On the eve of his death, Dr. Martin Luther King said, “only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.” I think of this often — and especially lately, with so much darkness in our politics.
A month after the 2010 earthquake leveled Haiti’s capital city, I was visiting my mother in Los Angeles. She had been diagnosed with cancer, and was planning for the end of her life. Sitting on her hospital bed, on the 13th floor, I saw her tray begin to tremble and I felt the structure judder. “It’s moving, everything is moving!” I exclaimed. It was un-earthly in every way to plant your feet on the ground and feel a once reliable surface convulse. It’s a feeling that’s horribly familiar these days.
When my mother was felled by a stroke — at 39 — my father, together with a stream of neighbors and relatives, worked with her all day, every day for a year, until her mind and her body returned....
Read or listen to the rest here: http://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/01/18/haiti-dignity-ophelia-dahl