Tag: solace

Winter Solstice fell on a Friday.  A church bell, its percussive cut-off left to linger to its unmuffled end, pealed in remembrance of twenty children and six educators who were alive and beginning their elementary school day just a week ago.

Twenty-six knells.

When the bell began to ring it was snow-free but stormy, winds so high that a “wind warning” endured through early afternoon.  (No more practical guidance was dispensed to we travellers than has been available when a “terrorism alert” turns from sunny yellow to clementine.)

Then, as if there had been a sudden change of mind in the heavens, the sky became  brilliantly lit not long before sundown.  It remained that way–fully out of darkness (not merely halfway, as Dr. Who’s view of Christmas might have it) for the rest of daylight on a solstice far more than halfway to black.

At the time I happened to be surrounded by places of healing, filled with people like my husband Jim, who spend years of intense and difficult training in order to dedicate their  lives to professional service.

These are the kinds of skilled, compassionate people who stood at the ready at Connecticut hospitals last week, awaiting patients in fleets of ambulances which did not come.   Continue reading “Seeking Solstice Solace”