Here If You Need Me
Maine Chaplain Kate Braestrup's Memoir of her Search-and-Rescue Work
After the sudden death of her husband, Kate Braestrup becomes a minister, and finds solace and meaning in helping others.
In Here If You Need Me, Kate Braestrup candidly describes her life as a Maine Warden Service chaplain, a profession that requires stamina and an openness to new (and often disturbing) experiences. From a search for a six-year-old girl who has wandered into a forest to the discovery of a snowmobiler's body beneath an icy lake, she keeps the reader riveted with fast-paced and lucid writing.
The Unromantic Wilderness
While Braestrup sympathizes with people who want to explore unfamiliar terrain, she knows that getting lost is always a real possibility. Wilderness is not quite so romantic a place when night comes on and you cannot find your way back. "Every year, someone who goes off into the wilderness realizes, one way or another, that he can't find his way out," she writes. "Communion with the natural world changes its flavor when it becomes involuntary and, apparently, interminable."
After witnessing a number of tragic situations in her work, she finds herself becoming more protective of her own four children, requiring that they wear helmets for many of their activities, and that they never ride on an ATV or snowmobile. (Becoming overly conscious of potential dangers is a common hazard of working in law enforcement, she notes.)
She jokes that she would make them wear flotation devices in the shower, if she could. Her children, described with both exasperation and affection, become accustomed to her frequent tirades on the dangers of drinking and drugs. "As a mother, I pray for miracles of the most ordinary kind on their behalf," she says. "I want their hearts to keep beating."
The Art of Consolation
Braestrup understands that her role as a minister is not so much to tend to the dead (though she blesses them through words and gestures), but to comfort the living. For the most part, her job is reactive rather than pro-active.
Though she says she would like to address the root causes behind many fatalities, to stand on a street corner shouting, "Do not drink and operate a boat, canoe, ATV or snowmobile!" what she has been hired to do is show up after an accident has occurred to offer consolation. She learns to do this better and better as time goes by.
Having been ordained a Unitarian Universalist, she reflects on some complex theological questions during her rescue missions, particularly on the meaning of miracles. Often, she reflects, "a miracle can only be the resurrection of love beside the unchanged fact of death."
Braestrup ministers not only to those who have lost loved ones, but also to the wardens, who have to cope with their own difficult emotions, especially when there is a bad outcome--the death of a child or a suicide.
The wardens have a variety of backgrounds and religious beliefs, but clearly appreciate her being there. When she prays for them she says, "May you be granted respite from what you must know of human evil, and refuge from what you must know of human pain."
The cover of Here If You Need Me shows a forthright and friendly-looking woman holding out a red mug, as if offering a cup of hot cocoa to the reader. It is a fitting image for her intriguing and true story.
Hachette Book Group/Little, Brown and Company 2007, ISBN 978-0-316-06630-3
