Sunday Secrets: Nov 04, 2007

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. I find it to be an amazing sociological experiment. Here are the secrets shared this week that resonated with me:

When my elderly next door neighbor was dying, she asked me to visit her. I wanted to. I just couldn't. I didn't have it in me. Every time I spent time with her, it brought back too poignantly the feelings of watching my own parents die just two years before. I couldn't bear the burden of watching another death. I was grateful other neighbors and my daughter were able to spend time with her.

I have nothing from the car that my brother Carl was ejected from, that took his life. I have memories, though, of my brother laid out at the mortuary. I have a bit of his curly red hair.

And there's the memory of Carl's friend, the driver, laid out in intensive care in a coma with tubes poking in him and machines beeping and his sister sitting silently by.
His friend lived.

I do, however, have some pieces of stained glass from my parish church that burned down when I was in 6th grade. Quite different, but all painful memories none-the-less.

PostSecret is a finalist in the 2007 Weblog Awards. It's earned my vote!