liturgy of leaving

My last job was that of Christian education director. I had no previous experience when I took the job, but I was desperate for health insurance and figured I could find Sunday school teachers with the best of them. I was surprised to find how passionately I came to feel about the work; much of it was helping people find their places in the community and another large part was helping children and adults learn to live liturgically. One of my gurus was the author and speaker Gertrud Mueller Nelson, who wrote the book To Dance with God. Nelson feels strongly about the place of ritual, not just in church liturgies, but in day-to-day living. Transitional times, she says, are dangerous times. The Church has always recognized this and marked those transitions—birth, coming of age, marriage, death—with sacraments and rituals. Nelson encouraged us to mark important moments in our lives and difficult periods of our days with well-designed rituals to make them safer times.

She says, "In our creative ritual making, we draw a circle around that place and that event so that we can be more fully awake to the magnitude of the moment." We ignore these transition times at our peril. Liturgy of transition can moor us to what and who is important, while ignoring those times or pretending it's just another moment can cause us to feel unsettled and beside ourselves.

Forgetting this wasted a lot of time and did a great deal of harm to Elizabeth.

In the last four months, she has careened around the state, going from a level II foster home, to Duke Hospital ER, to Central Regional Hospital in Butner, to a PRTF in Winston-Salem, to Baptist Hospitals ER, to their psych ward, and then back to Butner. She fought desperately to get back to CRH, at one point telling me, "But I didn't get to say goodbye to everyone." She left Baptist, her home for a month, with just an hour's notice. She muses about how nice Aunt Jackie, her foster mom, was and how she hopes she can see her again. She has a lot of regrets.

I knew we had to do a better job of helping her depart if we didn't want a repeat of the previous fiasco. I asked Mr. G, our CRH social worker, to help her figure out what she needed to do to say goodbye for good as she prepared to leave for a new PRTF. She asked for a notebook and had staff and peers write in it. That was a good start.

Our friend Tom, who has met with her almost weekly for a year, came up with the idea of a ritual as she left. He wanted her to know that she was part of a community and that she was loved. His hope was that she could use that love to sustain her through hard times. We invited those who were close to her to come to Butner and tell her in person. Because the hospital wouldn't allow children to come in the unit, Mr. G suggested that we be given a pass to take her out.

Tom and his wife Janice brought her to a restaurant in Butner, one where Claire and I ate regularly when we visited, one that had the advantage of a private room. Our friend Patti brought four of Elizabeth's friends. My sister and niece were there, as was our neighbor. Paul, our youth minister from church, rode with me and Claire. We ate pizza and mugged for the camera. The kids, who hadn't seen her in four months, picked up right where they had left off.

After our meal, Janice presented Elizabeth with a decorated shoebox. Tom explained that he and Elizabeth had talked about putting all that was important to her in a metaphorical box and holding it close to her when she left. This was metaphor made concrete; in the box she placed the letters and pictures we gave her. Each of us told her what we had brought and what she meant to us. She listened, wide-eyed, nodding at the things people said. Each item was placed carefully in the box. Tom talked about how he hoped, when she felt out-of-control, that she would use the love she was taking with her to help her remember to control her actions. Elizabeth and Paul recited the 23rd Psalm, alternating every word, something they did whenever he visited her. Then Paul prayed, asking that God be with Elizabeth and with us during this time.

It was good liturgy: meal, symbol, psalm, charge, prayer. And at least in the short term, it helped. She was tearful that night at bedtime, but appropriately so, as anyone might be who was leaving something comfortable and familiar to go to something scary new. In the morning, she was excited. When I talked to her Friday night, she seemed settled and happy. We acknowledged the magnitude of the moment and gave her something tangible to hold on to. We made it clear that our family and community were what she was leaving, not just Central Regional. And we told her directly, that even though she wasn't with us, she was still a part of us and deeply loved.

This is where we went wrong before: we didn't acknowledge the magnitude of the moment. In my desire to protect her from my pain, it must have felt as if we didn't care. That's not a mistake I will make again.

