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healing & FORGIVENESSElinor has a lovely voice and sings often,”the nurse said with a smile. “Everyone hereloves Elinor.”Accepting What IsHow did she manage to keep herheart open and her spirit alive? She hadno family. She lived without hearing herchildren’s laughter. She owned nothingand wore what was handed to her. She atewhat was given. She lived without privacy.She wasn’t able to walk down the street fora cup of tea. She was not bitter or angry,although she did not suffer fools. Her lifewas not cluttered with things she didn’tneed. “I don’t want anything at all,” shewrote on a sheet of lined paper clippedinto a blue binder. She had little choiceexcept how she related to herself andto those around her. She learned to livebeautifully with herself and others. I takestrength from the way Elinor survived sowell with so little, that she kept what wasmost valuable — her heart and her music.She was a Buddha in her simplicity, heraffection, and her sense of interbeing.I found the group home in whichElinor had lived for sixteen years after themental hospitals were emptied of patientsin the mid-seventies. “Yes, I rememberElinor,” said the woman who ran the home.“The day she came here she walked up thefront steps and when I opened the door sheheld out her arms and called me Mother!She endeared herself to me ... She lovedto sing!”Elinor was my teacher. She showedme how to be aware of love, to give andreceive the energy of love, to give space forlove to exist and to ripen. I became awareof what cut off the flow between us, thingslike needless questions and extraneouscomments. Elinor spoke out of her truenature and not as I might have wished orexpected. That encouraged me to be lessconcerned about results and more awareof what was true within and around me.Elinor always responded to love and affection.“I love you,” I told Elinor. “That’s theway it should be,” she said.Elinor’s mother passed away suddenlywhen Elinor was sixteen, and her father,who could have signed her out of thehospital when she recovered from the postpartumpsychosis, never came to take herhome. “I love my dad,” she said. “I alwayswill.” This too is Sadaparibhuta’s nurturinglove, even in the midst of betrayal andrejection. I come from a family that tendsto end relationships when pain or shameoverwhelms love. When I think of Elinor,I am aware that when the seed of love hasgrown small or been lost in the face of fearor hurt, I can find that tiny seed, and withnurturing, it will grow strong again.A Family ReunitedIn July I asked Elinor, “Do you havechildren?” “Yes,” she said. “I have twoand I love them very much.” That was thepermission I needed to search for her children.I was able to find them, and Elinor’sdaughter and granddaughter came rightaway to visit her.In January Elinor took her last breath.The weekend of her memorial service,Elinor’s family and four of my siblings metfor the first time. During the service I reada passage from the Bible: “Love bears allthings, believes all things, hopes all things,endures all things.” Tears fell as I read,knowing that Elinor was and is the lovethat bears all things, endures all things.Before I began to practice, before Ifound the Sangha, I would have fallen intosorrow and seen Elinor’s life as an unbearabletragedy. Belonging to a Sangha thatis supportive and affectionate, I am moreaware of the energy of love even when itsprings from the muddy ground of a lifelived in a mental hospital.Sitting with Elinor enlarged my heart.The weeds of mystery and tragedy and fearwithered as Elinor watered seeds of loveand simplicity and interbeing. What anamazing surprise to find that the personwho the family abandoned is the one whorestores our lost connections and the lovethat goes with them.Susan Hadler,True LotusRecollection,practices withthe WashingtonMIndfulnessCommunity inWashington, D.C.the Mindfulness Bell 33