Author: Sharron Burnett

My brother, Michael, was always considered the brilliant sibling. From the time he was a child his mathematical acumen was stunning. None of us were surprised when he graduated at the top of his high school class. When he was accepted at Rice University, one of the premier colleges in the country, we knew that he was on his way to fulfilling his dreams. After earning both an undergraduate and Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering he was courted by many companies but ultimately chose work with a NASA contractor to fulfill his childhood imaginings of be part of humankind’s journey into space. 

It was through his work that Michael met Becky Liu, a beautiful engineer originally from Taiwan. He knew her name from meetings and had only briefly spoken with her, but he wanted to get to know her better. One weekend he decided to call her. The only problem is that their were many Liu’s in the Houston phone book, and none of them were called Becky. He began his quest by calling each number on the list and asking if he might speak with Becky. it was a daunting task but he was determined to find her. After many attempts he finally reached someone who said that she was visiting his home and he would get her. 

The rest was a beautiful story. The two of them clicked almost immediately. They were like a set of bookends that went together perfectly. Michael was somewhat shy and introverted while Becky was outgoing. Both were academically gifted but also enjoyed camping, hiking, running and being outdoors. They loved music and live performances of the symphony and opera company. It did not take long for them to fall in love. It was amazing how their two different cultures were so wonderfully enmeshed. 

Becky asked Maryellen and Catherine to be part of the wedding party. They were quite excited about the lovely yellow dresses that they would wear. Pat was going to be Michael’s best man and Mama was elated for her son. Michael asked Mike to be one of his groomsmen as well. Even though Mike looked like a skeleton because he was undergoing chemotherapy for a fungal disease, he eagerly donned the formal wear and was quite happy to be doing something besides getting stuck with needles and enduring hours of infusing drugs into his body. Best of all I would finally officially have a sister. In fact, I would even be able to share her siblings. It was a glorious moment for all of our family. 

The wedding was perfection, a meeting of east and west with great love. Becky looked like a princess and Michael was beside himself with happiness. The celebration at the reception was palpable. Becky was particularly respectful and effusive with Mama. The two of them got along immediately. After a honeymoon in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado the happy couple settled down in a sweet house near NASA and all of our lives changed in a positive direction.

Mike was soon declared cured of his fungal disease. There would be no more hospital visits or infusions. We were more than glad to get back to normal or what we hoped would be normal. Sadly Mama had another episode of severe depression with some paranoid psychosis. I had to face the possibility that her illness was chronic and that her fate would be to battle its symptoms over and over again. This time she was not nearly as bad as in the beginning but she did require regular visits for psychiatric care. Her doctor also requested that she stay in my home until she was better. He advised me to mostly allow her to rest, but to gradually increase her responsibilities so that she would ultimately be ready to return home and to work.

It was nice having her living with us for a time. She mostly enjoyed cooking and playing with her granddaughters. She liked her doctor aAnd promised to follow his prescriptions. Her recovery was fairly quick so we all celebrated at Thanksgiving with our growing family and the assurance that Mama now had a plan for keeping her illness at bay. It was also great to see Mike regaining his own glow of health and to know that he was no longer in danger. We had weathered more storms and felt confident that we had learned how to endure any challenge that might come our way. 

With the dawn of nineteen seventy eight I was more assured of myself than ever. I had conquered my fears and learned that I was capable of weathering any storm that might come my way. Better yet I realized once again how important family and friends were in centering and supporting me. I knew that some would only be there for a certain time and others would follow along with me for all of my days. I would never be alone.

Sometimes we see ourselves in certain characters in books, on television, in movies. Right now I find myself thinking of an old Star Trek episode that featured an alien empath named Gem. The mute woman was so sensitive to the suffering of others that she was literally able to take away their pain. Sadly the cost of doing so was enormous for her just as such selflessness always is for those who take on the concerns of others. 

There are people among us who are so empathetic that they sometimes have to withdraw from society for a time or go mad. They care so deeply about the people around them, even strangers, that they often find themselves being overwhelmed. I believe that much of the depression that my mother experienced had its source in her unremitting kindness and compassion for others. While she had an uncanny ability to understand and grieve for those who were suffering, she also had a difficult time turning off the anxieties that came with being so incredibly sensitive. Her feelings and love for others was so deep that it sometimes hurt her.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are sociopaths who have little or know concern for anyone but themselves. They are emotionally cold and able to ignore the needs of the people around them. Their entire focus is on their own needs or whatever project they devote their lives to achieving. They can be charming without actually caring about the people that they use to reach their ends. They might appear to all the world to be highly successful because they are able to focus on getting what they want without being distracted by the kind of emotions that sometimes divert the rest of us. 

