In the year before she died, when life was growing increasingly hard, my daughter Cee Cee asked me to help her compose prayers that would truly reflect what she wanted to say to God. “I need you to write them in human, vulnerable words, Mom,” she said, and I knew she meant the language of the heart, not of scripture or prayer books or pedants or preachers in a pulpit – just words that told the truth about the suffering, confusion, anger, resentment, struggle, and the blind faith you need to carry on when you find yourself, much against your will, in the Valley of the Shadow, or in the throes of some other terrible trauma.

Cee Cee would tell me how she felt. I would write, then hand the prayers back to see if they filled the bill. Sometimes they did, sometimes she’d edit. Sometimes we’d laugh or cry because on that particular day all we really wanted to do was yell at God. We decided that, too, was prayer.

FINDING THE WORDS

In trying to interpret in words what was in her heart, I found words for my own sorrows, confusion, desperation and sinking spells of spirit – occasioned both by her illness, and by other sorrows that had buffeted my life. Both our prayers began to ramble outward into thoughts on the enigmas of the human condition and how we try to reconcile the lack of answers to our unfathomable questions by turning to God for solace. We often called on the female persona of God, in our prayers, as a Mother God seemed, somehow more accessible.

PROMISES TO KEEP

Cee Cee made me promise that if she didn’t make it through the heart surgery that was planned, I would not abandon “our book.” “Everybody suffers in this life, Mom,” she’d say, “and nobody really tells the truth about it. All those self-help books are so busy being cheerful they just fluff over the tough stuff. And that makes you feel even worse, because it seems you’re a coward if you admit that you’re afraid or angry that this has happened to you.” It would be hard to find anyone less a coward than she.

The year after Cee Cee died, my dearest childhood friend died unexpectedly, and five years later, my first born daughter, Bronwyn, followed her sister into eternity. By then, it seemed to me there could be nothing else left on earth to feel or think or say about loss – yet each death, like each life, is utterly individual and brings with it a panoply of memories and thought-streams as individual as Snowflakes from the Hand of God.

So, I kept on writing, feeling as if I’d found a way to communicate beyond words, beyond anguish, beyond loss, even beyond the grave. Writing prayers seemed to connect me to the essence of those I’d loved and lost, as well as to God. So what you hold in your hand is the book that Cee Cee loved, and the additions made to it in the years since her death.

To my amazement, many extraordinary writers and thinkers in the world of spiritual healing and philosophy have rallied around this small volume, since it was first published. Many grief counselors have written to tell me they use it to comfort people in the worst of times. I have been so touched and blessed by their generous words of encouragement that I’d like to include them here.