It had been two years since his death, and yet the hole in my heart for Wes was as big as ever. I couldn’t put the grief behind me. Why? I had changed locations and magnified my support system, which should have been all I needed for a fresh start. But eventually, I had to admit that what was missing was the relationship I had been avoiding the most.
I could finally admit to myself that it wasn’t just Wes that I missed; I missed God too, and I needed to believe in something bigger and better than the world I could see around me.
As I had hoped, being back home reminded me of the authenticity of my parents’ faith: We all said grace at every meal, morning and evening prayers bracketed each of my parents’ days, and though my father had retired from his pulpit, God was a constant presence, weaving His way into many conversations. As I lay in my childhood bedroom, I began a new middle-of-the-night practice. I closed my eyes and summoned up images of my father in front of his beloved congregation, back when his church was filled to the brim every Sunday. I’d return to being that little girl in the pews, completely safe in the warmth of my father’s voice and the strength of the God he spoke of with such love and conviction. I envisioned my mother, always supporting my dad and hanging on to his every word while establishing her own legacy as the church’s First Lady. Phrases and stories from my father’s sermons would come back to me, and I would say them aloud in the dark to myself. Somehow, I could summon them at night, though I couldn’t during the day. I could access a deeper part of myself—a kind of peace in the silence, a comfort in my aloneness.
Sometimes I would even find myself rocking back and forth like he had when he preached. I would clasp my hands in front of my face, trying to block out my despair, saying over and over, “Have faith!” Other nights, that wonder-filled voice of my father lulled me to sleep, and I felt that sleep alone was God’s grace.
There was a simple message woven throughout all my dad’s sermons: Take one day at a time, put one foot in front the next, and keep going with the faith that the Lord will guide you. Those words became my nighttime mantra, and by remembering them I found my own praying voice.
That was probably the beginning of the resurrection of my faith. I had to realize that the hole in my heart had been left not just by the loss of my husband, but also by my loss of faith. In order for me to heal, I had to find a way to let God back in my life even though Wes was gone. Letting go of my anger and inviting God in forced me to consider that I might be stronger than I knew, more resourceful than I could see, and more loving than my broken heart seemed to allow. It also fostered faith in my children, in their resilience and ability to believe in something greater than themselves during good times and bad. So although this began as a personal effort to help myself move from a paralyzing place, I realized that Nikki, Wes, and Shani had been watching me all along. Their spiritual journey would have been compromised had they not seen me authentically walking back along faith’s path with them.
LESSON FROM A LIONESS: Find a spiritual anchor.
When our days are darkest and our nights never ending, sleepless from unimaginable grief, believing in a power greater than yourself is oftentimes the only way to release healing light. But the question that most of us ask—I know I did—when we are caught up in this cycle of pain is, How does faith break through? Most theologians agree that anchoring yourself in a set of action steps that may or may not be spiritually based will be helpful until you decide what formal steps you can take back to a specific religion, if ever. Among some of the suggestions I found most useful were:
MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR SITUATION.
Crediting Albert Einstein, the late spiritual leader Dr. Wayne Dyer said the most important question you’ll ever have to answer is, “What kind of universe do you want to live in?” If your answer is different than the universe you currently exist in, then be prepared to ask whether you have been attracting the wrong things in life. Instead, begin looking at things that may feel boring and routine, seeking opportunity in them. This will start helping the universe work for you.
START LOOKING FOR RAINBOWS.
Once I began to emerge from my initial heartbreak, I knew the first step to my healing was to begin forcing myself to embrace the positives around me. First and foremost, I looked to my children, the ultimate salve for my broken heart. Bolstered by the presence I needed to help sustain them, I started looking for rainbows, flowering meadows, the changing leaves, cooing newborns, and, yes, aging couples holding hands. Once you can appreciate the positives around you, experts say the obstacles in the path of healing begin to fall by the wayside.
CREATE AFFIRMATIONS.
As important as it is to have a positive worldview, it is even more important to put that worldview into active practice on a daily basis. A good way to do this is through affirmations that remind you to put your faith forward:
I will get the job that’s right for me.
The people I need in my life are on the way.
All things are possible when I decide I have faith.
I will not be defeated.
Dr. Dyer said to start looking at the world in terms of what’s right instead of what’s wrong. Then you can look at what made you lose faith in the first place and say, “What’s the lesson I needed to learn?” or “Why did things have to happen the way they did?” After time has passed, he promises, you can look back and say, “Okay, I get it.”
LOOK BEYOND YOUR OWN PAIN.
