When I was about four or five years old, my parents enrolled me in the NYSEC’s (New York Society for Ethical Culture) Sunday school program. The program focused on the question, “what is the right thing to do?”. Throughout the 8 or so years I spent in the program, I had a multitude of teachers/mentors. In the program when someone turns 13, they end the youth program and join the teen leadership program. The current teacher for both of these classes is a woman named Rita. Rita was my Sunday school teacher for 2 or 3 years, and I’ve been in the teen program since 2008ish. I chose to interview Rita because I’ve learned a lot from her, and she is definitely a person I’d look to for guidance. We didn’t talk about a text, but during a recent meeting, we read the book, “How Full is your Bucket?”. There are two versions of the book- an adult book, and a children’s picture book. We opted for the picture book.
The book follows a little boy who is mean to his little sister, so his grandpa tells him that everyone has a little bucket over their heads that empties a little every time they feel let down. The next day at school, bad things keep happening to him and his bucket is nearly empty. During recess he visualizes everyone with their bucket, getting fuller because they're playing and having fun. Throughout the afternoon, his bucket gets fuller, because people do nice things for him because he's feeling glum. When he gets home, he decides to play with his little sister, because he is so happy, and so her bucket can be full. I think that the morals around this story are interesting. The concept being taught to children is similar to the concept of karma (what goes around comes around, good or bad).
On the phone with Rita, we talked a lot about her personal feelings surrounding the dead. Most of what we talked about was on spirituality. She focused on a recent death of her friend Chris. He was married to her friend and they had a girl. Chris died due to cancer a few months ago, leaving his wife and five year old daughter behind. She said that recent events led her to believe that spirits do live on and effect the lives of people who they touched while alive.
The first strange event was when some adults were asking the five year old daughter if she understood what happened to her daddy. She said that he was at peace and was with Caroline now. This was strange because no one in the family ever talked about Caroline, who was Chris' mother. The next thing was that he lost his wedding ring a few months before his death, and once he did pass away, his wife was "really sad and depressed. She said 'Chris, I just need you to give me some sign that you are taking care of things- that i'm not alone'. She was angry that her dead husband left her with a mess". Right then, her nephew came out of her parent's bedroom and said that he had found the ring. The peculiar part though was that it was stuck between two mattresses- a strange place for the nephew to find it.
The last thing, that has really made Rita think more about spirits carrying on in the world, was a phone call. Chris' wife was sitting in her car, crying, when her phone started to ring. The caller ID was Chris. She picked up, somewhat angry, and asked why this person was calling her. The man on the other end said that she had in fact called him- which was not true. They had a little bit of a conversation and she explained to him what had happened, and he actually ended up living in their old neighborhood. This might not have had and extreme message or effect on Chris' wife, but it's just a really strange thing to happen. "He left in such an unfinished way, so young, his spirit...who knows...I'm open to the idea of spirits living on".
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