One night a few months ago, my 8-year-old son was very sick in bed. He lay there moaning and crying because of terrible pain in his ears. While my wife was on the phone attempting to get hold of a doctor, I did what I could to comfort him. We tried the usual things, but nothing worked. The choices s

For almost five years now (since I was a young 74), I have entertained a friend who entered my life unexpectedly: daily physical pain. I am a diabetic, which is not painful in itself, but I eventually developed a condition known as neuropathy. In my case it causes continual pain in the bottom of my

Years ago - before I had children - I spent several hours one evening on a friend’s deck in the Adirondacks sitting perfectly still, watching night come. My purpose was to be the one person on earth that day to witness the exact moment when night definitively arrived at one place, when darknes

It is often said that war brings out the best and the worst in people. This is profoundly true. Men who in civilian life would not have crossed the street to help a stranger often fall in the effort to help near strangers. There are many good things to be remembered.

I hurriedly vest for Mass, fingers fumbling over the unfamiliar cincture. I pick up the books of hymns and prayers and scurry out of the sacristy, moving through the ancient stone church and the outer chapel. Pausing to genuflect before the Blessed Sacrament at a side altar to Our Lady, I shiver eve

Though she first introduced me to intercontinental travel, Auntie Lee does not venture very far anymore. Mostly she is pushed in her wheelchair from bed to dining room, from recreation - movies, sing-alongs, the Rosary - to her usual post across from the nursing station at Abbott Terrace, a long-ter