One of the most inspirational moments I have spent was with former vice president Joe Biden when he spoke with such eloquence about loss and faith. Speaking about his unbelievable family losses, he held my hands and said, “But there are so many others who didn’t have the resources I had, the support I did.” In an amazing display of his humanity, he is able to look beyond his own pain to feel the anguish of others. That’s faith. In the words of Dr. Maya Angelou, when you soar above your own pain, you become “the rainbow in someone’s cloud.” That’s when your own faith can resurface.
Moving Forward with Grace: The Una McHugh Story
Your hardest times often lead to the greatest moments in your life. Keep going. Tough situations build strong people in the end.
—Roy T. Bennett
Una McHugh is one of the thousands who lost a loved one on September 11, 2001. Her husband, Dennis, a firefighter from Engine Company 22, Ladder 13, was one of the first responders on the scene. Their children were five-year-old Chloe and ten-month-old twins Joe and Sophie. A teacher, having just returned to school after her maternity leave, Una saw her status change to single mother of three as her world spun off its axis in ways she never ever saw coming.
I was only back working a couple of days. I don’t even think it was a week. Dennis came to meet me with the twins at lunchtime. We walked around together outside the school and I just remember him saying we were so lucky. We both had jobs we were passionate about. We felt that way. Him being a fireman, he was able to be around a lot more with me and the kids, which is what he wanted.
Off he went to work for his twenty-hour shift.
As he walked out the door, I turned to look at the kids to get them ready to take them to the park. Dennis popped his head back in one more time. He said, “I love you.” That would be the last time I saw him. A few hours later, into the night, when the twins were already asleep, he called to say good night to Chloe and see how the twins were doing.
I remember chatting on the phone and then hearing Chloe chatting with him and laughing. He was asking what her favorite part of school was and like usual it was recess.
The next day, my sister was there to help with the twins while we were both at work. I left and soon after I got to work, I don’t remember how but we knew something was going on. As I watched the scenes unfold on the library television, the school became more chaotic.
With each hour passing without hearing from anyone at the firehouse or without receiving a call from Dennis, Una’s fears mounted. Glued to the television, she saw the death toll c
limbing, as was the number of those missing. She prayed as she never had before that Dennis was just too busy doing his job and would call any minute. She prayed for a miracle that she finally knew would never happen when the phone rang and a voice from the firehouse said that Dennis was among the missing.
In the beginning, my Catholic faith was very intense. I remember being in church praying. When the collection basket came around, I took all the money that I had and just dumped it in thinking, “That’s going to bring him back.” As I drove home, I saw the members of the local fire department outside with buckets, collecting donations for the victims and families of 9/11. I was mortified. I had no money. I just opened my window and said, “Sorry. I have no money. I just gave it to the church. Don’t worry. My husband’s missing.” Sometimes I look back on things I said. I felt bad I couldn’t give any money. I wanted them to understand me, as I meant to say, “Don’t worry. I’m one of them!”
I would go to church every Sunday, and at first, it was comforting. When reality sank in that he was officially dead and a little shock started wearing off, hearing things like “He’s in a better place” enraged me. I’m left raising kids and babies on my own, so my response was always hostile: “He’s not in a better place. A better place would be here with the kids.”
I couldn’t go to church. It wasn’t bringing me peace. I felt guilty that I was failing in that area. Even though Dennis wasn’t here, I thought I was disappointing my devout Irish Catholic in-laws. But God bless my mother-in-law. When I did finally mention it one day, she said to me, “Una, Chloe knows all her prayers. The twins will too. Your kids will be wonderful kids. You don’t need to be in a church to pray.” It was such a gift for her to say that. I still feel her love for me in the moment to this day.
But she and my father-in-law did something else that I was very grateful for. Even though my faith faltered, I wanted the kids to have the anchor in their lives that faith provides. My in-laws took the twins and Chloe to mass for me when I didn’t take them. They liked doing that, and the children liked going to church with them.
In the years Una spent reassessing her relationship with her faith and the actual church building, she looked at a potential family endeavor that would send a transformative message to their children about presence, something that would reinforce the need to share experiences, like reading with your children, and about legacy.
I just looked at my kids and thought, “How will the kids look at the death, destruction, and hatefulness of that day? How will it jade them?” I thought of Dennis and how he would have handled it. He always looked at life optimistically, so we were trying to focus on the positive. I, my siblings, and the people around me asked ourselves, “What can we do?” We turned our eyes a few miles from our house to the village of Piermont.
Piermont is where Dennis, the kids, and I spent all of our time, whether at church, dining out, or going to boutique stores. The town has undergone a massive restoration thanks to the passionate people who wanted to preserve the history and beauty of a special place. [But] the library was still not built. Dennis just loved reading and believed in the importance of books and all of the gifts they give. He often took our five-year-old daughter to the library. One day we had seen the Friends of the Piermont Library were selling shirts to raise money to build a new, state-of-the-art public library. Dennis said, “They’re never going to build a library if they’re charging so little for shirts,” so we bought five of them, using whatever money we had on us. That is the kind of man Dennis was.
