Nora's bread bowl

Today we embark on a new phase in our journey of life without Nora. As of today we have lived longer without Nora than with her. Somehow it seems her life was much longer in many ways that the just over 7 months we have just waded through.

Maybe that is why I felt a strong desire to again use the little bowl we weighed her in. As I brought it from our bedroom, where it has been housed since her death, to the kitchen, where it had previously been kept and used, it felt like another one of those moments where the meaning packed in the action was hard to contain on an emotional level. It was Nora that was last cradled there.

Tonight I once again lined the bowl with cloth. But this time, I filled it with fresh homemade cornmeal rolls to serve to new students who are joining us, from various place in the United States, Afghanistan, Liberia, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Indonesia, this Spring for graduate studies in conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Somehow it just felt right! These students, many of whom I have been working with to come to the program since before Nora was even born, are symbols of hope for me. Working with them, while it opens myself up to learning about suffering in many places in our world, connects me to incredible people who are seeking to bring change where it is so badly needed. I am grateful for the way that my work enables my life to be woven in some small way to theirs.

As I sit with colleagues and hear of their work in war torn areas, I'm reminded again of yet another way in which I feel so thankful for the time Nora spent with us and the sacred, secure, precious, focused time we spent with Nora at the end of her life. As emails come in from Gaza and I read reflections from a mother, the sister of one of our former students, wondering if she was wrong to choose to have children when she has no way to protect them, I find points of connections and then realize once again the uniqueness of our journey and, in some ways, the privilege we experienced during it. This does not minimize the grief of losing a child, but I believe it lessens the trauma of it. Where would I be in my grief process if Nora died because she was denied access to medical care because of her ethnicity? If she died of malnutrition because we were not able to earn enough money to feed her what she needed to thrive? If we had been separated from her at the time of her death or if she died surrounded by hatred and anger and violence? I just don't know...