Here If You Need Me by Kate Braestrup
True Story of a Widow Living Out Her Husband’s Dream
Aug 31, 2008
Kate and Drew had a good life. Their four children were healthy and happy, and they lived happily in Maine, enjoying their jobs as a write and state trooper, respectively. Then, early one morning, Drew left for work and everything changed: on the very roads that he served to protect, an oncoming driver lost control, and Kate lost her husband. Stunned with the loss, Kate decided to live on his mission and become a minister herself.
A New Life
Kate dove into her ministerial training, finding comfort within the courses she took and in the company she kept. She discovered that being surrounded by clergy was a comforting way to grieve for the loss of her husband, and the others taught her how to care for herself and others who might be in her situation. She learned from them and was able to take that knowledge and apply it to her new field of work.
She began working as a game warden chaplain for the state of Maine as a Unitarian Universalist, comforting friends and loved ones of those who were missing. Sometimes there were joyful outcomes, such as the six year old who had been chasing her dog and wandered alone into the woods. However, she also had to face many grim results, like the mother of an infant who left a suicide note in her car parked outside the woods.
An Honest Answer
Braestrup tells her story in this memoir with honesty and thoughfulness. Combining police procedurals with insights on life and death, she writes with grace and style. While she may not hold the answers to all of life’s tough questions (where do we go when we die?), she still does her best to answer them with honesty, integrity and love.
Each chapter, written in the first person, reads like an individual essay, with thoughts and observations on a day’s work. From the insights gleaned from search and rescue procedures to the interesting, if grisly, facts that she learns from the wardens (bears, for example, like to play ball with skulls – hence many skulls are found a distance away from the body to whom they belong), Braestrup tells it like it is, but with a large dose of integrity and kindness.
About Kate Braestrup
Kate Braestrup is one of the first chaplains appointed to the Maine warden service. Her novel Onion was published by Viking in 1990, and she has since published a series of magazine articles in Mademoiselle, Ms., City Paper, Hope and Law and Order. She lives in Maine with her husband and their children.
Braestrup, Kate
Here if You Need Me
New York, Back Bay Books, July 2, 2008
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