Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Haines author Heather Lende's new book, "Find the Good: Unexpected Life Lessons from a Small-town Obituary Writer," published by Algonquin Books.
The Good News
Recently, I was asked to write a short essay describing one piece of wisdom to live by. I thought about it but did not have a brief, easy answer. I have made enough mistakes in my life to fill a whole bookshelf of dos and don'ts. My friend John works as an investigator in the public defender's office but is a poet. That is probably why he managed to distill all his fatherly hopes and dreams into two rules for his only child: "Be nice to the dog and don't do meth." His son turned out kind, clear-eyed, and he graduated from a good college.
I didn't have such pithy haiku wisdom at the ready. As an obituary writer, I lean toward elegiac couplets, and I have five children, which also adds a lot more variables. One size won't fit all of them. I took another tack. I pretended I was on my deathbed. (I'm 54, have survived being run over by a truck, and I had a headache, which I worried might be a brain tumor, so this was not such a big leap.) I imagined I'd already said goodbye to my husband, children, grandchildren and all the great-grandchildren I hadn't even met yet.
If indeed all the wisdom I had in my heart was to be summed up in final words and it was difficult to speak more than, say, three, what would I rasp before my soul flew up the chimney?
Find the good.
I surprised myself with this pretty great notion. Find the good. That's enough. That's plenty. I could leave my family with that.
My "beat" at our local newspaper is death, which is why I was asked to contribute the essay in the first place. Since I have written obituaries in Haines, Alaska (population about 2,000), the town where I live, for almost 20 years, the journal's editor assumed that I must know something about last words and good lives. (After all, it is wrong to speak ill of the dead.) Turns out that I do. It just took me a while to believe it, and even longer to say it out loud.
Writing obituaries is my way of transcending bad news. It has taught me the value of intentionally trying to find the good in people and situations, and that practice — and I do believe that finding the good can be practiced — has made my life more meaningful. I begin each obituary with a phone conversation, followed by a visit. For reasons I'm not sure of, but that one priest told me may be my calling, I am able to enter a grieving household, pull up a chair, sip some coffee, observe, listen, ask questions that (I hope) will ease the pain, take notes, and recognize the authentic lines when I hear them. Finding the good in this situation is often challenging; it is not always obvious. If I concentrate and am patient, though, it will reveal itself. This usually involves a lot of caffeine.
After an elder who has been housebound and incapacitated by a stroke for 25 years dies, I find time to sit on the sofa and look through family albums with his widow and admire how handsome he was in his World War II uniform and how happy they both looked on that beach vacation the year before he was stricken.
When 12-year-old twins lose their mother to cancer, I will quote their father praising them and tell how he plans to take them on a family drive across the country to see their grandparents.
And perhaps hardest of all, on the snowy winter morning when I meet with the parents and siblings of a young man who drank too much one night and shot himself, I write down how very much he had loved to swim in the lake in front of their summer cabin.
I understand why you may think that what I do is depressing, but compared to front-page news, most obituaries are downright inspirational. People lead all kinds of interesting and fulfilling lives, but they all end. My task is investigating the deeds, characteristics, occupations and commitments, all that he or she made of their "one wild and precious life," as poet Mary Oliver has called it. He may have died mumbling and confused in a nursing home, but in his day he was a fine actor, dashing host and bon vivant you would have loved playing charades with. She was a terrific big sister, the daughter who always baked cookies for her dad, and had planned on attending an art college before she was killed in a car wreck. No one wants the last hour of her life to eclipse the 17 years before it.
This may not be how the obituary writers at national newspapers work, but I'm dealing with people I know — my neighbors in the small, close-knit community where my husband owns a lumberyard, where we've raised our family, where I've sat on the school board, volunteer for hospice, and am a regular at the Morning Muscles exercise class. These relationships alter the way I write. Before I compose an obituary, I ask myself what truths will outlive the facts of this person's life, what needs to be in it but also what doesn't.
Tom Morphet, my editor at the Chilkat Valley News, often disagrees with my choices and asks me to dig a little deeper into the more difficult times in a person's life. He warns me against habitually walking on the sunny side of the street.
Still, I leaned close to the radio recently when I heard a story about a study that proved optimistic women live longer. I called Tom right up with the great news.
"At least you believe you will," he replied.