Go in peace, Elizabeth. Our family and our community are strong enough and elastic enough to handle your absence for a time. You are still a much loved part of us and always will be. Remember that and use it to help you do the hard work you have to do.

you just might find you get what you need

It definitely wasn't love at first sight. You know those hokey ads of two people running towards each other in a field of daisies, arms extended, ending in an embrace? Well, we would have missed, turned around to try again, and smashed heads together, knocking out a tooth in one and inflicting a black eye on the other. It was really that bad.

When I found out that Elizabeth was being shipped back to Butner, I emailed E, our wonderful social worker from the last time there. She had a full caseload and didn't think we would end up with her this time. We didn't. I didn't hear anything after a day or so and emailed her again. Finally I got a phone call from Mr. G, our new social worker. He was obviously multi-tasking and apologized for being too busy to call. I said the best way to get ahold of me was to email. He said he didn't email. When I started talking about something I felt it was important for him to know, he cut me off and said he'd see me when I got there that afternoon.

By the time I did get there, I was in a fury. I was early enough that I figured a supervisor would be around and I planned to ask to be switched to a more compatible social worker. I was madder and meaner than the last time we'd been in Butner, and I was in no mood to be messed with. I waited in the lobby for him to come get me to take me to the unit. He arrived and started talking immediately about Elizabeth as we made the five minute walk to the lower level. E and I used to make small talk on that same walk. She made me feel like Elizabeth was the only patient she had and she had all the time in the world to listen. I felt like I was in the presence of another human and that made it easier to focus on the difficult work we had to do.

I don't do well with what I hear. Like Elizabeth, I have my own auditory processing problems. I got through college by writing down every word of every lecture and then going back to the dorm and rewriting the important parts. I can't walk and listen at the same time. I need to see it, and pictures help too. And I communicate best by writing, so that I have time to think about every word and whether it conveys what I want it to say.

Every encounter Mr. G and I had seemed to be a negative one. He talked fast; I listened slow. He strode; I moseyed. I was an idealist; he was a realist and impatient with my impatience with the system. He was interested in facts; I told stories. He interrupted constantly; so did I. We seemed doomed.

Before Elizabeth came in to the visiting room, Mr. G and I sat and talked, mostly at each other. "Why won't you do email?" I asked. "I need you to do email." He said that HIPAA regulations made it so that an email with identifying information in it could cost him an outrageous fine and he wasn't taking the chance. "Okay," I said. "But I don't do well on the phone, so it will have to be in person. And you can't do something else while you are talking to me." I could feel his irritation growing. "And you can't interrupt," I added, "Or I'll have to bring a talking stick and you can only talk while you are holding it." He looked at me in semi-amazement and then laughed.

When I left that day I hadn't talked to a supervisor yet. But Mr. G seemed reasonably competent and fairly personable. I asked Elizabeth what she thought. "I like him," she said. "Some of the kids don't because he's strict. But I think he's nice." That was important. After all, she was his patient, not me. I didn't have to like him. He sure was hard to talk to though.

As a southerner, it's hard for me to trust someone if I don't know their people. Have you ever noticed that when southerners meet for the first time, they start playing the Who Do You Know Game? It's an easy way to find out if someone is good or trustworthy or maybe not so nice. You can't play that game in hospitals, especially psych wards. In Baptist we lucked out and there WERE people who knew my people, and they were people I trusted. But this guy was the HIPAA king and I didn't know his people or his stories, and he had my kid.

The next time I came, Elizabeth said, "Mr. G knows Louise." Well, THAT was unexpected. Louise is a bona fide wise woman who knows both of my children well. I emailed her as soon as I got home. "He is one of the best people I know," she said. Oh. My friend Janice, herself a social worker and a member of my Child and Family Team weighed in. "He seems to know what he's doing." That was high praise from her. When we next met, I told him that Louise and Janice had vouched for him and I was willing to keep working with him. "But please don't just dive in. Ask me about the weather or something."

