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An Apostle’s Tale 1.3 – The Gift of the Storm

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The water jug in his arms was an item of considerable value to his impoverished house, and he dashed it to the ground at his feet, a ruin.

He reached for the tiny amulet hanging around his neck, fumbling like a man who’d lost the proper use of his hands. It was a flat disc no bigger than the iris of Asha’s eye, crudely etched with powerful commands and strung by a thin fishgrass cord. It was, in fact, armor stolen from an unlucky umbrella-shell slug that once crept along the bottom of the Great Green, and how it had come to rest in Bibleb-Akhet he neither knew, nor, at that moment, cared. Seizing the charm tightly in one fist, he struck himself in the mouth much harder than magically necessary, and certainly harder than he’d intended.

“Bibleb eats the storm. The body of the storm is the strength of Bibleb. Behold, the storm is consumed. Bibleb eats the storm.”

He raced back to Asha, slung her beneath one arm and, as she hollered her objections, raced up the trail toward Bibleb-Akhet, shouting as he ran.

“Storm! Storm!” he screamed, through the gathering winds. By the time he reached the village Osiris had disappeared completely behind a veil of blown dust and sand. Already well aware of the descending peril, the villagers were dashing about collecting their animals, herding them inside their tiny huts, and frantically muttering “Bibleb eats the storm, Bibleb eats the storm…” Bib-useka raced to his own dwelling, flung aside the heavy fish-grass mat that was its door, and stepped into the cramped, windowless interior. By the flickering light of a single oil lamp, he could see that his wife, Tinet, was exactly where he’d left her – laying upon a thin blanket upon the packed-earth floor, her small, calloused hands folded over the great mound of her pregnant belly, her legs spread wide apart and her dark eyes round with fear. He set Asha down atop a pile of loose fish-grass against the back wall, and was momentarily horrified to see wet blood spattered on her face and arms.

“What happened, Asha?” he demanded. “Where are you hurt?”

Alarmed by her father’s tone, Asha-shen merely started crying and pointing at his chest, which is when Bib-useka became aware that his energetic prayer in the desert had cracked open his lip, resulting in the bloody cascade that now covered him from chin to sandals. Sighing with relief, he turned away from his disconsolate daughter and knelt beside Tinet.
“It’s a storm?” she asked. There was a hint of panic in her voice, but only a hint.

“It’s a storm.”

“Where’s the water?”

“We’ll have to make do with what we have.”

Tinet gasped as a strong contraction gripped her.

“Nopet isn’t here yet,” she panted. “She’s supposed to midwife. Did you see her?”

“No, but Nopet won’t be coming,” Bib-useka said, trying to sound relaxed and confident. “Don’t worry. I know what to do.”

“This child is not a goat,” Tinet said. “I want Nopet.”

“Nopet will have her own troubles just now. We’ll be alright.”

Tinet’s labors lasted all that night, and all the next day, and for all of the two days after. Every hour, it seemed to Bib-useka, the storm increased in anger and doubled in violence. A slight, but steady rain of grit sifted into the gloomy hut through the small smoke-hole in its roof. He lit incense before the household’s shrine to Bibleb, enticing the god to ease Tinet’s labors. The aromatic resin – a costly commodity Bib-useka had sacrificed much to acquire and now burned with desperate profligacy – added its fragrant vapors to the dense pall of oil lamp fumes until the room’s atmosphere could almost be felt with the fingertips.

Every so often Tinet screamed in pain. When she did, Asha screamed in sympathetic alarm. Each time they screamed, Bib-useka’s heart exploded within his chest. He was frequently tempted to step outside and gather his composure, but he knew without looking that he would find no relief under the storm’s gritty lash.

Fact was, despite the hut’s thick mud-brick walls, little of the screaming could be heard against the howling gale and the sinister hissing of high-velocity sand. In theory, at least, humble Egyptian “beehive” houses were proof against sandstorms, but more than one in Bibleb-Akhet’s history had collapsed under the onslaught of a Lybian storm, and that would spell disaster for his wife and daughter and unborn child. They rationed their water, ate sparingly, recited spells over their charms and prayed to Bibleb.