Tom and I were both pleased with the way the obituary of an old miner unfolded. His widow and daughters wanted to be sure I included the bad with the good. Rather than detour around his sinkholes, they told me to note that he had been a hard-drinking, hard-living, and some would even say hard-hearted, man who was transformed by a voice he heard in a blizzard while driving through a mountain pass, telling him to change his ways. He did, becoming a sober, tender, nursery-rhyme singer as soon as his first grandbaby gripped his finger. He taught all his grandchildren to sing along when he played the guitar. If grandchildren can help an old miner find the Lord on his rough road to Damascus, what am I going to discover thanks to mine?
I think about children first when bad things happen. How can we reaffirm that there's so much to applaud, even if they see nothing worthy of an ovation? And then I know. Whenever there is a tragedy, from the horrific school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, to when a fisherman dies after slipping off the deck here in Haines, awful events are followed by dozens and dozens of good deeds. It's not that misery loves company, exactly; rather, it's that suffering, in all its forms, and our response to it, binds us together across dinner tables, neighborhoods, towns and cities, and even time. Bad doings bring out the best in people.
Lives were saved at the finish line of the Boston Marathon because bystanders ran toward the explosions to help, rather than away from them. This is what Fred "Mr." Rogers's mother wanted him to notice when he was frightened by scary news. "Look for the helpers," she told him. "You will always find people helping." Mr. Rogers passed along that advice to millions of other children (and their parents) who were scared or angered by violence or tragedy, and it helped them, too.
Look for the EMTs wheeling the stretcher into the ambulance.
Look for the guys grilling hot dogs for hurricane refugees.
Look for the motorcycle club collecting canned goods for the food bank.
***
Sly Stone sang it loud. We are family. Our hearts are every bit as malleable as stardust turned to gold.
Loving one another polishes them.
"Where do stars come from?" my oldest granddaughter, Caroline, asked one winter evening when her parents were out and I was tucking her into bed. I told her, and she wondered why we only see them when the sun goes down. Darkness makes light visible, I explained, echoing Emerson. I didn't say that I imagine stars represent the people who used to live with us and aren't here anymore, and how perfect it is that they twinkle rather than glare hotly down on us, and maybe that's why they call the night sky the heavens. That would be even further over her head.
After Goldilocks ran off, we dimmed the bedside lamp and whispered about bears, what porridge is, and why walking into other people's houses when they are not home is a bad idea. Then Caroline pointed out the window again. "I love the stars," she said and stuttered the way she does because her thoughts are faster than her tongue. "I really, really, love, love stars, don't you Mi-Mimi?" (She gave me the new name to go with my new role.)
This afternoon I will finish that short essay on finding the good and then walk on the beach with my granddaughters. I'll look for heart-shaped rocks while little Caroline and toddling Lani and Ivy tumble behind me, dumping sand from one pail to the other, stomping in tide pools and climbing over driftwood. You probably wouldn't know the gray gravel is littered with hearts unless someone showed you, but once you do, you can find lots of them.
Sometimes, I set down these found hearts on top of logs for passers-by to notice. Other times I fill my pockets with them. I gave one to my husband on Valentine's Day. There are three on the kitchen windowsill, one on my dresser. Lani and Ivy are still too young to know what they are, but Caroline, at 3 ½, finds sand-smoothed baby-palm-sized hearts all over our house. I have taught her to watch for them on our beach walks, too. Some days there are more than others.
When Caroline asks if she can take my current favorite heart rock home, I say yes. I have faith that there are plenty more where it came from and that we will find them.
Make Your Own Good Weather
My husband is reading a book about a man adrift in a life raft, which got us talking about being stranded on a desert island. Chip asked, if I could only bring five things to eat on the island what would they be? I said, "Coffee, cream, raspberries, brown rice and red wine." Pretty soon we were choosing what device, which author and which musician we would need to have along to survive the ordeal emotionally. I said, "My iPhone, Mary Oliver (or maybe Emily Dickinson) and Bach."
"You never listen to classical music," Chip pointed out. "You like country songs."
"This would be an opportunity for growth," I said, thinking I should also expand my appreciation for poets beyond New England women. Then he inquired, in his logical left-brain way, how would I charge the phone?
