Here If You Need Me

I have just finished reading a fantastic book called, Here If You Need Me by Kate Braestrup. She's a chaplain with the Maine Game Warden Service, whose husband died shortly before she entered seminary to become a UU minister. I loved the book. Her story is a memoir, it is observations about her chaplaincy (she often is present when searches are going on for lost people in the Maine woods) , and also about life and death. I liked what she had to say about death and how honest she was about it. I'd like to share a great quote with you.

She's talking about how long a person should grieve:

"Go ahead. Arrange and rearrange the stones on top of your beloved's grave. Keep arranging those stones for as long as it hurts to do it, then stop, just before you really want to.

Put the last stone on and walk away.

Then, light your candles to the living. Say your prayers for the living. Give your flowers to the living. Leave the stones where they are, but take your heart with you. Your heart is not a stone. True love demands that, like a bride with her boquet, you toss your fragile glass heart into the waiting crowd of living hands and trust that they will catch it." page 196

Read this book!