Just before the fourth dawn, on the twelfth day of Drought, in the sixth year of the blessed reign of Pharoah Amenhotep III, Great Spear and Shield of the Two Lands, Tinet gave birth to a boy. He appeared to be healthy and whole, and flailed his arms and legs with proper energy, and gave every indication of wailing satisfactorily, although it was impossible to be certain within the terrible din. Bib-useka swabbed his first-born son with the cleanest scrap of linen he could find, tied off his umbilical cord with a fragment of fish-grass twine, and gently placed him at his wife’s breast. Then he collapsed and lay for a long time as still and senseless as a corpse.

The storm blew itself out that morning. The winds died as quickly as they’d risen, leaving deafening silence and enormous drifts of sand in their wake. The gods of Lybia had said their piece and could do no more. The Children of Bibleb emerged from their homes to survey the damage and locate the carcasses of livestock left outside and killed by the storm. The unhappy creatures would need to be butchered before the flesh became too rotten to eat. If their loss was a heavy blow to their owners, at least the village would eat well for a few weeks.

Knowing that Tinet had been due, a neighbor thought to look in on the little family. He kicked away a low drift of sand, tossed off a friendly Opening-of-the-Door chant and swung the mat aside, allowing a flood of fresh air and sunlight to enter the stifling room.

“Congratulations,” he smiled. “Looks like you have a son.”

“Bibleb is great,” said Bib-useka, moving nothing but his lips.

“What’s his name?”

Long custom dictated that males of Bib-useka’s line be named to increase the glory of their god and indicate the possessor’s fervent devotion to Bibleb. Bib-useka, whose name meant “Bibleb’s Ox”, merely gave an almost imperceptible shrug and tiredly rolled his eyes toward Tinet. His wife opened her eyes, looked at the baby in her arms, and them closed them again.

“His name is Djamose,” she whispered. “The Storm Gave Birth to Him’.”

An Apostle’s Tale 1.2 – The Red Birds

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Ra awakened in the east and rose as Khepera, the scarab beetle.

By late morning he’d shed his mighty carapace, allowing the full glory of his personage to fall upon the earth. Several hours later, as he sank low toward the western horizon, he assumed the crown and wrappings of Osiris, in which guise he would descend into the Underworld. Far below, holding a cracked clay pot in one hand and towing his four-year-old daughter with the other, Bib-useka barely registered the approach of evening.

“Pardon me, ladies,” he said, apologetically shouldering his way through a small knot of women idly chatting in the dusty lane. “I need water.”

The village’s main street was really a path, or perhaps more correctly an alley, albeit one with the olfactory aspect of a sewer, winding through the middle of Bibleb-Akhet’s two-score mud huts. A child of 10 could, at any point along its length, easily stretch out their hands and touch the crumbling walls on either side. Besides the bevy of biddies, traffic was further impeded by a smattering of dogs, roving squadrons of chickens and the occasional donkey that had inadvertently wandered into the reeking maze and had yet to find its way out.

“Blessings on you, Bib-useka,” the women cried, shuffling aside and touching the man and child with their hands as they hurried past. “And may Bibleb’s strength be upon Tinet this night!”

Tossing distracted thanks back over his shoulder, Bib-useka raised the pot before him like a warship’s ram and plowed on, shortly emerging into the orange-painted late-afternoon desert and tacking south along a well-beaten track thickly littered with shards of broken pottery. A cat missing one ear and about half of its fur tailed them a short distance into the waste, then grew suddenly and crushingly bored and lay down where it was. The air was perfectly still, and the dust disturbed by his daughter’s racing feet hung in the air behind her like a rare morning fog. That would have struck Bib-useka as ominous if he’d been inclined to notice.