And he did. He really tried and I appreciate that. He made small talk, obviously itching to get on with it. As time went on, our relationship became easier. When I'm talking about Elizabeth, I have stories I tell, stories that I think say far more than a straight narrative does. He started listening to my stories and in the process discovered that it's easier to do that than to calm me down when I can't get my point across. He took time to hear what was being said in between the lines. He learned to laugh at me when I pounded the table and said I wanted to control everything. Then he helped me find what I could control and get on with it.

Claire and I visited Elizabeth last night. I was incensed about a decision the hospital had made, and this time I was the one who started in on him as soon as he came down. "How come I have to obey your rules but the hospital doesn't have to obey their own rules?" I fired at him. "What are you, an idealist?" he countered. We went on like that, yet somehow managing to accomplish what I had wanted to before we ever got to the unit. While he was out of the room getting Elizabeth, Claire asked if we were going to have the conversation I had talked about having all the way to Butner. "Oh we got that straightened out," I answered. She narrowed her eyes in confusion. "You two were each carrying on a conversation, but it wasn't the same one," she said. "How could you have accomplished anything?" But somehow, we did.

As I signed reams of paperwork tonight in preparation for Elizabeth's leaving Friday, I stopped between forms. "You are a good person and I appreciate everything you have done for us," I began. "You said that yesterday," he said, "Here, you didn't sign this one."

When my kids were little, I used to infuriate them by countering their complaints with singing the Rolling Stones' song, "You can't always get what you want . . . " I still miss the easy relationship I had with E at Butner. She was just what Elizabeth and I needed our first trip to Central Regional, kind, patient, knowledgeable, pastoral. But Mr. G kept me from getting too comfortable. This was just a temporary resting place on our way to better things. He wasn't about bonding, he was about getting her what she needed and sending her on her way. He, jarring yet compassionate, was the right person for this part of our trip. Because, you know, if you try sometime, you just might find you get what you need.

Where we're headed

. . . . and all I do is miss you and the way we used to be . . .

It's looking like the Butner chapter of this journey may be coming to a close. Since Elizabeth has been back there, the push has been to get her out quickly before she gets too comfortable. She likes Butner and she feels safe there. Hell, I feel safe there too. It's hard for both of us to leave. Again.

We have been looking at PRTFs, psychiatric residential treatment facilities for those lucky enough not to need that particular acronym. There aren't enough anyhow, and the situation is complicated by the fact that a Virginia PRTF that had 113 NC kids lost their NC funding, and so those kids bounced back into the already overcrowded NC system. Some PRTFs have turned her down, based on her high level of need. I have the world's best Child and Family Team (CFT) and they, along with our Butner social worker, work long hours calling, submitting applications, and calling some more. Finally two accept her, both in eastern NC.

Yesterday I drove down to visit the one in Kinston. It's a haul, over two hours or three Dire Straits albums away. My heart remains in the mountains even though I've lived in central NC for 23 years, and so this flat dusty land feels especially alien and alienating. Why are there so many RV sales lots on this road? I pass Cleo's Concrete Creations, Chosen Vessel Ministries, and lots of Christian academies. Yellow signs with red spray painted words sprout like weeds all over the roadside: peaches, tomatoes, yorkies. Yorkies? I check again. Yep, yorkies. Do I really want her in a town that boasts the 2nd AMEN ment Gun Shop? I'm suddenly very homesick for Chapel Hill.

I continue along Hwy 70, cut off on 268 and find my way to the facility. Road construction debris fills a vacant lot next to it. The place itself looks like a prison, with a fence around it and several low buildings. I stop and sit in the car for a couple of moments, my mood matched by the heartrending strains of a Mark Knopfler guitar solo, the notes echoing the words of the last verse: rockaway, rockaway. In my mind it sounds a lot like walk away, walk away, but I resist. The song ends and I get out.

