My eyes popped open at 3 a.m. A woman way over on that Other Coast read the thing I wrote about depression and I realized–you could fire a nail gun at this Irish skull and they’d bounce off, bent and useless–I needed to “friend” her, because no one in her family understands what it is she is suffering. I found her page and, of course, was not surprised at what I found: a vibrant, smiling woman with beautiful children–they look grown now–whose faith life is very important to her. I liked her immediately.

Of course this reminded me of Joe Loomis who, again, took care of me after my Mom died. This is that “paying it forward” business.

This is my space, so I get to ramble.

 All of this in turn reminds me of why I became a history teacher. We are not, in the end, fractured and alone–sorry, existentialists. We are all in some way connected to each other and we all have obligations that we may not even be consciously aware of to take care of each other: if you’re lucky, and had the kind of parents I had, then you commit your life to acting on those obligations no matter what you do “for a living.”

This is why so many locals love John Gearing, who works at the cemetery and had the article in yesterday’s Tribune. John has dedicated his life to caring for that cemetery and in the process has become, because of his compassion, a great comfort to those who have lost loved ones.

What John does is so important because my calling has led me to understand that we are connected even to the dead: I have never felt more heartbroken than I did in Anne Frank’s home in Amsterdam, nor more intimate with a family I had never met. I wanted to go backward in time and rescue her and the Franks from the evil that would sweep them up, but then I had to remind myself that Anne was fulfilling her obligation to all of us, at a terrible, terrible price. She reminds us, to this day, of what it is to be human, reminds us that we have a purpose, even in a life so brief, and she reminds us, too, that what we do matters.

The wonderful thing about history is realizing that the dead are not really dead. They stay with

us. They walk with us on our journeys, and, if we pay attention and are watchful, they light the path ahead for us.