“Slow down!” Asha-shen complained. His only child was named “Abundant Hair” because she’d been born with a full six inches of dark, gossamer tresses falling down over her still-unopened eyes, which tresses were now bound together in a thick braid that stretched down to her heels and swung wildly behind her as she galloped along. “Why do we have to run?”

“Because mommy needs water, sweetie.”

Bibleb-Akhet’s only source of water was a muddy well at the bottom of a deep wadi a good half-mile distant. Lined with nothing more substantial than native dirt and endless toil, the well was forever falling in upon itself and the men of the village were forever digging it out again. North and south of the well, winding between high crumbling banks for a hundred yards in either direction, the wadi’s floor resembled an unlikely green river of vines and trees and grasses. It was there, 50 feet below the Red Land’s scorching face, that the Kher-Bibleb cultivated what fruits and vegetables and animal greens as could be coaxed from the stubborn stream-bed to sustain the meager life/health/strength of Bibleb’s Horizon. A sturdy stone basin perpetually full of sparkling sy-Sobek product ranneth over a short walk east of the village, but that liquid treasure was quite expressly not intended to refresh the Children of Bibleb. As he and Asha made their careful way down the steep, narrow defile leading to the gully’s bottom, Bib-useka silently prayed that he would, just this once, find the troublesome hole intact. To his surprise, it was. He set down his jug and dropped to his knees, bending low and gently striking his forehead on the well’s uneven rim.  

“Hapi will open his mouth and water will pour forth,” he murmured, eyes closed. “Blessed is the gift of Hapi, may his breasts never wither.” He kissed the dirt, shifted ninety degrees and repeated the ritual, then again, then again, until he was certain that Hapi had no valid procedural reason to withhold his benediction. “Hapi is satisfied,” he said, rising to his feet. “Behold his bounty.”

He ordered Asha to stay put. She was happy to, contentedly squatting down and drawing pictures of birds in the packed earth with her tiny finger and softly humming to herself.  Bib-useka quickly lowered the well’s ragged goat-skin basket hand-over-hand into its dark mouth until, perhaps 30 feet down and just beyond the reach of the dying light, he heard it strike water with a muted splash.

“Well, thank Bibleb for small favors,” he muttered, hauling up the rough, fish-grass rope. He was rewarded with a half-gallon of milky brown water. It took about 10 minutes to fill the pot. As anxious as he was, Bib-useka carefully coiled the rope next to the well’s mouth and fortified it with a brief protection spell for good measure. Water and the rituals associated with it were matters of considerable gravity to the people of Bibleb-Akhet.

“The birds are red,” Asha said, regarding her artworks with curiosity.

“Yes, Asha. Red birds.”

Bib-useka hoisted the jar in both hands and started back up the path.

“Stay right behind me. Hurry up, Asha.”

They climbed back onto even ground and retraced their steps toward Bibleb-Akhet, the father’s eyes staring blankly at the beaten earth, his attention already far ahead. Despite the heavy burden in his arms and the even heavier one on his mind, Asha-shen’s father was nevertheless instantly aware when the rapid patter of her footsteps behind him suddenly stopped. He turned impatiently, silently cursing even that momentary delay, but the admonishment that rose in his throat never made it to his lips.

His daughter’s face, ordinarily rather pale for an Egyptian, was the color of boiled beets and facing directly west.

“It’s red, like the birds.”

The tiny square teeth peeping through her smile looked as though they’d been tearing at a fresh kill. Her eyes glinted like polished onyx set down in blood-red pools. Erratic gusts of wind softly played with the loose hair around her temples, blowing them first forward, then back. Bib-useka cursed himself as he realized the whole barren expanse within his field of vision was awash in crimson light. Somehow in his preoccupation he’d failed to receive the warning sent up by the spirits of Asha-shen’s crude representations, and managed not to notice that the world was on fire. He spun around to face the setting sun. Where one would expect to see Osiris shining like burnished copper, the King of the Underworld had instead donned a scarlet cloak and the black underworld seemed to be boiling up through the dim heat-haze to meet him.

