Michael Malone - Weebly

soldiers lost to war as the women sat politely in their
living rooms, telegrams still in their hands; of parents of
children that same day lost to disease, lost in hospital
wards, in refugee camps, in hungry villages, lost in city
streets? How could reporters bear to thrust a
microphone up to the sorrow of the world and record
its piercing, unending scream?
The Sisters of Mercy had always told Judith she
imagined too much. They told her to be happy. They
told her that being a Christian did not mean she had to
suffer every pain ever felt by her fellow man. They said
only Christ could bear to feel so much, and that He did
feel it so that she wouldn't have to, so that she could be
a happy child. Wasn't she young and healthy, well fed,
warm, and graced with prettiness and a good mind? But
she could not will herself to stop. They told her it was a
sin to despair when God wanted her to rejoice in His
gifts. They told her she made God unhappy, too.
Judith tied a piece of black yarn to the green. Then
she heard her husband's clock over the family room
fireplace, where electric logs glowed orange but never
burned. The new old-fashioned clock beat three times