It just seemed to make sense that we start a foundation. The first project was helping Piermont build the library.
We pledged $500,000 and asked the library to be named for Dennis. The first few years we did two fund-raisers, one a comedy night and the other a silent auction, and we thought, “He loved to laugh and he had a good sense of humor.”
All these years later we still organize a 5K run and people of all ages come and we have a little family fair. It’s always right here, in Piermont, overlooking the Hudson River and the Tappan Zee Bridge. It is about bringing people together and having some fun and laughter and enjoying our community spirit.
In 2007, the Dennis P. McHugh Piermont Public Library was born. After this pledge was met, Dennis’s relatives and Una went on to raise money to do other things in the community. They raised money to build parks; to support a local hospice and Homes for Heroes, which provides apartments for veterans; and to help local families falling on hard times. Una found her calling in giving back and having her faith manifested through acts of kindness throughout the community. She came to believe that faith can be everywhere and wherever you are.
Looking back over the years, she recalls the words of a favorite aunt, drawing from her own heartbreak after losing a husband, who told her following Dennis’s death, “Your kids will see you through it.” And they have, says Una. The beauty of maintaining presence for your kids does as much for the single mom as it does for her kids. It also allowed Una untold opportunities to keep Dennis’s memory alive for their kids, especially when her own sorrow started to surface.
I would think, “What would Dennis do if he was here?” He would laugh because he had a great sense of humor and start to do what he called “tickle time.” So I’d say tickle time and they’d run over and I would lay them on the ground and I would go and tickle each one of them and they would just roll around and laugh and laugh. I’d think about what Dennis would want for us and I know he’d want us to be happy.
In addition to tickle time, I always tried to carve out time for us to maintain little traditions. Often, we’d come down to Piermont and have a picnic by the water and things like that. Every Christmas our routine is to go see a play and then go out to dinner, just the four of us. In more recent years, obviously when everyone is becoming more independent, having that time together remains incredibly important, although the kids fought it at first. I remember saying to them, “I hope as you age and when you have your own families, you think at least once a year to come together as siblings with your families.”
Establishing family traditions, and feeling guided by thoughts of what Dennis would do, helped Una find something she could believe in. For now, she is content with the way her single-mother life has evolved and the way the kids have fared. Chloe graduated from Villanova, where she majored in nursing. She is now working at Sloan Kettering hospital. Joe and Sophie will also graduate this year with stellar high school credentials and are weighing numerous college options for the fall. Una is grateful to have had support from the 9/11 fund and pensions. But to those around her it is clear that despite her unbelievable loss, Una is living out the teachings of Luke 12:48—To whom much is given, much is required.
LESSON FROM A LIONESS: Help your children find their spiritual base, even if you are reassessing yours.
Presence of Faith can feel elusive in the midst of tragedy. How do you find your joy when grief has stolen your heart? Sometimes, however, as a single mother you must help your children remain grounded in a spiritual base. Just as it will in time help you re-anchor your life in something bigger than yourself, believing in a higher power will provide your kids with the armor they need to deal with life’s uncertainties.
When you know that your own spiritual practice is a struggle, call on your pride to help. For Una, having Dennis’s parents continue the ritual she and Dennis started of weekly church with their children was a godsend. Without judgment, they stepped in when she needed them the most. That provided Una with the comfort of knowing that even though her faith was in a reassessment stage, her children would not lose the anchor that faith provides. But even more than physically going to a sanctuary, the words that Dennis’s mother said to Una—“Chloe knows her prayers”—I think provided the clue to what Una had already instilled in Chloe: spiritual strength through prayer.
Much of what is written about prayer is based in Christianity. But I wanted to provide some tips culled from my own family plus numerous sourc
es that can be applied to those on all faith journeys, be they Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Mormon, or—according to a 2017 Gallup poll—the substantial percentage of people who claim no faith preference at all.
INSTILL THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF GRATITUDE, TOLERANCE, AND KEEPING AN EYE ON THE PRIZE.
Teach your children to be grateful for what they have. This doesn’t mean “things.” In the American Indian culture, gratitude begins with Mother Nature. A Tecumseh prayer begins, “When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the morning light, for our life and strength. Give thanks for your food and the joy of living.” When children see the struggle of a single parent, be it financial, the inability to buy certain clothes or go certain places, or sometimes the social isolation caused by small-minded people or living far away from a support system, teach them that you are grateful for what you do have, the fact that you have each other, and the hope that things will turn around because you have faith.
The Power of Presence Page 9