RUMORS OF OUR DEATH HAVE BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED

I just returned from a visit to my father after he was hospitalized with heart failure. I thought it would be my last. Arthur Ranger Curran’s a hearty, hardy guy. Until his ninetieth birthday, the man was walking four miles a day, studying statistics and French for a mental jog, and had every radio in the house tuned to world events.

Last week, he barely had the strength to swallow from a straw. If we’d not sprung him from the bed-rest the hospital prescribed, I have no doubt we’d be planning memorials right now. Instead, after a few days of being back in his house, sleeping next to his bride of 68 years, and being free to move about (albeit on a walker) I found myself saying to him, “Well, Dad, I guess the rumors of your death have been greatly exaggerated.”

While I was with him, I was deaf to the chatter of emails, feckless to my calendar and focused on the smallest things. Now that I’m home and catching up with bills and deadlines, I stumble upon the most delicately-worded facebook messages asking how I am. I ramble on about what it is that’s occupying me, my dad, my daughter, my refinancing, my mischievous dog.

It didn’t quite occur to me that what my correspondents would really like to know is whether I’m OKAY. As in: Last we heard, you were treated for cancer. So, are you OKAY?

Yes, lovely people, I appear to be very much okay. Better than that. I won’t test the Evil Eye by saying I’m cured. However, the odds are very much in my favor. I see my favorite surgeon every month and he says I’m great. I believe him. Sort of. I know nothing in this world is guaranteed, but when I stay up late worrying, it’s not about throat cancer.

It’s about the surprises that visit when we least expect them.

In the same week Dad collapsed, my sister-in-law was hospitalized with meningitis and my nephew and his girlfriend narrowly escaped the fire that torched their Atlanta house.

A photo of the fire seconds after they got out.

Now they’re all steadily recovering but Crikey! In the same moment that you’re thanking God for what didn’t happen, you’re hit square in the face with the recognition that s*&t happens. And not just to other people! Katy, bar the door!

The next morning

The trouble is, it’s never just s*&;t. It’s always a mixed bag of ‘Things got pretty scary,’ and “Hey weren’t we lucky?” In the same month all these near-disasters happened, I got a visit from dear Irish friends, the news that my novel Everyone She Loved would be translated into German, an unexpected royalty check and a thousand other blessings.

Even as I was composing this, my dear friend Julz called to say her cancer doc had just pronounced her ‘home free.’

Given my odd fascination with how life serves up catastrophe with sacred moments too lovely to express, I’ve been drawn to stories that do just that. The novels I list below have lifted me up even while they took me places no one would voluntarily vacation. What they’ve done for me, and I hope they will for you, is to remind me of the simple privilege of ordinary life, of peace, of food, of shelter and of freedom from persecution. These are things we all take for granted as we grumble about the trimmings of life in this beautiful country of ours, a place that, for all its divisions and flaws, provides us with so much treasure, if only we could pause for a second and take notice.

Fabulous and Unforgettable Books

 Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Backseat Saints by Joshilyn Jackson

The Gendarme by Mark Mustian

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows













As a recent translation of the Rule of St. Benedict goes:
The first rule is simply this:

Live this life and do whatever is done in a spirit of Thanksgiving.
Abandon attempts to achieve security, they are futile,
give up the search for wealth, it is demeaning,
quit the search for salvation, it is selfish,
and come to comfortable rest in the certainty
that those who participate in this life with an
attitude of Thanksgiving will receive its full promise.

Always We Begin Again by John McQuiston II