The lovely Madelyn Simone enjoys coming to spend the night at Pop-Pop’s house about once a month. Upon her arrival, she makes her habitual rounds: watching the “baby” movie (the newborn video of our son Dan), stacking the Matryoshka dolls, and shining her Pop-Pop’s flashlight on the ceiling with much vigor.

She also likes to dig through the box of bracelets on my dresser, trying on the various baubles held within. One bracelet was a gift from a dear friend, who gathered together small pictures of the women in my life, including my mother, my sister, my daughter-in-law, and special friends. I wore that bracelet regularly, holding those precious women close to my heart through the death of my dad, the uprooting of our family from Canton, and even my dissertation defense. At some point it got consigned to the jewelry box, but those women remain dear to me in ways I will never forget. On each visit, Madelyn and I look at their faces together, naming them and telling a story or two about who they are. I do so with the prayer that she will have such precious and powerful women in her life some day.

Madelyn’s favorite, however, is the charm bracelet I wore as a young teen-ager. She invariably asks me, “What’s this, Nana? Why do you have a broken football on your bracelet?” Yes, Madelyn, the football broke, and since it was soldered on to my bracelet, I can’t get it off.

Just as pedal-pushers have been reborn into capris, so too has the charm bracelet survived a number of reincarnations. They were popular during the reign of Queen Victoria, and when her dear Prince Albert died, she even had “mourning charms” created, including lockets of his hair and miniature pictures of her beloved. 

In the 1940’s, charm bracelets went through a gumball phase, as children wore tiny plastic charms collected from gumball machines and candy boxes. These charms were worn on bracelets and dog tag chains, and included cartoon figures such as Betty Boop, Little Orphan Annie, and Mickey Mouse. And in recent years, many women cherish their Pandora bracelets, with the popular hearts, flowers, and cupcakes encircling their wrists.

In the late 60s, I received my own sterling silver bracelet, and would often find a tiny charm nestled in a gift box at Christmas or a birthday. As jewelry designer Tracey Zabar describes, that charm bracelet became a “history on the wrist.” Its jingling charms tell the story of those teen years, of a trip to Massachusetts to celebrate my cousin’s wedding, a weekend spent at Alleghany State Park, and my alma mater, Tonawanda High School.

These charms have withstood the test of time, as I’m still a smitten football fan, and while I traded the woodwind timbre of the flute for the brass horn of the Salvation Army, music still brings me great joy. The miniature grand piano charm is tarnished, but my love for its keys has not dulled, as I take pleasure in the baby grand nestled in the curve of our living room window.

An additional charm bears the image of praying hands, and from the miniscule print on the reverse, I can still make out the rhythm of Reinhold Neibuhr’s insightful words: “God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.” Little did I know then how often those words would be prayed over the course of my life.

From the perspective of forty-plus years, my charm bracelet is a visual reminder that much of our character is formed in our childhood years. Who I was then, although molded and shaped by the connecting years, carried the same zest for life, the same love of music, and the same foundations of faith that continue to form me today. Pierce Harris tells us, “Memory is a child walking along the seashore. You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things.” Or what memories will be awakened as a granddaughter reaches into a jewelry box.

To Remember

It’s been a week of mystery on the world stage, as a plane carrying 239 passengers disappeared literally into mid-air. As of Thursday, when I completed this column, no trace of the plane, its black box, or its passengers has been found. Did it veer off course, did it attempt to turn back, or did its pilot actually “land” on the water and the plane sink to the floor of the South China Sea? No one knows.

A bit closer to home, a mummified body, believed to be that of Pia Farrenkopf, was found in the garage of her Pontiac, Michigan home. As best as can be determined, she has been dead since 2008. Since she had traveled quite a bit, neighbors thought perhaps she had gone to Germany, and kept the grass cut at her home, while her bills were automatically paid from her checking account until it ran dry. That’s what ultimately brought authorities to her foreclosed home, where they made the unexpected discovery of Ms. Farrenkopf.

