The 21^st Century Magazine,
at South Florida's www.miami-dade-online.com.

Grieving for a person, place or thing is a process. The stages Ms. Ross has given to us rarely change from one person to another, one form of loss to another. Loss is loss. Be it the loss of a limb(s), a spouse, a business, a child, a career, a home, etc., it still remains something that one "ceases to have." Sometimes the loss is due to poor planning on one's part, other times it is just an event that cannot be rationalized and dissected. It just happened.

The first story came to me by my dear friend Kathleen. It is a short story entitled, "Marbles." I equate the story with loss of time. Next to individuals we are either related to or we have befriended, time is perhaps the most precious thing we own every day of our lives.

Since reading the piece, I have been tempted to go into my hutch in the parlor and take out the old milk jar that contains cats eyes marbles, count out the amount of Saturday's I think I have left in this world and then place them back in the jar. I would place the jar near my computer where I spend a lot of time writing and working with my web sites. Notice I write, I would, because I haven't yet. I can't seem to bring myself to look at the reality of time and how I tend to waste my Saturday's. If I had to consciously look at the marbles leaving the jar, then I would have to also become conscious of the clock that is ticking and my mortality. Marbles and mortality . . . that is what it would all come down to. I still think it is a good idea as a reminder to use our time wisely, but for now I will just mentally think about time.

Most of the selections contained in this volume of Spiritual Treasures will cause the reader to do some serious reflecting and soul searching. Some may make you cry. "Cleansing tears," I call those little drops. Many of the
pieces will be good reading and in many cases a "lesson" will not be learned as we have all learned some valuable lessons in our lives and have learned them well! We all make different choices in life and some of us do not have to learn the same hard lessons over and over again. We learn the first time.

One of the stories you will read centers on a most incredible man. By the time he was in his mid-fifties, due to arteriosclerosis, he had lost both of his legs up to his thigh region. He was a father of three sons and a husband to his wife Anna. He never stopped giving to others when most people would have thought at first glance he had nothing left to offer. As he wheeled himself down the hallways of the local hospital and despite his disability, he changed lives one at a time by being a source of encouragement and hope to other amputees. He was a living, breathing example of not giving up.

Other losses that will be addressed are the loss of a home, as in the case of the story about the families in Tarboro, North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd September 1999. I will share the loss I felt after I closed the doors to my angel shop business. I know there are many readers who have experienced that unique loss. A business is something that is created and recreated every day of its existence. The other losses that will be addressed in the form of a short story, poem, and essay will be loss in the form of relationship, death, missed opportunity, career, independence, identity, career and faith in God.

Although these are the difficult things in life to speak of, they are important. My hope is to that each selection and the insights that follow will give the reader an opportunity to reflect on the concept of loss. The desired outcome because reading for pleasure, will be for a readers to gain a better understanding of the losses experienced by your neighbors, your friends and family . . . and yourself.

After I closed my angel shop, I was waiting to begin some kind of work. I didn't know what it would be. I didn't know how to dispose of the contents of the shop so they were placed in boxes upon boxes all over my home. I used to drive around town for the next "perfect" location . . . one in which I would thrive and survive. It costs money to begin again and I was already in a hole as far as that went. Not a deep hole, but one that could sufficiently bury a person without difficulty. Joe had suffered other financial losses in his life and had been a major part of helping me design and set up the angel shop.

So, on September afternoon, we found ourselves sitting in the family room in front of the stone fireplace knowing that we should be elsewhere.. . out working "real" jobs. He was forty-nine and I was forty-eight. We were trying desperately not to fall apart but we were both hitting an emotional low. It would have been easy to point fingers at each other and some days we did, but this particular afternoon, we just talked about the way things had been and how they now were and we both agreed that we didn't know the new direction. We prayed about it. But we both knew prayers are answered in God's timing because He knows all, feels all and sees all, so that is all we had left to do that afternoon . . . give over our concerns to the Almighty.

We decided to have a Christmas open house in my garage. I took money I didn't really have in the hopes of having non-stop business to help us out of the hole. He decorated the garage like a little mini Angels Amongst Us. It was nostalgic and brought with it, sadness. "Why couldn't I have the shop again?" I sent out over 100 post cards and made some calls. I decided to offer mulling spice apple juice and a homemade cake or cookie everyday and the hours would be from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. through the week.

I made all these preparations during a most difficult time in American History. The country was literally consumed about chads and uncounted votes. We were experiencing an election nightmare stemming from the close results of the November 2000 election for President. In just a few hours time during the wee hours of November 8th, two men had been declared our President. Further down the road, then Vice President Gore conceded. So, needless to say, the idea about the little shop as an open house didn't work.

In this period of time I was bombarded with calls on a daily basis from creditors . . . personal and business. I began to know many of the creditors on a first name basis. The mortgage company was the very worse. On one day, I received a phone call, a home visit and a piece of mail !. . . all requesting their payments that were past due. On another day the telephone rang, and it was a lady from the mortgage company. It seemed that this particular lady called me every day at approximately eight o'clock in the morning. During her phone call, this particular lady would mispronounce my name. She would begin by saying, "Is this Marion?"