Obviously it is unhealthy to be at either extreme of the emotional spectrum but more often than not the empath is viewed as being weak while the sociopath is heralded as a person of strength and success. As a society we often admire the person who does not become sidetracked by morality or compassion while viewing the empathetic person as someone who is delusional. I saw such responses to my mother again and again from people who did not realize the incredible extent of her ability to understand the suffering in the world in a visceral way. 

I suppose that DNA and modeling from my mother has impacted me. I am indeed a very empathetic soul even as I am able to moderate my intense feelings more carefully than my mama was able to do. Nonetheless there are moments when, like her, I begin to feel overwhelmed by what I see as the sadness and even cruelty in our society. I have had occasions when I had to back off just a bit from my emotional responses to students who were in troubling situations. I had to learn that becoming too involved in worries about them did little to actually help them but definitely sapped energy from me. 

As a dedicated teacher I knew my students well and sometimes when a preponderance of them were struggling at the same time that my mother was becoming ill, I had to give myself mental health breaks by staying home for a day or two to recharge my batteries. i saw that i was no good to anyone when I became run down with worry. 

We are barely into the new year and yet I feel as though I am my mother or Gem from Star Trek. I am grieving the loss of a great man, Jimmy Carter, and wondering where we might find more people like him in a world that seems to be out of whack. I am overwhelmed by the horror of the fires in Los Angeles and realize that the dire warnings about climate change that one of my grandchildren has been predicting have come to pass. I feel as though I can hear and feel the agony of people in war torn parts of the world. I lie awake at night considering how frightened immigrants in our midst might be feeling at this moment. I hear vile threats against the LGBTQ community and wonder if people that I love who are members of that group will have their lives torn apart in the coming days. I see attacks on humanity happening with greater and greater force and my empathetic impulses are responding in a state of high alert and agitation. 

It is all too draining and my instinct is to draw back into a state of isolation for a time lest I am overcome with sorrow. Instead I know that these are not ordinary times. Instead I have to take a deep breath and push myself beyond the pain that I am feeling for others. There will be time for rest later and right now the world needs individuals with empathy more than ever. 

The truth is that the self centered emotionless people are actually the weaklings among us and the empathetic folks are the heroes who will eventually set things right. It has always been that way in the long history of humans. We have been saved time and again by compassionate souls like Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who were steadfast in moving the world in a kind and gentle direction. Such people might seem to be dreamers, idealists but it is from them that the best tendencies of our nature are revealed. 

I suppose I will rest for a tiny bit each day so that I will be ready to absorb some of the pain in the world. I can do this one person at a time, on day at a time. There is much sacrifice and work to be done. This is not a time to look away.

I suppose that it is quite normal for most of us to remember our childhoods as idyllic experiences. I’ve listened to stories from my grandfather whose boyhood took place under the loving care of his grandmother in a rural area of Virginia in the nineteenth century. He lived in a house without glass windows or centralized heat, but he only recalled the fun times that he had as a boy. The same is true of my ninety five year old father-in-law who grew up in a small mountainous town in Puerto Rico and spent his youth playing with his many cousins who lived near him.

In truth I often think of my own mid twentieth century childhood with great joy. I can envision the fun that I experienced as though it was only yesterday. While I might be inclined to believe that mine was indeed the best possible time for growing up that there ever was, evidence to the contrary is all around me. My own children rhapsodize about the wonder years of the nineteen seventies. My grandchildren relate wonderful stories of being a child at the turn of the twentieth century. Then there are the children who live in my neighborhood whom I watch with delight as they gather to play.

The greatest joy that I experience is the sound of children running and enjoying their games. I have a front row seat to hear their laughter and to see that the joys of growing up still resonate even as the world changes around us. They may be finding different ways to be young and joyful than my grandfather or I did, but the evidence is clear that they are living experiences that they too will one recollect with a sense that surely these must have been the very best of times. 

I hear a great deal of angst from older folks indicating their concern for today’s children. I suppose that it is normal to worry when we hear stories of youngsters welded to gaming machines all alone in darkened rooms. While such situations do exist, I find little evidence that they are the norm. Somehow children find each other regardless of the circumstances and then use their imaginations to create play from whatever they happen to find in their environments. It is as natural a part of growing up as learning to walk and talk. I have witnessed its loveliness over and over again. 

One of the reasons I love my neighborhood is that it is family affordable and friendly. I take great delight in being around the children who are growing up around me. I listen as they chatter in the mornings waiting to catch the school bus. I wait to hear their return to home in the afternoons. I watch their pairings and hear their boisterous commentaries on life. The sights and sounds of their play are as sweet as the ones that I once enjoyed with knees skinned from learning how to skate or ride a bicycle. 

On Christmas day the children still come outside to try out the gifts that Santa left for them. They greet each other with the same awe and wonder that me and my friends once experienced. Anyone who thinks that children today are somehow spoiled or too bored with life to just have some unplanned fun are not watching. They are as inventive and lively as ever. 