A staff member is walking with a obviously upset and indignant girl, who cries and tells her side of the story. The staff member listens and makes sympathetic sounds. The girl calms down and I can no longer hear her voice. That's positive. I am directed to the administration building. Kim is perky and upbeat, obviously excited about this new unit. She points out that a new unit is different from a new program. They already have 24 beds for kids ages 7 to 17. This new unit will house 18 more kids. Elizabeth is being offered a bed in a pod for six girls, most of them 12 and 13.

We go to the new building which is in that final stage that all teachers know from the week before school starts. Floors are shiny new, bedspreads are on the bed, but the computer lab is empty. Boxes are stacked in the hall. The building is light-filled and attractive. She would be in a three girl living area, with three bedrooms, a kitchenette, one bathroom and a sitting area. As I look around, I suddenly see all the things that I didn't know to look for in the last PRTF, signs that tell me that perhaps this place can handle someone with her level of need. The TV is behind glass. There are no visible projectiles. There is one seclusion room for every three kids. Kim tells me that even when they are asleep, there are four people assigned to a six bed unit. Okay, that's good.

We find an empty office and sit, and I fire questions at her. I'm going to tell her just how bad my kid is, making sure she knows what they are in for. I thought I had told the last PRTF that, but somehow they didn't get it. I'd rather tell them now than have THEM tell me later. "Are you sure you can handle her?" I demand. Kim smiles. "That's what we do here," she says. "I could tell you stories about kids that make your child look easy. They deserve to be helped too. We can handle her." I ask how many kids they have kicked out in the four years they have been open. None, she tells me. My kid can get kicked out of just about anything, I brag. She's been kicked out of schools, camps for mentally ill kids, PRTFs, and psych wards. There's a first for everything. "Are you scared yet?" I ask. "No," she says. "That is what we do," she says again.

I tell her I'll let her know something on Tuesday and head back home. I call members of my CFT team. We talk about good points and bad. I realize most of what I object to is due to my snobbishness: eastern North Carolina, the gun shop, the fact that Kim mispronounces words. But I'm mostly stuck because I no longer trust my gut, a real handicap for someone who makes most decisions by what feels right. I loved the last PRTF; I loved that it was a working farm on 400 acres. They had a cat, for God's sake. There is no cat here. It was in the mountains. I liked the people at the old PRTF. But bucolic and nice didn't work so well. I need competent more than I need lovely.

At our treatment team meeting today, the social worker and psychiatrist sit and listen as I babble, even though they are pushed for time. They are in their best therapeutic mode, patiently asking hard questions to help me clarify what I want to do. Finally Mr. G, our social worker, asks, "What do you need from us?" "Tell me what to do," I say. They hesitate and look at each other, knowing they aren't supposed to impose their views or wishes, and then turn back. "Take it," they say in unison. Finally—certainty from someone! They talk about why they like it and their reasons are good. They point out that she is in far better shape than the last time she left Butner. And we've learned from the mistakes that we made in her last discharge plan.

We make a plan: Mr. G will have her decide what she needs to do to say goodbye. They'll make a list and check things off. Butner will transport her down there; I won't go. She isn't allowed visitors for 30 days, but I can call. It won't be easy; she refuses to come to this treatment team meeting and hangs up on me twice when I try to tell her about the place. If I'm having trouble trusting, how much harder for her? On June 3, she and the other five girls will arrive at the facility together. That's not much time.

One bright point: our seminarian (a student priest to those not liturgically inclined) will be assigned to a church in Kinston. The Holy Family diaspora, which served us so well in Baptist, comes to the rescue yet again. Tom agrees to visit her and I feel better knowing another pair of eyes are on her.

If they do what they say they can do, she will spend the next one to two years there. They will do medication management, therapy and something they call ART—aggression replacement therapy. She'll get schooling and she can earn trips into town, and eventually even home visits. The assumption is that she will leave there and come home because our system naively assumes that a few months of services will cure mental illness.

