Kate Braestrup - Marriage and Other Acts of Charity: A Memoir

O ne summer day, my daughters, Ellie and Woolie, ages eight and six, respectively, got lost in the Maine woods. They went for a walk with their older brothers, but Zachary and Peter, tired of their sisters slower pace, abandoned them in what, from the girls point of view, was a vast and trackless wilderness.

Actually, it was a small wilderness, situated on an extremely small island off Popham Beach, Maine. The kids and I were staying there for an August weekend.

We had watched ospreys fishing. We pored over tide pools where sea stars slowly bored their lethal holes in the shells of dog whelks, and barnacles waved their thready tentacles in the water, hoping to catch a snack of minute marine debris. Right after breakfast on our first day, the kids spotted a seals tidy domed head just off the rocky beach and seated themselves in a blond row in the blond grass on the bluff above, waiting for the seal to pop her head up again.

They looked just like a painting by Mary Cassatt, I thoughtmy aesthetic judgment once more overwhelmed by maternal feeling. Later, when Zach and Peter returned from their walk with the news that they had left their tiresome sisters behind and had no idea what had become of them, what followed was not a scene Mary Cassatt would have wanted to paint. (Edvard Munch might have taken a stab at it.)

Meanwhile, Ellie and Woolie sat glumly beneath a spruce, convinced they would never see home and hearth again. Then it occurred to Ellie that they were, after all, on an island. If they found the shoreline, it should be possible, in theory, to circumambulate the island and find, by the waters edge, the cottage with their mother in it. So the girls struck off in the direction of the nearest wave sounds, and when they reached the coast, they turned right. The plan would have worked perfectly, except that in scrambling over a particularly jagged set of rocks, Ellie fell, cutting her knee badly.

Things now looked very bleak. Ellie bewailed her bloodied knee. Woolie toyed with the idea of building a hut out of driftwood and nursing her sister back to health on a diet of rainwater and raw clams, but Ellies knee really did look painful. Besides, Woolie could do with a cookie. So Woolie threw back her head and addressed herself to the empty sky.

HELP! she shrieked. HELP! WERE LOST, AND MY SISTER IS BLEEDING!

Within moments, a paramedic was by her side.

Maternal panic was replaced that day by bewildered gratitude. Woolie marched jauntily into view, followed by her sister, borne in the arms of a stranger, her injured knee neatly bandaged.

Glad to help, said the paramedic. His name was Joel. He happened to be vacationing with his family in a cottage on the other side of the island and had been peacefully sunning himself when the summer breeze carried Woolies cri de coeur to his trained ears.

Woolie seemed to take it as a matter of course that her prayers would be answered. If she had known the word paramedic, she might even have been more specific in her request, although, as it turned out, she didnt need to be.

I am a person of faith or a religious fanatic, depending on whom you ask. I believe absolutely in God made manifest in love, but I cant explain, let alone emulate, my daughters confidence in lifes beneficence. When in doubt, I reflexively anticipate the worst.

Pessimism meshes well with my primary ministry, which is to serve as chaplain to the Maine Warden Service. I provide support and comfort to game wardens and civilians at the scenes of the various outdoor calamities to which game wardens respond: snowmobile accidents, freshwater boating accidents and drownings, hunting accidents, suicides, wilderness search and rescue operations, and, occasionally, a homicide.

No one needs a chaplain when the outcome is likely to be good, so quite a lot of my work deals with death. Or to put it differently, and as I prefer to think of it, I bear witness to the ways in which love resurrects itself in the face of loss. It is a great honor to be present to a strangers grief, to play even a small part in the most intimate, excruciating, and transformative chapter in a persons and familys history. I appreciate the clarity and frankness of those whose loved ones have died. (Death just strips away all the bullshit, declared a hospital chaplain I know, approvingly.)

Having written at length about death already, I realized that it must be possible to describe how lovereal love, Gods lovemanifests itself in other areas of life, those in which everyone involved continues breathing. Certainly a more cheerful topic.

Ive been married and widowed, betrayed and betrothed. Moreover, as a woman of the cloth, I am often called on to advise others about how to enter into, be content within, or extract themselves from the married state. At frequent intervals I preside over the nuptial ceremonies of neighbors, friends, and game wardens. Write what you know, they say.

On the other hand, far from encouraging us to strip away what is trivial and false, marriage starts out with the expensive theatrics of a wedding. If national statistics hold for the couples who ask me to join them in holy matrimony, 50 percent of them will end up divorced. The more surprising statistic I offer to the eager affianced is this: 100 percent of marriages will end.

So what was I thinking? Marriage isnt a cheerful subject at all!

I, of all people, should know this: My young late husband, Drew, was killed in a car accident, and friends, my parents, and my sister have been divorced. Many good friends and colleagues are making second and even third attempts at this putatively happy state. Whence their Woolie-ish, sense-less confidence? Why are they not rushing to join monasteries and nunneries? This would be the sensible response to the pain that, once endured, convincingly promises more to come. Instead we stand (or stand again) in a place made holy by this reliable human lunacy and offer heartfelt prayers in the direction of a sky that has already demonstrated its indifference to heartbreak. Our mothers and brothers smile, our sisters weep, and little children scatter flower petals at our feet as if what we are doing makes sense, but it makes no sense. It is crazy to marry, nuts to love! Its crazy to risk loving even the mother, the brother, the matron of honor. Its insane to love