When the Heart Has Healed Again: A Memoir of Tragedy and Forgiveness by Julie White

Six-twenty A. M. The phone at my bedside rings. I answer. It was Thursday, July 14, 1976, nine years and three days ago today. Yet I remember that morning, what was said and all that I thought, as clearly as I remember yesterday.

"Julie."

"Yes."

"This is Betty at the resort. There’s been a fire. Alex, Bridey, and Byron are dead."

Just like that, like a bomb. My brother-in-law, niece, and nephew were dead. I remember the instantaneous fear. Where was my sister?

"Where’s Debbie? What about Debbie? Is she alive?"

"Yes, she’s alive." I remember thanking God that she was not dead, and then I remember the dread and fear. I vacillated from shock to complete lucidity. I asked if she’d been burned.

"I think so," Betty answered. "How badly?" "I don’t know."

I put down the phone, hesitating, wanting to deny. While getting dressed, I kept muttering, "Oh, God, oh, God, my sister didn’t die." I ran the three blocks to the hospital, down the street, across one block further, and then up the hill.

All I could think of was Bridey: "Aunt Dewey, tell me a story. Tell me about Manny Panny, Goodie-Goodie-Gum-Drops and her old man, too. I could certainly roll away from you. Dance with me, Auntie Dewey, and tell me a story." At the front door she would jump into my arms. "Auntie Dewey’s here. Auntie Dewey’s here."

I walked into the emergency room; nurses were all around her bed. Debbie sat there so frail and weak, her burned hands cupped in front of her. He nostrils were black with smoke, and her hair was singed. I remember wanting to comfort her. I went to be near her, but I couldn’t say anything. Debbie’s children and husband had been killed. What could I do or say?

I’ll never forget Debbie’s looking at me; she was in pain and far away. She knew I was with her; she touched my hand. I bent down close to her head. She wanted to speak.

"Debbie, what is it? What is it?" I asked. I remember that I couldn’t hear. "What?"

She leaned forward and whispered in my ear. "The cup is broken."

"The cup is broken" was all she said.

In the spring, far from the shores where I grew up, I sometimes dive along coral reefs at night. There are no city lights along the shores. It is other lights that shine on these reefs at night. Here the sea’s surface glimmers silver with the clear bright light of a trillion stars. It is here that I know only peace and joy and wonder…

I am not naïve. I know what I have seen. But my anguishing cannot last. It is not a way of life. And I know that I have learned other lessons….

As I turn to leave the rocks, the pools, the holes and hollows, and the creatures that I so often watched along this shore, I know that what I have learned cannot be counted or measured or weighed; but it can be known. Compassion, empathy, understanding, and love are real as any life for me now. They live in me now. I know I have lost; I know I have learned; and I know how much I care. I turn once again to look at the horizon and then make my way back home.

Quality Paperback. ISBN: 0-937897-87-6 Dimensions in inches: 0.30 x 8.0 x 6.0 9 original b/w photographs by photographer Ken Appelt. $9.00

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