A third story, aptly titled “Grave Science,” told of the work of JPAC, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command. This military operation identifies the remains of American military personnel found in sites around the world. According to reporters Kelly McEvers and Megan McCloskey, “More than 83,000 people are classified as missing in action or prisoners of war from World War II and the Vietnam and Korean conflicts. The Pentagon deems 45,000 of those ‘recoverable.’ JPAC is charged with finding and identifying them.” In 2013, the remains of 60 people were identified, at the cost of one hundred million dollars. Let me write out the zeroes: $1,000,000,000.00. That’s how much per successful identification? You do the math, as I couldn’t figure out how to put the line over the repeating 6’s.

Now before you question my patriotism or concern for our deceased veterans, I wore a Viet Nam era POW bracelet until it broke in two, and its pieces still sit in my jewelry box. Major John Held encircled my adolescent wrist, and I prayed for his return, for his family, and for those still at war. And as I’ve watch the POW-MIA flag flying from our neighbor’s flagpole, I’m  grateful that we still remember. But how much is enough?

These juxtaposed stories, connected as they are by the specter of death, raise questions that are tough to wrestle with. What is the value of life? Of identifying remains? When do we move on? How do we seek – and find – closure? How will we be remembered? How do we live in a way that someone will miss us when we’re gone? Writer Annie Dillard describes our existential probing like this: “We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here.  Then we can at least wail the right questions into the swaddling band of darkness.”

Author Frederick Buechner provides us with additional perspective on this, as he writes of the need “to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.”

Even though seemingly forgotten in death as in life, we remember Pia and her kindred sisters and brothers in the anonymity of their lives and deaths.

Even when the sky over Malaysia is vacant, and the whole world asks, “Where is Malaysia Airlines Flight 370,” the cell phone will keep ringing, as those who have loved will hope against hope, remembering.

And even when the telegram grows brittle and the broken POW bracelet gathers dust, we pause to remember fathers and sons, brothers and sisters who died alone, far from home.

As Isabel Allende explained in Eva Luna, “There is no death, daughter. People die only when we forget them. If you can remember me, I will be with you always.”

 

Remembering . . .

Larry and I were privileged to serve with the Salvation Army in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attack of 9-11.  Returning to our room each night, I submitted a column to the Canton Repository, helping the folks at home to connect with the devastation and hope in New York.  The following was my first submission (10-3-01).  Seems like yesterday . . .

The images of our first day in New York post 9-11 both assaulted and comforted us.  The assaulting images hit as we arrived in New York City late Sunday night, with our first sight a grave reminder of September 11.  That grand old lady of the city, the Empire State Building, stood alone, abandoned by her bookend rivals.

The Salvation Army headquarters on 14^th Street was our destination, with a brief orientation as to what we would be expected to do.  Our first day included stops at the medical examiner’s office; Worth Street, the one-stop social service office for displaced workers, families and airline employees; and Ground Zero.

Heading downtown, we could see the dust and smoke as we approached the site and passed through the checkpoints staffed by police and military.  The access to “the zone” was very limited, but our Salvation Army credentials got us through, and we worked with a team to evaluate the needs of the feeding sites and to plan a reorganization and cleanup effort that lasted until midnight.

Even the constant television coverage since the attack had not prepared me for the totality of the devastation.  Beyond the tangled mass of rubble that had once proudly graced the sky, the blocks surrounding the World Trade Center site were bombed out, an empty Borders store staring at me from the destruction.

Yet amid the horror, there were images of hope.  Neighborhood fire stations, with their altars of flowers and pictures.  Incredible stories of the workers.  Letters from children from all over the world hanging from Salvation Army and Red Cross canteens.  The man who drove to Manhattan from New Jersey in a rented truck with snack bags packed by the children in his school, each one with a crayoned message of hope for those who serve. 

If the terrorists managed to destroy the buildings on West Street in lower Manhattan, it is obvious that they were unable to destroy the spirit of the people of New York – or of America.