I started to say that's not the point, this is just pretend; I mean, don't those smartphones have GPS tracking systems anyway? Instead, sounding snippier than I intended, I said, "Can I pack a little more and stay for six weeks?" It was almost 10 p.m. and I was tired. My days and nights have been revolving around a 17-month-old. Our granddaughter Lani is staying with us temporarily. Her parents are in Anchorage, 800 miles away, waiting for her little sister to arrive. Labor began a week ago, too early, at 33 weeks. It has stopped now, but doctors are doing their best to keep the baby inside the womb and Stoli near the neonatal intensive care unit for at least three more weeks. (You may remember there is no hospital in Haines.) It could be longer. Term is about 40 weeks.
Today, Lani's cousins, Ivy and Caroline, spent the afternoon with us. The floor is sticky and there's a playpen in the living room, a high chair in the kitchen, and I have sprained my ankle, again, stepping on a block.
The dog, Pearl, is having a grand time pulling the stuffing out of a plush moose.
It's also mid-August, one of the busiest months in Chip's busiest season. From April to September my husband's lumberyard earns our family's income for the year. So he can't help out as much as he'd like. If anyone dies right now, someone else may have to write the obituary. It's impossible to type with a child on my lap. I've tried.
But I am singing a lot. Lani thinks "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" is a fine tune. My plan is to distract her into forgetting her fear of water. She is filthy. We dug potatoes today. Lani cheered each time we found one and then she dropped it in our pail. She was so impressed by this ordinary wonder that I furtively reburied the spuds I found so she could pull them from the soil herself.
Afterward, when she refused to sit in the bathwater, even with the song, and I worried she'd slip and fall standing in the soapy tub, I stripped down and climbed in with her. To her surprise (and mine) it worked.
I had to dry and dress her first, so she wouldn't catch a cold, and before I knew how it happened, I found myself standing at the desk-turned-changing-table in the den-turned-nursery, naked. Thank God my life is not a reality TV show (even though my overarching guideline for grandchild care is, would I want their mothers to see this on videotape?). I have since hung a robe in that bathroom. I am caring for this baby with every fiber of my being, hoping that by keeping little Lani safe, healthy and content, the sun will shine on her mother and soon-to-be sister.
We open Lani's curtains each morning and note if it is fair or stormy, clear or foggy, if the tide is high or low. I tell her there is no such thing as bad weather, thanks to our rain gear and rubber boots. We listen for the roosters and Pearl's jingling collar tags. We never watch cartoons. We stare at the drifting clouds, the waves and the ants in the sand. We read stories. Lani won't sleep at night without "Goodnight Moon."
The story reminds me of an obituary I wrote for a 20-year-old who died of complications from congenital cerebral palsy. Jeremy "talked" with a voice output device, by dialing up digital recordings of sentiments he wished to express. The school superintendent recorded, "Hey, dude, step aside, I'm coming through" for him, and Jeremy replayed it as he guided his motorized wheelchair down the hallway between classes. "Despite his disabilities Jeremy had a terrific outlook on life. He was certainly a great example for all of us," Superintendent Byer told me.
When Jeremy died, his mother was so devastated that she could not speak to me. She requested that we correspond in writing for the obituary. I slipped my initial questions through her vestibule door. "How did he die?" I wrote. She wrote back, "The cat came and clawed at my bed. I woke up out of a dream in which I was reading 'Goodnight Moon' to Jeremy. Got up, stoked the woodstove, went to check on Jeremy. He had just departed."
Goodnight moon, and sun and stars.
My last note from Cherri about Jeremy arrived after the obituary had been published. She thanked me for exchanging notes the past week or so. "Heather, you are a part of this, too." She wrote "this" but I read "Life. Love. Loss. Us."
This is why I insist on finding the good: because I know some truths, which have been shared with me by people at their most vulnerable, when their hearts are so exposed and raw that it takes all their energy to compose a few lines and pass a note under a closed door into my waiting hand. As an obituary writer, it's my job to be part of Jeremy's death and to help his mother remember her son's life. But as a human being, I know that once hands are clasped, it doesn't matter who did the reaching and who responded. The comfort is in the pressure of palm on palm, of heart to heart.
The same day our daughter Sarah and her husband announced that the child who would be called Caroline was on the way, I met with the family of a teenager who had drowned while canoeing. It was Mother's Day. The parents had split up a few months earlier and the boy's mother was moving away. The father sat on the couch holding his new girlfriend's hand. The living room was full of boxes filled with clothes and household items and sacks for the Salvation Army and the dump. Photos of the son were scattered across a table and were being selected by his sister for a poster at the memorial service.