I would like that but I no longer count on it. It's a long, winding road our family is traveling. This part is dusty and flat. I hope for a more scenic route someday, but that might not be where we're heading. When the things that you hold /Can fall and be shattered/Or run through your fingers like dust. . . I turn up the volume, hoping it will cover the conversation in my head. Right now my job is to get to this next turnoff and hope it's one that leads somewhere good.

garbage strikes, punk rockers and dandelion wine

After I survived the Aran Islands part of my British Isles expedition in the summer of 1987, I hitchhiked across the country to Dublin. It was a novel feeling to hitchhike the width of an entire country in one day. Hell, it was a novel feeling to hitchhike, something I had never been brave (or stupid) enough to try in the States. There was always a bit of anxiety interspersed with the excitement of getting a bit further along the way, but there were enough people happy to give an American a ride that I made fairly good time.

I arrived in Dublin in the midst of a rainstorm and a garbage strike. I finally found a youth hostel where I shared a room with two teenage punk rockers from Chicago. It worked out well; they stayed out all night and slept all day while I did the reverse. None of us had much money, but they had enough drama for all three of us. I listened to their early morning tales and offered advice that they neither asked for nor followed, advice that usually fell into one of three categories: see a doctor, call the police, don't do that again. I likewise disregarded their advice, which generally consisted of foregoing stuffy cathedrals and trying one of the many pubs or discos. We bumped along in genial disharmony, each bemused by the others' choices as how to best experience Ireland.

While they slept, I played the virtuous sightseer. I slogged along in ankle-deep floating garbage as I hiked to the post office that was the headquarters of the 1916 Easter Rising. My very distant relative Thomas McDonagh was executed for his part in that rebellion and was memorialized by Yeats in poem and by a plaque in the PO. I saw the Book of Kells at Trinity College and went to St. Patrick's Cathedral, where Jonathan Swift was Dean. I had planned to hitchhike up to Belfast, but by then my achilles tendons were so sore and inflamed that I knew I couldn't. After dithering for a day or two, I decided to splurge on the train and so arrived in Belfast relatively though not completely painfree. I took the bus across town to the ferry and watched as soldiers poked our luggage with their rifles and questioned us as to our destinations. It was my first experience in a war zone and I was happy to get on the ferry and head to Scotland.

My destination was the small town of Strenraer for two reasons. One was that was where the ferry went. But it was also the home of a family my boyfriend had met the previous year when he was in Scotland, and they had invited me to stay. I arrived in Strenraer without incident and called the family. The wife answered the phone. After we had exchanged greetings, I told them where I was, and she said she would send her husband to get me. I described what I was wearing: "I'll be the one in the white shirt and black pants." "Hmm," she said thoughtfully, "I think I'll come along as well."

When they pulled up, she jumped out of the car and burst into laughter. "Next time," she said, "You might want to call them trousers. I had visions of you standing here in black underwear."

I had thus established myself as a green traveler rather than the urbane American I had hoped to pass myself off as, but that worked to my benefit. I was obviously in pain, so the mom hustled me off to the doctor. He invited the whole staff to meet me; they all had friends in America that they wanted to ask me about, friends in Montana and New York and Massachusetts, and they were disappointed when I didn't know them. He looked at my inflamed achilles tendons for just a moment, asking, "You've been hitchhiking, haven't you?" I was surprised, but I admitted that I had been. He explained it was a very common injury. I was wearing a heavy pack, and when a car stopped, I ran to get in, my body at an awkward angle which stressed my tendons. He put me in an ankle brace and on an anti-inflammatory, apologizing profusely for the one pound cost, and sent me on my way. I tried to pay but he wouldn't let me. This was my first, wonderful exposure to government sponsored health care.

