a wedding invitation because if I didn’t, he’d be the only person in my whole family not to get one. And that just seemed wrong. Also, if Ruth were alive, I’d have of course sent one. So I sent one.

His note was late, and he wrote, “I’m sorry this is late. Your Aunt Ruth would never have let that happen.”

My eyes promptly filled up with tears. What a perfect, sad, and good thing to say.

I wrote him a proper note in the thank you note. I told him how sorry I am that Aunt Ruth is gone, and described what they as a couple (an idea of a smart couple traveling the world) meant to me as a child, and that I had thought of him frequently– and that if he ever came to our city, he should let me know, because I’d like to see him in person.

Anyway. I felt anxious when I mailed the note– flurries of “it’s too much!” and “it’s not enough!” and “why even try to say these things?!” for a full 24 hours.  I eventually told myself, “You had to write something. We’re only human. Better to try and write something clunky, and convey it awkwardly, than ignore these things.”


(Contributed by Stephanie, from an original post at: www.girldogtorch.wordpress.com)