The Chase for Beauty

I never took down my Christmas lights from last year.

I left a single strand across the top of the cabinets in my kitchen and lit them every time my heart sank and I felt the need to lift my spirits. In the last 12 months, that ended up being quite often.

I didn’t have a chance to take down the holiday decorations right away. A week after the New Year began, my 36-year-old brother, Don, unexpectedly showed up at my house on a Saturday morning to take me for a ride in his new car. We didn’t go anywhere special, but the time we spent together that day is a memory I will cherish.

The following Tuesday, after an ordinary day at work, Don collapsed at home from cardiac arrest.

When he reached the emergency room, his heart was shocked seven times and CPR was performed for 15 minutes before a heartbeat was obtained. I have been haunted all year by the unforgettable image of the helicopter he was transported in as it came in to land on the hospital roof that cold, rainy, miserable night. When a young neurologist prepared us that all hope may be lost, I suggested that perhaps we could still pray for a miracle. She shrugged at the notion and half-heartedly replied, “You can if you want to.”

Two days later, my brother woke up.

And so in the dead of winter, my family and I spent 50 days and nights stuck in a hospital purgatory where waiting for an outcome and praying for a miracle are the only diversions to critical situations. In the close quarters, you can often hear others calling out the name of their loved one or praying for God’s mercy to end their suffering.

One night, while sleeping on a chair in the critical-care waiting room, I was startled by a stranger in the middle of the night who came into the room to retrieve something. Realizing that he frightened me, the only words exchanged came from his whisper, “Have hope,” then reiterating as he squeezed my hand, “have hope.”

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One of the fastest ways to find the available grief support programs in your city is to do a Google search.

Simply go to google.com and search for the following:
grief counseling, (YOUR CITY, YOUR STATE)
For example, in Pittsburgh, I would type:
grief counseling, pittsburgh, pa

Hit “search,” and you should see a list of results like this:

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I recently came across two links that I wanted to pass on…. The first, funeralideas.com was created in honor of a young man named David. It contains an especially helpful section about grief and shares information about healthy grieving, as well as living and grieving (”the worst part of depression is falling out of happiness”).

The […]

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I have had 20 years of contact with Dr. Hurwitz, as a grandparent of a child with a cleft lip and palate, and also as a patient who had a tumor removed from my nasal cavity. Dennis has always given his all to treating my granddaughter. She had many surgeries in her 18 years as […]

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News footage about Karen’s death and the trial that became known across the country as the “Clockwork Orange Murder.”

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Now that we’re almost a week into this blog, I think it’s time to share our vision.

This site was created as a complement to The Chase for Beauty, a book about a prominent plastic surgeon whose daughter was murdered in her own backyard by a teenage friend. This true story covers both ends of the […]

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A few of you have asked if this blog is the main webpage for the book. The answer is no. This blog and these postings serve mainly as a discussion section–in fact, it’s only a piece of the picture.
If you visit www.thechaseforbeauty.com, you’ll find more book-related material. There is a trailer as well as other […]

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Throughout my search for grief support resources, I have been hard-pressed to find a comprehensive source of information. Even though it can be hard to quickly find what you’re looking for, the following sites are a good starting point:
The Center for Victims of Violence and Crime
Pittsburgh Meditation Center
Good Grief Center
UPMC Classes and Events
Please share any […]

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