I filled my prescription, put on my ankle braces and felt like a new woman. So when the teens of the family invited me to a local disco that night, I was ready to try it. The three of us entered the dimly lit, cheesy nightclub with its grimy floor and glittering ball and headed up to the bar. I knew that it wasn't a good idea to drink alcohol while taking medication, so I decided to stick to apple cider. The room was hot, I was thirsty, and the cider was cold and cheap. After the third one, I discovered I liked to dance, something I had never enjoyed much in the U.S. After the fourth one, my dancing had improved so much that I was attracting spectators, who obviously were watching in envy. After the fifth, the crowd had gotten large enough that I started wondering if something was amiss. I found one of my hosts, who offered me a beer. I explained that I couldn't drink alcohol and was sticking to cider. She stared at me for a moment before she and her friends dissolved in giggles. "And what do you think the cider is?" she asked.

Oops. I decided to take my chagrined and intoxicated self home to bed, but she wasn't ready to go and her brother was nowhere to be found. "It's easy enough," she said. "Just cross the square and keep to the left. You'll see our flat." I found my way home and fell into bed fully clothed. The next morning at breakfast, as I cautiously eyed my fried tomatoes and eggs, I looked up to find her brother watching me with amusement. "I see you got home all right," he said. "I wasn't sure you would. You looked like a bloody sailboat, tacking from one side of the street to the other. We followed you part way to make sure you got here. I thought you said you didn't drink?"

There were further adventures involving the whole family, the World Cup on the telly and homemade dandelion wine that it would have been rude to refuse, but for some reason those memories aren't clear. I'm sure they still have their family stories about the American who came to visit and stayed accidentally drunk the whole time. Is it any wonder I can't remember their names?

why I'm surly tonight

Baptist gave up. I knew they were going to. Dr. J had said that they were going to put in for a transfer to Butner because it would take weeks. "Besides," she said, "If she's doing well, we can turn it down." Less than a week later a bed came open and they didn't turn it down. I have to give my permission for them to give Benadryl, but I have no say in her being driven across the state to a new hospital by a sheriff's deputy.

It's a bad time because they have just started her on a new medication and are tweaking others. Psych meds often have to be started at low doses and then increased gradually. Sometimes you have to prescribe different drugs in the interim, while the new drugs are being increased. And then there are the drugs that are given to stave off the sometimes horrible side effects of other drugs the patient is on. She is right in the middle of all this.

Luckily I have the email address of our former social worker at Butner and I email her to tell her Elizabeth is on her way and not to change any meds. They can't add anything without permission but they can take her off. Tonight the admitting doc calls to ask my permission to put her on new meds. I say no and ask that she stay on what she was already on until I can meet with them. He can't find a record of her being on any meds. I tell him what I think they are and he finally finds a reference to that. He agrees to leave her on her current drugs and let me take it up with her medical team tomorrow. He is very nice and tells me how Elizabeth is doing. She is excited to be back because she will get to see me more.

I'm going to take a hot bath and read my murder mystery and eat ice cream and pet a cat. And then I'm going to go to bed. That's the best plan I can come up with at the moment. I'll think about it tomorrow.

hope of things unseen

I first saw the painting The Disciples Peter and John Running to the Sepulchre on the Morning of the Resurrection in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris many years ago. The painting has a very modern feel to it, but in fact it was painted in 1898 by the Swiss landscape artist Eugène Burnand. The Musée d'Orsay has an overwhelming number of impressionist pieces, housed in an old train station. I drifted through the light-filled space, leisurely drinking in my fill of Renoir, Degas, Monet, and Van Gogh, all favorites of mine, glorying in the joy of so much wonderful art that I'd seen up to this point only in books. Then I came to this unfamiliar painting and it stopped me cold. I stood for several minutes and just stared.

You know the story. After the dark days before, the sun is rising and John and Peter rush to the tomb. They have heard Mary's report of the stone being rolled away and, except for the linen clothes, only emptiness waiting within. It's easy to tell who is who: John the mystic, ethereal in his white robe, has his hands clasped as in supplication as he runs ahead. Peter, the craggy fisherman, looks as if he's been on a three day drunk. He has, of course, but it's a binge of bitterness, self-castigation, and grief rather than alcohol. What they have in common is the hope and shock that permeates every part of their being, that propels them in spite of their exhaustion and fear to race each other, that wonders what they will find there . . . . .