In every era there have been children who are withdrawn and those who are bullies. There have been natural born athletes and those who feel clumsy like I often did. Some are outgoing and charismatic while others prefer to quietly observe in the background. Our personalities and talents begin to form as we try different things as children. We develop likes and dislikes and hopefully get an idea of who we are and how we want to be. The journey can be wonderful but as with all things in life it may also be difficult or even enormously painful. Our playtime as children is a time when we learn skills that we rarely even notice. The fun of it all hides the importance of it. 

Of course some little ones find themselves in horrific situations but thankfully they are the outliers For most children the growing up times are as enchanting as ever. There will be alliances and even spats but in navigating such things they learn how to cooperate and compromise. We grow both physically and mentally and if we are lucky we make it through the awkward times mostly intact. The circle and cycle of life goes on and on just as it always has. 

I love when the days of fall bring cooler weather and the school year begins. The children are more likely to be outside again where I can share in their joy from my perch at the head of our street. I hope they see me as a kind old lady who would help them if they needed anything and not as some strange old person who might not possibly understand and appreciate them. I hope that they know how much joy they give me just by having fun. Through them I am young again when my whole life lay before me. I experience the wonder years one more time. 

On a very cold day I am reminded of my childhood when the weather here in Houston, Texas used to become more winter-like starting around the time of my birthday in mid November. I recall gifts of sweaters and woolen skirts that I would proudly and thankfully wear until the end of our frostier days around the middle of March. 

Back then I walked to school which was not much of a challenge on most days but often turned brutal during the winter months. I always appreciated my good fortune whenever my friend Judy and her mother would see me shivering as I fought the cold winds and stop to offer me a ride in the comfort of their warm car. I suspect that they never fully understood the depth of my gratitude for their gesture of kindness. 

Don’t get me wrong. I reveled in the colder months of the year. They were most assuredly my favorite times. I like the clothing associated with winter and the invigorating feel of the air. I always imagined that my DNA had been designed for living in the northern states but somehow my family had traveled south and so I was forced to simply enjoy the the three or four somewhat mild winter months when the heater roared inside our home and hot chocolate was the drink of the hour. 

There was one winter day when the skies grew dark and gloomy in anticipation of snow, a rarity in our region. I would have been quite excited by the prospect had I not caught a case of measles from someone that I had encountered. Back then there were no vaccines for the disease so I had to hope that mine would be an easy sickness rather than one that would cause major problems for me. 

Being a voracious reader I had learned of the possible side effects of measles and my mother contributed to my dread as well with her obvious concern for my well being. I was rarely sick in my childhood and I did not miss the anxiety on her face and in her words. She kept me isolated from my brothers who luckily did not become infected. I lay alone in a darkened room with the blinds shut tightly lest my sight be affected by the brightness of the sun. I suppose that my time in bed would have been boring had I not been so weak that I mostly slept in a kind of feverish daze. 

I would awaken to hear my mother and brothers talking in distant rooms but I had little desire to be with them. The illness was so debilitating that I remember worrying that I might die even though my mother reassured me that with rest and fluids the dangers would soon pass and I would never again have to worry about contracting the measles. 

When the cold days of my illness let to one of the few snowy days that have occurred in all of my years in Houston, Texas I was devastated. Not only was I unable to join my family and our neighbors in snowball fights and the building of snowmen but my mother cautioned me not to spend long stretches of time peering out the window. 

I listened to the joyful banter coming from outside with a sense of self pity that only grew as I heard my brothers breathlessly returning inside with laughter and comments about how glorious the frosty day had been. I suppose it was somewhat fortunate that my fever spiked sending me into a long nap from which I emerged only after it was dark and everyone had gone back inside. I thought that surely I was going to die as I awoke in my weakened condition and my mother came into my room to ply me with hot soup and glasses of water. 

The red rash that seemed almost like a scarlet vest on my chest seemed to taunt me as it reluctantly refused to heal and disappear. i wondered if this was how people died in the long ago and faded in and out of slumber as my body reacted to the headaches that kept me from becoming rambunctious even as my patience wore thin. 

I missed a week of school with the measles and when I returned i felt like an alien. I had so much work to complete in the short amount of time allotted for making it up. I also had to endure the reminder that I had missed all of the fun associated with the once in a blue moon snowy day that everyone else had so gleefully enjoyed. The teacher announced a special project in which we would each have to create a drawing of the winter wonderland that we had enjoyed accompanied by an essay describing what we did on that day. 

Not wanting to be morose I turned it into a creative writing assignment. I imagined what how my snowman might have looked if I had been able to create him and wrote a story worthy of a talented fiction writer. My work was wonderful and earned me an A+ but I wondered if the teacher would suddenly remember that I had been at home with a sickness and would then give me a failing grade for lying. To my amazement she never seemed to catch on to my charade. 

