COMMENTA RY
Charity Vogel: How a stone can soften the shell of grief
The stones found their way. It took a little while, but in the end, the tiny symbols of love and connection made their way to the place Robin Tolsma hoped they would.
Now she can sleep a little better at night: knowing she did what she could to bridge a seemingly uncloseable gap, and bring a small measure of balm to the soul of another suffering woman.
Tolsma, you’ll remember, is the widow of Darren Tolsma, who was killed in the crash of Flight 3407 in Clarence on Feb. 12. A column in this space some weeks ago described Robin’s collection of stones: small rocks that she has picked up over the past few months from the site where the plane plummeted to earth, killing 50 people.
Robin keeps the stones in her home, and uses them as a way of remembering her husband, and a source of comfort. To her, they represent the last place her husband Darren existed on this earth. And so she made the offer to the families of pilot Marvin Renslow and the other members of the flight’s crew: let me share some stones with you, to help you through this time of anguish.
It took time, but the message got through.
Lyn Morris, the mother of Flight 3407 first officer Rebecca L. Shaw— her mother calls her “Beki”—contacted The News and, through the paper, reached out to Robin Tolsma. She accepted the offer of a stone from the crash site.
Now, the two women are linked by letters and e-mails. They are talking about their grief. Robin plans to give the stones to Lyn in person, if she can. And, in at least one small way, that seemingly unbridgeable gap from one side of the disaster to the other is closing.
“I felt as though you reached out and touched my heart,” Morris wrote to Tolsma recently.
Tolsma, for her part, feels as if she has made a bond that will never be broken.
“I know a part of me died on February 12—the best part of me, actually,” she said. “But now I know that part of me and the part of Lyn are somehow together.”
From small stones to powerful connections: as the aftermath of Flight 3407 has shown us, moments of beauty can exist amid the most horrific circumstances. And sometimes the distance from one human being to another is a surprisingly small one.
As small, perhaps, as a stone.
•••
A couple more updates to this column:
Ipecac in grocery stores.
A couple of weeks ago, a column in this space described the quest of Kenmore mom Debbie Begeny to achieve a change in state law that would remove ipecac syrup from store shelves and put it behind pharmacists’ counters.
Ipecac is used by bulimics and anorexics to purge their bodies of food, with potentially devastating results; Begeny blames her daughter Heather’s 2003 death on the use of ipecac.
The tide seems to be turning, these days, when it comes to the availability of ipecac in local stores. A Wegmans spokeswoman, Ann McCarthy, responded to the column to say that Wegmans no longer stocks the potent liquid.
“The potential for misuse factored into our decision,” McCarthy said.
The proposed law remains before the State Senate; it has already passed in the Assembly.
Where I’ll be, for a bit. Don’t check your calendars on upcoming Mondays. I’m taking a little time off from this column to research a longer piece of writing I’m working on. I’ll be back before you know it, and in the meantime, happy summer!
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