Hope is often indistinguishably mingled with fear; when life is satisfactory, there are only superficial things to hope for: a new car, a sunny day, a raise, pot roast for supper. It's when things are the darkest that hope is most needed; that's all that's left. Is it even possible to live without hope?

When Elizabeth was ten, we went to a regularly scheduled psychiatrist appointment. For some reason, she would not cooperate that day and hid under a chair. Dr. B tried to coax her out, but nothing worked. Finally she stood up and said, "There are children for whom there is no hope and I think you have one." Then she left the room, leaving Elizabeth and me staring at each other, her from under the chair, me standing in the middle of the room. I held it together until later of course, because that is what you do when you have a child with severe anxiety. No hope? I changed psychiatrists, but the damage had been done. No hope? What do you do with that?

I have a number of friends with mentally ill children and one day I ran into one at the mall. "Linda," she said, "I keep having this dream of holding D. and walking into the ocean and not stopping." Tears filled both our eyes. I could only nod because I know that dream all too well. It's the dream you have when you have no hope. No hope? That closes all paths but one.

Elizabeth has been hospitalized for three months now. She is fragile and falls apart easily. SHE has hope; she talks regularly about what we will do when she comes home. "You can't come home until you can do it safely," I remind her. "I know," she says. "I KNOW I can do it." Twenty minutes later, she falls apart over my leaving or having to take a bath or a perceived slight from another patient, and burly security officers descend once again. I see the signs of fatigue on the part of her doctors and nurses. They look away when I ask questions and their responses are shorter than they were. They spend more time justifying their actions. I have seen this before. It's what happens before someone once again gives up, when they once again stop hoping, once again taking my hope with them.

This weekend, Easter weekend, I visited on the Saturday. The regular docs had the weekend off and a Jewish doctor filled in for them. He's on the faculty at Bowman Gray and hadn't seen her before. While he was making rounds, she had a tantrum and he got to see her in her full glory. I came in shortly after and he asked to see me. "I'm wondering," he said, and proceeded to go down a different path than we've gone down before. "I don't normally work with children, but with violent adults. Still, there are some things in common." He proposed a new drug, part of a class that hasn't been tried, a cheap generic with few side effects which can be added to her existing meds. He called the attending at home and got his approval. "Let's try it," I said. I told him the story of Dr. B. He was shocked. "Oh no," he said. "Of course there is hope."

At the Easter Vigil that night, I sit in the dark and cry. Bishop Curry preaches, a good thing, because when he talks, I can almost believe in this risen lord stuff. When he talks, I can almost have hope. He reminds us of the power of baptism, and I remember that it's Elizabeth's and Claire's baptismal anniversary. "We bind onto ourselves today the strong name of the Trinity," we used to sing over their lamb cake lit with one of their baptismal candles. The lights come on and the roar of the Easter shout fills the room. Darkness is defeated. Of course there is hope. I wipe away my tears and ring bells with the rest.

I wonder what John and Peter felt when they reached the empty tomb. In John 20 we're told they went away to their own home. This empty tomb, this symbol of hope and resurrection to us, must have seemed like just another defeat among so many. I wonder what they were hoping for? They could not have imagined what would happen next. They could not have hoped for the resurrection.

What do I hope for? I hope that Elizabeth, a child of God created in God's image, will fulfill the promise of her baptism. I hope she will be whole and happy and faithful and useful. I hope that this next drug will be the one that works, and if not this one, then the next or the next or the next. I hope for more doctors who look at her and are intrigued rather than defeated. I hope for things I can not yet imagine.

Minister Charles L. Allen says, "When you say a situation or a person is hopeless, you're slamming the door in the face of God." I hope I remember that.

Of course there is hope.

wonderful pest

It's hard to remember when Bailey wasn't a part of Holy Family. First, he belonged to a neighbor, but he obviously wanted to become an Episcopalian, because he escaped to our not-so-welcoming arms whenever he could. He even ripped out his people's screen porch so he could join us in worship. Far too many times, I crawled around the altar during the 8:00 am service, trying to get Bailey out and back home. At Elizabeth's adoption party, I put him out of the undercroft 17 times. There is no telling how many times others did; the persistent widow had nothing on this guy.

