Kent Nerburn

Hello, everybody.

Since I’ve last written, we have received many donations to the headstone fund. It has been a wonderfully gratifying experience. The family of the boy has been overwhelmed and overjoyed. Their misfortune in life continues, with the woman of whom I wrote now needing several surgeries, and not having, shall we say, the most bountiful benefit package in the world from our great American flagship, WalMart. So this beautiful moment of the headstone is a joy that shines brightly for her, as well as for the family.

I have spent some time at a headstone company, and we are arranging a flat stone with an oval photograph of the child, and a permanently installed votive candle holder so the woman can continue her practice of lighting a candle at the grave. This has all been preliminary, and until the family itself can get down there (it’s a hundred plus miles from our northern Minnesota home), the specifics will not be nailed down. I don’t feel it’s my place to make choices in this matter beyond making arrangements and setting up some rough guidelines of what we can and cannot afford.

I will, of course, keep you all informed about the progress of this very exciting enterprise. Our goal is to have the stone installed in time for the family’s annual balloon launching at the gravesite. But that is contingent upon weather, since our frozen northern ground does not allow installation of stones on any schedule other than its own.

I have not had time to write personal responses to everyone who has asked how to contribute. For those of you who still wish to do so, the address is:

Tyler Henry Memorial Fund
First Federal Bank
P.O. Box 458
214 5th Street
Bemidji, Minnesota 56619

When the stone is in place I will make the next step in my cyber-education and figure out how to put up a photograph of it on this website. The woman has also expressed a desire to write a thank you to all of you who have carried this project close to your hearts. That, too, will be posted.

I have to say that this is one of those moments for which we all live. It is so rare to be able to do something that, by all appearances, is an unalloyed good in this world. I feel that all of us who have been lucky enough to be involved — and this includes all of you readers who have been touched by the story and follow it with interest — have been made richer by our participation. It has created, for a moment, a community of good-hearted people who simply want to see something honorable and worthy and kind done in this world.

If there has been a theme in my writing, it has been that we are not all called to greatness, but that we all have moments in our lives where we, alone, can create a goodness that otherwise would not exist. This is one of those moments. I hope more of them come to each of you, and that you claim them for what they are and what they can be. One of life’s true miracles is that each of us walks a path so unique in space and time that we come upon moments that are given to no other. Those are our gift, and our test. How we meet them is the measure of our heart.

This headstone is, to me, one of those gifts and one of those tests. I consider myself one of the luckiest men in the world to have had the chance to receive this gift and, in theological parlance, to transubtantiate the ordinary into something spiritually rich and meaningful. May such opportunities come to us all in full measure as we continue through our profoundly ordinary, but profoundly miraculous days.

I’ll write more soon.

Well, the campaign for the headstone has been a wonderful success. The Unitarians, bless their ever-questioning souls, came through with unexpected generosity. The woman and I spoke together at the service. I told the story of how I got involved. She showed pictures of the young boy and told the story of the gravesite and how the cemetery board had made her take down her decorations.

Then I brought up the dream of the headstone and how they could be part of this dream.

My son, who was sitting behind the woman, said she gasped and sat upright when I proposed the idea. The people in the congregation reached into their pockets and donated from the heart. With a few more dollars we will be there.

The woman (it sounds so clumsy, but I really don’t want to use her name for the sake of her own privacy) told me that she and her family cried all afternoon about their good fortune. They had been sending away for headstone brochures, but had figured it was an impossible dream. Then, this.

Now we only have to arrange for purchase and installation, and a wonderful circle will have been completed. I hope to write something more as the story unfolds further. I want you all to be a part of this. But, for now, I just wanted to get the word out.

And to those of you who wrote asking how to help, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I’ve tried to get back to each of you with the address of the bank that is holding the funds. If I didn’t get to you, or if any of you want this information, contact me.

This is a wonderful story growing out of a terrible tragedy. We are lucky to be able to play a part in it.

Today is a big day in a small way. I’ll be speaking at a Unitarian church, which, in itself, is nothing unusual. But today I’m going to try to accomplish something that has been weighing on me for several years. Those of you who have read Calm Surrender will remember the chapter, Candles on the Grave.

In that piece I tell the story of a woman who holds a vigil at the grave of a child. Since the writing of the piece, and because of it, I have gotten to know her. I have also gotten involved with the local cemetery board, which has forced her to take down the decorations that were her way of honoring the memory of the child she had lost. It has not been a pretty time, because the ruling of the cemetery board, and their paternalistic attitude, have been as cold as the stones that they insist are the only acceptable way to memorialize the death of a loved one.

I have talked to them, written to them, written columns in local papers, but all to no avail. So I have given up fighting with people who will not be moved, and have chosen, instead, to try to get a headstone for the grave.

The family is not well off — I have said before that we live in a small town far from any “economic boom” that is ostensibly taking place in this country — and the woman barely makes ends meet by being a cashier at Wal-Mart. She and her family were never able to get a headstone, and that was part of the reason they decorated and kept a vigil at the grave.

Today, this may all begin to change. Unbeknownst to her, I have spoken to a granite works that produces headstones and have gotten the costs for a simple stone with a photo of the child and an attached votive lamp in which she can keep a candle burning, as is her wont. It will cost us many hundreds of dollars, but at least it can be done.

So, today, at the Unitarians, I will begin my efforts to collect the funds for this headstone. The woman is coming along to help me tell the story, but she is unaware of my plan. She thinks this is just about telling the story of the death and the struggle for redemption that has taken place in her heart. She is quite unaware that this is about a larger redemption — for all of us, and for the community as a whole.

I firmly believe that we are all called to live a life of service. But very often, the service is not something we choose, so much as something that chooses us. This particular small act has chosen me. It chose me on the day I first saw that grave with its decorations and wondered what it was all about. It has been mine ever since, waiting for me to have the courage and initiative to make the gesture that it demands.

Today is the day. I’ll write and tell you how things went in my next entry. In the meantime, go read the selection entitled, “Candles on the Grave.” It will bring you into the story and let you be part of something that I am hoping will be pretty special.