“Damn,” he said, instantly chilled to the bone. Bib-useka knew the desert, depended on it for his livelihood and lived at its mercy. “Damn.”

An Apostle’s Tale 1.1 – A People Apart

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A person blessed to accompany Ra on his daily voyage across the blue vault of heaven,  and assuming they weren’t instantly reduced to ashes by intimate proximity to his blistering majesty and were of a botanical frame of mind, might liken Egypt to a lotus flower.

Sprouting in Nubia’s impoverished soil, the Nile’s graceful, green stem winds north between forbidding wastes for hundreds of miles before blossoming into a broad, fertile delta on the shores of the Great Green sea. To those privileged to dwell therein, the favored country between was Kemet, “The Black Land”, a term of endearment recognizing both its rich black soil and the healthy balance sheets it typically produced.

Just once along the Nile’s journey, and while still a very long march from the sea, that wondrous tendril of life and industry sends forth a single, vast leaf that unfurls into the Western Desert’s bleak heart farther than a swift camel can plod in a day and a night. In dimmest antiquity, the reptile-rich salient known as Ta’ sy-Sobek – the Land of the Lake of Sobek, in homage to Egypt’s perilous crocodile god – was little more than a glorified oasis, a sweltering natural sink into which pooled such Nile waters as survived the long westerly seep beneath the sands. That was before an ambitious partnership of high-minded elites bethought itself to conscript entire divisions of low-cost laborers to dig a colossal ditch connecting Ta’ sy-Sobek directly with the Nile’s invigorating flood, a stroke of conceptual, organizational and profitable genius that transformed a compact district of mild prosperity into an enormous region embracing some of Egypt’s most valuable and fecund real estate.

Each year at Inundation, stone-lined canals bore sy-Sobek’s life-giving waters far into the arid hinterland, and carried regular bumper-crops of wheat, barley, flax, and fruits and vegetables of all kinds back to the lake for transshipment to hungry markets near and far. Great quantities and varieties of fish inhabited the vast lagoon, and once the better part of Sobek’s inconvenient physical manifestations had been rounded up and sacrificed to his greater glory, casting nets into sy-Sobek was as safe as it was lucrative. “Shai-nefer Sobek”, the inhabitants called themselves, the Lucky of Sobek, and never tired of congratulating themselves on their good fortune. At the extreme western tip of that bountiful leaf, perched precariously between green plenty and parched desolation, hunched the decidedly unfortunate village of Bibleb-Akhet.

The view from “Bibleb’s Horizon” was somewhat less grand than that suggested by its name. Its western horizon encompassed only desert, the “Red Land”, and not a majestic desert of shifting dunes and laden caravans and powerful spirits, but a depressing wilderness of sharp stones and burning salt pans and hostile demons. To the east, at once depriving and sparing the village the constant prospect of that tantalizing paradise so near at hand, rose a long, low fold of earth gently wandering north and south that bore little resemblance to teeth and was known locally as Ibhi Wadjet – “Wadjet’s Teeth” – Wadjet being the ancient patron goddess of Lower Egypt often depicted in the form of a serpent, and her presumed teeth represented by a crumbly scattering of squat honey-hued boulders haphazardly strewn across the rise’s not particularly snake-like crest.

Flanked by forbidding wastes on one side and an unlovely natural fence on the other, Bibleb-Akhet’s some 200 souls occupied a miserable ribbon of thirsty disappointment perhaps a quarter-mile wide and characterized by blighted earth, scorching winds and pointed isolation. To the happy multitudes native to Ta’ sy-Sobek’s far-western reaches, Bibleb-Akhet was “Dung-Town”, a sadly fitting appellation since, perchance observed from Ra’s speeding chariot, its few dozen mud dwellings looked like nothing so much as a jackal’s latrine. Its residents, by predictable extension, were generally, and without the softening influence of jest, referred to as Dung-Eaters, which was patently unfair, because although the self-described Children of Bibleb stooped to dine upon a great many things not typical of better-supplied tables, so also the Kher-Bibleb retained sufficient pride and means enough to avoid that basest of fare when there was even a small chance of being observed eating it.

