When I was in elementary school (at least a hundred years ago), I developed a ton of flat warts all across my forehead. I’m talking at least a bazillion.  I don’t know where they came from or how they got there.  It certainly wasn’t because I rubbed a frog all over my face, but frog or not, my forehead was covered in them.  If they had all run together (which they could easily have done, given their numbers), no one would have ever known.  My forehead would just have been fat.  But they didn’t so everyone did and my mother couldn’t stand it.  I had the perfect solution—bangs.  My hair was thick and I could easily hide behind it, but still I was hauled to one dermatologist after another in search of a cure.

The first one told my mother the oil from my hair was the culprit. So guess where my camouflage went?  Tucked up under a headband so the world could view my Lego-like forehead.  When that didn’t help, he decided I should be placed under a heat lamp long enough to charbroil my face—but to protect my eyes I got to wear tiny little John Lennon-like goggles.  I looked like a raccoon for weeks afterwards—beet red over my entire face except around my eyes and where the straps were that held them in place—the goggles that is.  Not my eyes.

She finally gave up on this particular doctor, especially when I told her I was tired of having the top three layers of my epidermis burned away. And his treatment didn’t work.  So off we went to another doctor and another option, this time involving dry ice.  After all, if extreme heat doesn’t work, we’ll just go in the opposite direction.

Note to everyone. Do not put dry ice on your forehead and leave it for extended periods of time.  The resulting headache is not worth whatever it is you are trying to achieve.

So off we go to doctor number 3, an elderly gentleman with offices somewhere in the vastness that is Memphis. He looked at my bang-less forehead, listened as my mother recounted the efforts of those who had come before him, and then just shook his head.  Warts are a virus.  So you treat them like a virus.  And he did with a magical little pill that cleared them up in a matter of days . . . or maybe weeks.  I don’t really remember.  I just know they were gone and I didn’t look like a raccoon or have a massive headache and I could wear bangs again.  I never wanted to kiss anyone’s feet as badly as I did his.

Why for, you may ask, have I given you such a detailed glimpse into a character-building/traumatic part of my childhood? Because of the moral to the story.  Don’t give up.  You don’t always have to keep trying what someone tells you is the solution—especially when it obviously does not work—but when it doesn’t, move on to Plan B . . . or C . . . or however many letters of the alphabet it takes.

Grieving people need that kind of lesson because what works for one person may be the worst possible idea for someone else. But somewhere there is something that will relieve the pain, even if only for a moment.  Perhaps it’s playing with the grandkids or listening to Beethoven’s 5 ^th Symphony in C Minor . . . or Glenn Miller’s version of almost anything.  It may be a walk in the woods or an hour spent by the lake.  You may find your relief in a room filled with friends or in the pages of a good book . . . by reaching out to others in need or by accepting their hand when someone reaches out to you.  The peace you find may be fleeting at first, but as time passes the periods of respite will hopefully grow longer in their duration as the constant pain fades.  Even if that process takes years, I believe a friend of mine hit the nail on the head when he offered these words of wisdom—words which I shall alter ever so slightly to fit this situation.  Any relief is better than nothing . . . when nothing is all you have.

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