A light in the darkness

A call came in to the dean of students office. I was sent to tell a student to go home immediately; her mother was dying. I found her in an art history class. The room was darkened for slides of paintings to be projected onto a screen. Into hallway came a young woman I had never met. Her first words were, “Is my mother all right?” I had to say no. No, she is not all right. You need to go home. We left the building and she sat down on the front steps. “Why?’ she asked me. “Why did this happen?” Her mother’s death was not a surprise. She had been sick. The student knew this was coming sometime, but sometime had become today.

I had no answers for her. “I don’t know; I just don’t know. I am so sorry.” She was going to take the bus home to Washington. I was appalled because there was one layover, and this trip that should have taken less than three hours by car was going to take about six, as I remember. I offered to find her a ride, but she said no. It would give her time to think. She was used to it, she said. I walked her to her dorm, and off she went to pack. When she returned to school, I wrote her from time to time. She never came in to my office to see me, but she said she was doing okay. She said she talked all the time to her mother who had died.

A new school year came. In November I was diagnosed with breast cancer and had surgery. I was frightened. I tried to think my way out of my fear. I listened to friends. I heard from clergy. People sent me cards and flowers. The darkness did not lift.

One day I got a Christmas card. I was sitting at my kitchen table. It was a cheap card. The note was in pencil, something I would have taken my children to task for. Use a pen! It said something like, “I am so sorry about your illness, but I have talked to my mother about you. You are going to be okay!” And it was signed by this young woman whose mother had died.

I burst into tears. I suddenly and irrationally felt that she was right. I was a little embarrassed to tell people. One I told worried that I was lapsing into “magical thinking,” which is supposed to be a bad thing to do. I knew that by the standards of good science and good psychology and even good theology, this message did not pass muster. But I couldn’t help it. It was a turning point. It lit up my darkness. I was grateful for it. I didn’t care where it came from or under what conditions. I didn’t care that it was written in pencil. I didn’t care that in so many ways it seemed foolish.

In our little corner of the world in the Shenandoah Valley a darkness has descended. A freakish accident has taken the life of a beautiful young girl. At least two families are dealing with the worst nightmare imaginable, and hundreds of others are touched as well.

Huge layoffs are pending. So many of the usual sources of stability and hope that we depend upon are simply gone. Where on earth will we find even a little peace and hope? Who’s got a candle we can light to see in this thick fog of sorrow?

I don’t know. I simply don’t know. We will do the best we know how. We will try, we have to try, but all our striving may not help much. Somehow, though, I think there will be some kid with a pencil in her hand who may be the one to make the difference. Oh, she won’t be able to fix our finances or reverse history so terrifying accidents didn’t happen after all. She won’t be able to make the sun shine as if it were midday when actually it is the middle of the night. But she will be the one with the little candle and a pack of matches to bring enough light and warmth to get us by the worst of it. I am going to be on the lookout for her.

Patricia Hunt, of Staunton, is a chaplain at Mary Baldwin College.