Finally we all just gave up. His people appeared one day with his paperwork, telling us they were moving to Colorado and were afraid Bailey would walk, fly or hitchhike back to us in Chapel Hill. Cindy, our daycare director, became the keeper of the papers and the maker of vet appointments. I became the surreptitious collector of money for food and vet care. There was no shortage of donations.

Bailey pulled his weight. He attended every meeting, working the room while purring loudly, and made an appearance at every service, although he generally cut out during the sermons. He attended confirmation classes, but found the theology pedantic, so he slept through most of them. He took his naps with the children in the daycare and never bit one, even when he should have. When the health inspector came, he at first thought Bailey was a stuffed animal, until he stood and stretched, yawning in that slow, huge way that only cats do. Although the inspector docked the day care points, it was easier just to take the hit than to try to keep Bailey locked in my office for the day, something we tried a few times. Bailey was not pleased.

He kept the premises rat-free and kept us company when we had to work at night. He greeted Larry, the first day care worker on the premises, every morning. He was so much a part of us that when we took pictures for a parish directory, Bailey showed up, even though he hadn't gotten a reminder postcard. He marched stately up to the photographer, his tail high in the air, and jumped up on the chair. The photographer looked at us. "What should I do?" he asked. "He wants his picture taken," we said. "Take it." Bailey's picture appeared in that parish directory and thereafter he got reminder cards when it was picture time.

Bailey had his detractors; those who were allergic to cats, those who didn't like cats, those who didn't think cats should be drinking the holy water, there were many that felt he didn't belong there. He often slept in people's cars, scaring the bejeebers out of them when he jumped on their shoulder as they were driving away. But for every one of those, there were five others who slipped me money for Bailey's food or who showed up with a case of Fancy Feast. And Bailey had an important pastoral role. Whether it was comforting a crying daycare child or striding into a tense meeting, he did his part to keep the peace both within and among his parishioners.

At no time was this more apparent than on 9/11. We were in the library for EFM that morning when the horrible news came. Our administrator's husband was in New York, at a meeting planned for the World Trade Center. A member of the group had a son who was flying that day. As we sat watching the television in horror and fear, Bailey moved from lap to lap as we stroked him absently. He showed up to help plan the service for the evening. And he attended and sat with those who needed it. Man, did we ever need him.

One summer, we realized that Bailey hadn't been seen for several days. The staff started making inquiries, but to no avail. Larry, Cindy and I divided up animal shelters and checked them daily. Weeks went by, but we wouldn't give up. We just couldn't visualize Holy Family without Bailey. Shelter staff looked at me pityingly on my daily visits, but I explained that a cat who drank holy water regularly had to have a few more lives left. During my visits to the Orange County shelter, I fell in love with a little tortie, which I finally adopted. The next day, three months after Bailey left, Larry called me at 7:00 am. "Guess who was waiting for me this morning?" he asked. Somehow I wasn't surprised. He was much lighter but otherwise in fine condition. We postulated that he had escaped a rainy Sunday in someone's car, which then drove him to Durham or Apex or Carrboro. It had taken him that long to find his way back to us, but of course he did.

The next phone call wasn't so happy. It was about a year later when our priest called to tell me that Bailey had been hit by a car. Cindy took him to the vet, but his injuries were too serious and he was put to sleep. Larry had found him waiting outside the daycare when he arrived that morning. Injured though he was, he came back to us one more time.

He rests, I hope in peace, in the church garden. There were those who wanted to get another cat, but I explained that you don't choose a church cat, they choose you. We were honored for a time to have Bailey in our communal lives and I look forward to seeing him again at the heavenly banquet. And I don't want to hear any silliness about cats not making it to the Kingdom. This cat drank holy water.

Best cat ever