Inspired by Clara Maass + Reaching for the Light

This is a post from Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville. I’m not sick, thank God, nor am I here to visit someone who is.

I am in a conference room where my support group meets on Sunday mornings--a 13-minute ride from my home. Before COVID, this was a very popular meeting, and met in a much larger room here. It still is very well attended, although most participants are on Zoom.

A few of us still come in person, sitting socially distanced and carefully masked, and we are grateful for the opportunity. The gift. 

It has been almost two years of every other support group I go to meeting on Zoom. Two.years. March.2020.

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I’ve been longing to write but our TV/internet bill is overdue. It is very hard to write on an iPhone Mini screen. We can scramble to pay the bill, but we will be getting the $$ quote tomorrow for receiving Sugar’s ashes.

We spent a lot over the holidays, like many, including travel expenses to and from Maine, gifts etc. etc.

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So who was this mysterious Clara Maass? I know she was a nurse. When I drive into the hospital grounds, I see a blowup of this black and white photograph over the parking garage.

Here is the link to her life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Maass

Clara Louise Maass (June 28, 1876 – August 24, 1901) was an American nurse who died as a result of volunteering for medical experiments to study yellow fever. 

She was born in nearby East Orange, the oldest of nine children in a poor family of German immigrants. 

What a brave woman. Pretty sure Clara did not have the luxury or time to be deeply depressed. She was busy supporting her family and trying to save lives. (People were paid to be infected by mosquitoes carrying yellow fever....to help find a cure.)

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I have to go now. I have to drive back to Montclair. I plan to stop at Brookdale Park and walk a loop on the track.

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I want to get back to being helpful and bright. Loving and kind. I want to be able to see the social media photo of Tom Crutchfield--the very stylish dresser who worked behind the Annick Goutal jewel box of a fragrance counter at Bergdorf Goodman, on the Beauty Level--and tell him I love his sherbet-colored, ruffled shirt.

When you are down and depressed, writing even a simple "love your shirt, Tom, and we love Joe Allen Restaurant too" can take too much effort. Can’t dig that deep and bring goodness. Wallowing in sorrow. Our fluffy white Sugar is gone, and I’m also making big efforts to bid goodbye to sugar the substance.

On we go. May the spirit of Clara Maass somehow bring me up.