In essence and in fact, the citizens of Bibleb-Akhet were a people apart, which is a surprisingly difficult thing to be. Whether by commerce, or romantic blending, or common cause, or mere curiosity, it is the natural tendency among human populations to mingle. People like to belong, and they like everyone else to belong alongside them. Indeed, Egypt had no shortage poor villages strewn along its vast periphery that managed to find acceptance within the larger polity, and any number of stubbornly dissimilar tribes and sects and insular factions that nonetheless enjoyed public tolerance and respect. Even determinedly anti-social classes like thieves and murderers, and roundly unpopular ones like foreign exiles and damaged slaves, could expect a secure, if humble, seat at Pharoah’s unifying table. But not the Children of Bibleb, a de facto banishment made even more remarkable by the fact that the unhappy citizens of Bibleb-Akhet were in most ways indistinguishable from those who shunned them. They wore clothing identical to – if shabbier than – those of their disdainful neighbors, spoke no language other than Egyptian, were steeped in the country’s customs and lore, and had inhabited their disagreeable acreage for time out of mind. Yet, in the national consciousness, and to a somewhat lesser extent their own, they remained little better than strangers in a familiar land, refugees in their own country, a tainted people unfit for better station.

Just as the exalted may discern things not plain to lesser creatures, so those of more humble perspective may more easily recognize the profane truths lying beneath their betters’ elevated horizons. If the mighty, for example, will confidently predict the gross market value of a season’s yield of swine manure, so the meek will contrive a dozen practical uses for it. Alas, were the tendencies of those dwelling in high branches toward detached abstraction confined solely to the collection and sale of pig excrement, life among the roots would smell a good deal sweeter. As it is, the loftiest – subject to the same base passions and corporeal frailties that govern the low – forever strive to order heaven and earth to suit their own interests and appetites, a process by which even small differences in stature often foster wide practical disparities.

            On the eighth day of Drought, in the sixth year of the blessed reign of Pharoah Amenhotep III, Great Spear and Shield of the Two Lands, the parched and impoverished gods of Libya gathered together their collective resentments, simmering jealousies and sulky indignations into a towering fit of pique and sent it spinning across the sands against their age-old adversaries, the smugly superior gods of the Nile. When the powerful start throwing punches, of course, the blows inevitably fall most heavily on those least able to absorb them, and while Egypt’s sacred menagerie relaxed at ease, secure behind massive stone walls and attended by the soothing devotions of priestly armies, the long-suffering faithful of Bibleb-Akhet sat ignorant and helpless on the edge of ruin, oblivious to the divine tantrum howling down upon them.

Smiling through the tears – Camp Comfort helps bereaved children find their smiles

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Last weekend, as on most summer days, the Rocky Mountain Village Easter Seals Camp at Empire Junction was alive with children’s shouts and laughter.

Dozens of kids between the ages of 6 and 12 spent two glorious days hiking Clear Creek Canyon’s green heights, singing time-tested campfire songs, eating hearty camp chow and bunking down with new friends on rustic camp beds. To grown-up eyes, it all looked wonderfully innocent, carefree and life-affirming – a Norman Rockwell picture of idyllic childhood memories.

But there was plenty on last weekend’s camp schedule besides horseback riding and watercolors. For instance, each camper was asked to describe how they felt when their secure little worlds exploded.

“In my shoulders I felt afraid,” said a pony-tailed angel named Emily, who lost her dad to cancer last year. Maybe 8 years old, Emily wore pink socks and an over-sized pink sweatshirt. Like the eight others in her “Chipmunks” group, she’d tried to plot the course of her personal tsunami on an outline of her thin 4-foot frame traced on an Emily-sized piece of paper. She spoke clearly, but seemed unsure of whether she wanted to giggle or to cry.

