When Paths Cross With Love

The picture was attached to a brief email last night from my dear friend Mary. I opened it and sat back, astounded, delighted and filled with a sudden rush of love.

It was a picture Mary had asked someone to take on her smart phone during a weekend charity tea when she encountered Sister Rita McCormack, someone very dear to me -- and a relative stranger to her.

I was filled with wonder that two people with whom I have had such long and loving friendships -- Sister Rita for 63 years, Mary for 44 years -- but whose paths have not crossed in all that time would meet and talk and, knowing the place each holds in my heart, would think to have a picture taken together -- just for me!

                                             

Sister Rita McCormack (l) and Mary Connolly Breiner

There is so much history in their embrace!

Sister Rita was a very young teaching nun -- just arrived from Ireland -- when we first met. And I was a shy, struggling eight-year-old, recovering from bulbar polio, troubled by my father's mental illness and his horrific abuse, particularly of my younger brother Michael. 

Sister Rita would be Michael's first grade teacher and would reach out to us in so many ways to comfort, support and encourage both of us. She was quick with hugs and reassuring words. When I stood at the edge of the playground, friendless and feeling so alone, she would come embrace me, let me walk beside her, holding the cord of her habit, feeling safe and increasingly confident as we made the rounds of the playground and I got better acquainted with the kinder and gentler members of my class. She spent hours after school, helping me to regain clear speech by acting out poems and plays. It sparked my initial interest in acting and brightened my days. Teaching me to play the piano was a less successful venture. I had little interest in making music then. All I wanted to do was to talk with her. And I loved to hear her sing and, when she encouraged me to join her, I would quietly, shyly sing along. Our favorite songs together were the comic Irish folk tune "Kitty of Colraine" and the hymn "Oh, God of Loveliness."

When I would describe her to others in later years, I would say that she was like Julie Andrews in "The Sound of Music." But the truth is, Julie Andrews was like Sister Rita -- which was why I enjoyed her so much in that movie.

Sister Rita is bright and talented with boundless energy and commitment to making a difference. She is still an activist for a number of causes. At 85 and suffering from two different kinds of cancer, she is, nevertheless, unstoppable. She shows up. She moves ahead. She is fully engaged with the world and with others. She truly lives her faith. 

The latter is also true of Mary Connolly Breiner. 

I first met Mary when we were in our late twenties. The daughter of novelist and screenwriter Myles Connolly (whose "Mr. Blue" was and is a Catholic classic), Mary grew up amid the movie stars of the beachfront Malibu Colony but left that all behind to enter the convent right after high school. 

After ten years as a nun, she made the painful decision to leave -- and her first job post-convent was at 'TEEN Magazine where I had been working for several years. 

We bonded immediately. I loved her sense of humor and her wicked insights. I admired her compassion and kindness. Our Irish Catholic origins gave us much in common. And we shared a secret ambition to go back to school and become psychotherapists. Only Mary did it first -- 20 years before I finally returned to school.  (I had declined to attend weekend grad school classes with her when we were young because I thought it would interfere with my social life).

She had a thriving practice for many years. She also met and married a widower with three children who quickly became very much her own. Her days were busy as a wife, mother and dedicated therapist. It was only when her beloved husband John had a life-changing accident and became ill that she decided to stop seeing clients in order to devote herself full-time to John's care.

Despite the fact that my husband Bob and I moved from California to Arizona six years ago,  Mary and I have stayed close. I travel to their home in Camarillo, CA every two months to visit with both Mary and John and with John's live-in caregiver Arthur, who is a wonderful new friend. And, conspiring with Bob to keep it a surprise, Mary came to Arizona last year to make my 70th birthday special and memorable.

Despite their long history with me, Mary and Sister Rita never met until about a year ago, meeting by chance at this same annual charity event. This year, they sought each other out, and decided to pose for a picture together as a gift of love from them to me.

It's a gift that not only warms my heart, but also is bringing some unexpected blessings. When I posted it on my Facebook page, I got "Likes" and some comments from elementary school classmates who have their own reasons to remember Sister Rita with love -- though we all knew her then by her pre-Vatican II religious name of Sister Mary Virginia before she reverted to her birth name in the mid-Sixties. 

After sharing this picture, I've enjoyed a delightful online conversation today with my friend Pat Hill, a classmate from kindergarten through high school. And I got a message from another grade school classmate I haven't seen or spoken with since we graduated in 1959: this male classmate, now an attorney, sent me a message that he'd love to get in touch with Sister Rita and would also enjoy visiting with me on the phone. I smiled at his request. I remember him and his twin brother as the most civilized and kind of the 13-year-old boys in our class. I'm happily anticipating our conversation.

And then there are shared snippets of the conversation between my two beloved friends, revisiting a long and cherished history.

"Sister Rita is such a dear person," Mary wrote with the email accompanying the photo. "She told me how you would walk around with her when you were little, holding onto the cord of her habit. She beamed as she talked about you. She just loves you dearly...as you know..."

What a joy it is when the paths of those you love unexpectedly cross, bringing such a rich variety of wonderful, life-affirming surprises, expanding like a gentle ripple on a wind-swept pond, to warm me and others who know one or both of these very special women with so many sweet memories and enduring love.