The good news is that Rod Dreher is blogging again, this time at the American Conservative; the sad news is that his sister Ruthie, pictured above with her daughter Claire, has just been killed by cancer. Rod – we email-know one another and have at least one good friend in common – has been blogging about the reaction to his sister’s death. It is, as it must be, emotional, passionate stuff.
There’s no pressing need for me to write about this, I guess, save that blogging is most often a means of expressing frustration or unhappiness or outrage and it is not often that we – that is, people who generally write about politics or culture – pause to reflect on the greater issues, far less note how often humanity or decency prevails in even the direst personal circumstances. I commend Rod’s posts here, here, here and here to you.
This passage was especially striking:
Everybody’s sad, and tired, but doing okay. My mom came in from Ruthie’s house tonight and said, “You can really feel her presence over there.” I walked next door to say hello to Mike and the girls, and I instantly understood what Mama meant. There is peace where there shouldn’t be peace.
People are doing such amazing things for this family. Ruthie’s daughter Hannah and a friend were driving lickety-split to get up to the hospital in West Feliciana from LSU, when her radiator conked out. A man pulled in behind them straightaway, asked what the problem was, and hearing their plight, said, “Get in, I’ll take you wherever you need to go.” This perfect stranger drove them 30 miles out of his way, with all three of them praying for Ruthie the entire journey. They don’t even know the man’s name.
Another man who owns a car repair shop nearby drove down to pick up Hannah’s ailing jeep. He brought it home, replaced the radiator in it, and refused to take a penny for his parts and labor.
You watch these things happen, and you can hardly take the purity of people’s generosity and love.
[…] Once, early in Ruthie’s teaching career, I was home from Washington visiting, and hearing her talk about how difficult her class was this year. Cutting up in class, not doing homework, the usual thing.
“Ruthie,” I told her, “I swear I don’t know how you put up with it. Why would want to deal with that?”
She looked at me like there was something wrong with me, and said softly, “Because I love them.”
Since she was in second grade, Ruthie has wanted to be a teacher, thanks to the example of Miss Bennett, her teacher that year. You never know the good you can do for people if you just love them, and are patient with them, and help them when their ox is in a ditch. It’s the simplest thing in the world to know, but why is it so hard?
Rod’s a restless, religious type and I trust his faith will help him, his family and everyone else down there in rural Louisiana at this time. Nor do you have to be any kind of a believer to appreciate his writing on this subject or find it strangely uplifting.
UPDATE: I’m not alone in being drawn to Rod’s writing about this. It reminds Alan Jacobs of the final lines of Middlemarch.
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