Each time I asked a question either the father answered and the mother contradicted him or the mother answered and the father said no, that wasn't correct. I don't think they even agreed on his date of birth. My questions became shorter, their answers briefer. Then it was quiet. I'd only been there about 20 minutes, but I stood up to leave, saying I was so sorry, again. That's when a silver-haired old woman came from the kitchen with mugs of tea and a plate of cookies and insisted I stay.
Everyone sipped and crunched. Then the old woman said the boy had played the piano. That he had a dog. And his parents nodded and wept, and remembered enough to fill an obituary. This is what I do.
***
Rocking Lani back to sleep at 2 a.m., I feel her heart beating against mine, recall my own babies' snuffling warmth, and am hit by a blue wave. The undertow of time is strong. I will never float this way again. Neither will any of us. It's not make-believe at all, is it?
So what do you plan to take on your one-way trip to the desert island? Who do you want rowing with you in that life raft? I know I don't want to be cast away with someone who talks all day long about the hazards of falling overboard, eating raw fish and skin cancer. Who asks, "Why didn't you pack sunscreen instead of red wine?" That will not be helpful. There is a reason the band continued to play as the Titanic sank, and I think it has been much maligned. I'm going down with the horn section swinging when my time is up. Also, I've decided that wherever I'm going from here, I'd rather not be in an open raft on an endless sea, even with plenty of coffee and raspberries.
Is it OK if I change the raft to my grandmother's dreamboat of a vintage Chrysler? There are wide bench seats, along with plenty of legroom and an AM radio with the baseball game on. I've already got the window rolled down and I'm pointing out all the good things I can see from here. And I'm not driving. Something bigger than me is steering this rig. Pearl is on the floor with her soft head in a grandchild's lap. I'm wedged in the back, too, amid the car seats, singing about the Big Rock Candy Mountain, changing "cigarette trees" to "cinnamon trees," and just one more gray hair away from ditching my baseball cap and backpack and buying a wide-brimmed red straw hat and matching alligator bag, which I will stock with dog and teething biscuits, bright shiny objects of distraction, curiously strong peppermints and a huge first-aid kit.
If I were to die tomorrow, would my grandchildren recall anything I've shown them about love and happiness? Would they even know what "find the good" means? They're too young for me to explain that yet, but I wonder if somewhere inside their brand-new silly-putty hearts there's an imprint of what I wish for them that will endure? Maybe that's a lot to ask.
It's plenty good that one loves the stars in the night sky. The other pulls open the curtains and greets the day as soon as she wakes, and a third has learned to unlatch the gate and run ahead of me to the ocean. Even if they won't recall one funny line from a story we read together or that warm egg we carried so carefully from the chicken coop to the kitchen, I bet they'll remember the fake front tooth that is our little secret. My sisters have never even seen me smile without it, but when I pop it out it makes all the grandbabies laugh, and though I wish I still had the original tooth, what's not good about that?
So I will wake early to work while the house is quiet. When baby Lani calls from her crib, I'll help her let the morning sun in, singing, "Oh, what a beautiful morning. Oh, what a beautiful day." I will change her diaper and find a dress her mother packed for her. "It's just you and me, kid," I'll say, as I pin back her curly black hair. (And to the dog: "Out of the diaper pail!")
Looking for the good may be part nature, but it can be nurtured. I believe that with my whole heart. I have learned it by writing obituaries, raising a family and living in a small town.
Find the good, praise the good, and do good, because you are still able to and because what moves your heart will remain long after you are gone and turn up in the most unexpected places, maybe even clutched tightly in the dirty little hand of a child running along an Alaskan beach. Everyone has heard of hearts turning to stone. But stones can turn into hearts, too. I know, because I've gratefully accepted those heart-shaped rocks, dusted them off, put them in my pocket, and carried them home.
Heather Lende is a Haines author whose previous books include "If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name," a New York Times best-seller, and "Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs." She writes a regular column in We Alaskans and has contributed essays and commentary to NPR, The New York Times and National Geographic Traveler. John Hagen is a Haines-based editorial and portrait photographer. Find his work at http://hagenphoto.photoshelter.com.