I would politely correct her and say, "No, Mam, that is Miriam." Well one day, at the bottom of discouragement, the phone rang and this same woman, who I had told a thousand times before the correct pronunciation of my name, called and asked for "Marion." After all the harrassing calls I had received, I finally lost it. I raised my normally soft spoken voice one or two octaves and said, "Mam, if you can't pronounce my name after all the times you have spoken with me, please don't call me again!" and hung up. I felt pangs of guilt but I was beat.

The night before New Years Eve Celebration, the doorbell rang. As I opened the door, a lady I had never saw before was holding some papers in her hand and asked for "Miriam." I shook her hand as I introduced myself. She in turn handed me foreclosure papers for my home. She was a Christian lady who believed in the power of prayer but did this "job" to support her little daughter while going through college. Heh, it was a hard job but somebody had to do it! Believe it or not, we ended up praying together before she left. As I entered my home, I glanced inside the parlor
and saw them . . . the two pillows with the inscription, "Home is Where the Heart Is."

The days that followed were gut wrenching. I didn't know which way to turn . I loved my home. I called a realtor friend and we discussed the situation. She placed a "For Sale" sign on my front lawn. I didn't know where I was heading. All my life I had wanted a fireplace and a pool. I was beginning to feel like maybe I had just wanted too much. This home had both of those "wants". Each time the fireplace was lit in the winter months, I said a prayer thanking God. I did the same in the very hot summer months when I sat on the pools edge before jumping in. Joe and I would sometimes lie on floats and just hold hands as we let the water gently float us around the pool. I remained grateful for these gifts.

One evening after looking around at homes for sale something happened that I will never forget. I call it a "revelation." The emotion I experienced overtook me. It was one of gratitude. I only thought I was grateful before the business of foreclosure. The feeling came as I was sitting on the fireplace hearth. As I was gazing in the direction of the kitchen, it seemed to stretch for miles and miles. All of a sudden, what had seemed like something I was entitled to . . . something I guess I quite possibly was beginning to take for granted . . . at that moment in time I experienced a reverence for my home that I had never felt before. Later in the week, I was driving through the subdivision across from ours, and the same feeling once again overtook me. We live in a middle class neighborhood. All of a sudden, all of the homes looked grand! My own neighborhood took on a lovely look . . .one in which I became very appreciative of where I had been living the last three years and I was beyond thankful. I felt I had been blessed and it wasn't an entitlement at all, it had been a gift all along.
In the days and weeks that followed, I was able to work something out with the mortgage company. My home was saved! There would be no more calls, home visits or mail requesting outstanding payments. I was brought current. Yes, "Home IS Where the Heart Is." My friend Kathleen always said that if one were to look for the word survivor in the dictionary, my name would be next to the word. Yes, I know I would have "survived" had I had to move out and into something different but I didn't. I also felt grateful that I now had a choice to sell or not.

I learned many lessons from this experience. Probably the most valuable was to always maintain an attitude of gratitude. Don't take your dwelling place for granted. A hard time could come to any one of us. The other valuable lesson is to pay your home first. If you think for one moment that you can play catch up with mortgage payments, you are mistaken. A mortgage payment happens to be the most money that is sent out month. It adds up to the point where it becomes almost impossible to recover.

Miriam's Insight:

Some people might be astounded that I have shared something so difficult and humiliating. But I believe that sometimes a lesson learned can be a lesson shared and that is my only intent with presenting this real life drama. Don't think for a moment that as time passes, I will ever forget being on the edge of losing my home. It was not a "life" I was going to lose but more a way of life. After all, home is where you hang your hat. Just as a mother bird builds her nest, a human mother builds her home for her family.

My hope, reader, is that when you finish this story, you will take a drive around your neighborhood. Put a new pair of "glasses" on. Look at your town-home, apartment, mobile home or frame home with different lenses. Most of us in America live lives that we have been so accustomed to, that we can't imagine living any other way. Yes, "Home is Where the Heart Is," and a home can be recreated someplace else. I could have had a mover bring the old blue check couch along with my "Home is Where the Heart Is" pillows and I knew in my heart of hearts that I could have made any other house or townhouse, a "home." But I also knew that I wanted to try to keep what had become comfortable and a place of refuge for the last few years. Change seems to comes more frequent as one ages but it seems to be something that is resisted as well.

Writers Note: I am typing this manuscript in the home I didn't lose. Both Joe and I have found rewarding work. I have been fortunate to work two and a half days per week at a home health agency in which I teach home health aides how to give the best care possible to their patients. I spend the other days of the week writing and talking to church groups/women's groups. God continues to bless my life. I give Him the glory.

You can see more of Miriam's writings at is http://www.angelsamongstus.com and from there is a link to Spiritual Treasures, the series of books she is publishing.

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