I’ve thought more and more of this time as the possibility of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. becoming a kind of health czar for the nation looms closer and closer. I worry about his anti-scientific ideas particularly when it comes to vaccines. I can’t imagine leaving the fate of children to chance regarding the catching of measles like I had when I was young. I know from experience that it is not a disease to be taken lightly. As a mother I am grateful that my two daughters and all of my grandchildren will never have to worry about catching measles because they were vaccinated as children with no complications. I can’t imagine a world that loses herd immunity and puts little ones at risk of great harm once again. 

One might say that I became immune to measles the natural way and that it was only a minor inconvenience to be sick, but I know better. There have been only three occasions in my lifetime when I became so ill that I literally worried that I was not going to live through the ordeal. One was with a three months long bout with hepatitis that doctors thought might become chronic. Another came when I caught the flu on a trip to New York City later having fevers that raged higher than one hundred three degrees. The third illness was my encounter with measles at the age of nine. In many ways it was the worst of them all. 

Now there are vaccines for the most terrible viruses and illnesses that I have experienced and it makes me happy to know this. I pray that we do not undo the progress against disease that we have made. A world with herd immunity is a much better place to be than one in which we take our chances with dangerous diseases. I much prefer having a scientist or doctor in charge of deciding how we will proceed.

He arrived at the gathering bent over, walking slowly forward with a cane. We had not seen him for some time but we knew that he had been battling cancer. His family had been worried that he would not make it past a few months, but here it was over a year later and he was still smiling and moving in spite of whatever had so deformed his once tall and strong physique. It was painful to see him so deformed but he seemed not to be perturbed at all. 

We had always enjoyed his banter at parties and special occasions. He is a brilliant man with a life story that is filled with adventures. He travelled the world to get to the United States and become a citizen. Then he continued moving from place to place with his work and his studies. He earned a PhD and became renowned as a engineer. Talking with him has always been like tuning in to an educational podcast. He is at once a most interesting soul and a philosophical guru. It was good to know that somehow he had overcome the cancer that had seemed so dire.

He told us that there had been a tumor lodged so deeply on his spine that the doctors had to remove some of the muscles in his back to remove it. Thus he was unable to stand upright as he walked. Instead his upper body form a kind of right angled hinge with his legs. He might have simply adjusted to life in a wheelchair. It would have been so much easier to navigate that way but he is a determined man who patiently does whatever is necessary to move forward, to achieve goals that would be daunting for most of us. Best of all, he is a happy man who finds joy even when fate seems to turn against him. 

We were amazed at how positive he is about his fate. He feels grateful to still be alive even in such an altered state. He speaks matter of factly about his year long battle with illness and pain. Now he says that his body and mind have adjusted to his new reality and it is good. He is happy and appreciative of the efforts of his doctors and the members of his family who stood by him and nursed him during the most difficult times. The joy that he quite obviously feels radiates when he speaks so matter of factly about his disorder which he views as a time of miracles. He almost acts as though he became a better man during his illness and appreciates the experience with all of his heart. 

Somehow just being with this man and witnessing his positivity fills my own heart with joy. There is so much negativity floating around in the atmosphere these days. People complain about so many things, many of which are nothing more than petty annoyances. I am guilty of such myself. We get so busy finding fault with minor setbacks that we forget to focus on what has gone right in our individual worlds. This man has chosen a different path in which he finds the good in even his terrible and frightening experience. He revels in still being alive after fighting for over a year to regain his health. He celebrates the dedication and determination of his doctors who went extra miles to save him from certain death. He boasts about his family and the people who patiently nursed him in the darkest of times. He is a model of how to live a meaningful and appreciative life. 

There are of course individuals in every corner of the world struggling with war, disease, addictions, death. This man understands that he is among the lucky ones as compared with people who are starving for nourishment or kindness. He sees life through the eyes of gratitude. He does not resent his fate nor does he complain about the changes in his life. Instead he thinks of others who are not as fortunate and contemplates how he might help them even in his own wounded condition. 

This man reminds me to first and always be grateful for what I have. There are wondrous miracles big and small in each of our lives that we may not even notice if we become complacent and emotionally blind. We may indeed have aches and pains and challenges but we also have people around us caring for our souls and our bodily needs. We might not fulfill every wish or dream we have composed in our minds but what we do have is most likely more than enough to feel comfortable. In our quest for more and better we too often lose sight of those who are starving for sustenance or security. We forget the importance of being compassionate and sharing with those who were not born into a world as wonderful as our own. He on the otherhand takes nothing for granted. Others are always on his mind and Thanksgiving is every single day for him even though just walking across a room is an enormous chore. 

I have been inspired by him to be a better person. He may not realize it but he is a gift to all who are lucky enough to know him.