“In my arms I felt sleepy,” Emily continued. “In my mouth I wanted to yell.”

One at a time, the other children in Rocky Mountain Village’s picturesque Genesee Hall took their turn, sometimes confidently, sometimes quietly, sometimes tearfully, reliving the darkest hour of their darkest day. The small audience listened with sincere interest. It was ground they knew well.

“In my stomach I felt worried.”

“I felt cold in my legs.”

“My heart is where I felt lonely.”

After half an hour of intense personal revelation, the Chipmunks packed up their tracings, put on their shoes and ran chattering out the door. It was time to try the camp’s zip-line, and serious matters blew instantly away in the clean mountain breeze. That’s how it goes at Camp Comfort.

“Probably the most striking thing about kids is that, unlike adults, they can alternate their grief,” explained Camp Comfort co-director Wendy Snow, a social worker with the Mount Evans Hospice. “They can spend an hour talking and crying about the death of a parent or sibling, then turn right around and go fishing, and really have fun doing it. They’re amazing.”

For that matter, Camp Comfort is amazing. The Mount Evans Home Health and Hospice program is one of precious few in the country specifically designed to help children deal with grief. Today, the program runs two weekends a summer and is attracting favorable notice from coast to coast. In theory, the camp costs $150 per weekend per child but, in practice, virtually no one is ever turned away.

“Sally Wandling is the person who really got Camp Comfort started, and she used to say that children are the forgotten grievers,” Snow said. “It’s true. When a parent’s spouse dies, they’re often overwhelmed by their own grief and all the other stuff that comes after a death, and the child’s grief gets forgotten. It’s nobody’s fault, it’s just what happens.”

To supplement the natural restorative powers of fresh air, lush forests and soaring vistas, each camper is issued a short workbook to fill out. Called “Healing My Heart,” it not only gives surviving parents a crucial road-map to what’s on their child’s mind, it’s often a grieving child’s first opportunity to assess their own situation.

“It makes them think about what’s happened, and how it’s affected them,” said Snow’s co-director, Barb Lamperski. “Kids don’t really know how to talk about their grief, and in schools they don’t have anyone to talk to who will ask the questions and listen to the answers. At Camp Comfort, they get to talk to other kids who’re going through what they’re going through. It makes losing a loved one seem more normal and less scary.”

Down at the fishing dock, where a handful of volunteers from Evergreen Trout Unlimited were hosting their customary and decidedly low-impact fishing clinic, Littleton twins Jeff and Joe, who lost their mom rather suddenly to illness, looked perfectly normal and didn’t seem scared at all. Tall, red-haired and 13, the brothers took turns casting into a well-stocked trout pond. After only a few throws, Joe hooked a spirited 10-inch rainbow, proudly admired it for a moment or two, and then released it back into the water.

“I like all the activities, and I really liked the zip-line,” said Joe, his soft smile at once genuine and tentative. “You get to do a lot of stuff you don’t normally do. It’s fun.”

“It was pretty tough at first,” admitted Jeff. “When you have to tell your story, it’s really tough to talk about. But once you get through it and you hear everybody else’s stories, it’s nice to know that other kids have gone through the same thing.”

At Camp Comfort, that willingness to speak frankly about tragic loss and suffocating grief can be disconcerting, even shocking, to the uninitiated. But if the campers are candid about their broken hearts, they don’t dwell on them. Pain is merely an overfull piece of baggage they bear in common, and sharing its weight between them lightens the load for all. But it could be hard to hear, just the same.

“The rules all changed, and everything was different. I just didn’t want to talk about it.”

“I was sad, but it kind of felt nice that people who didn’t used to like me were nicer to me.”

“It’s nice when people say you look just like them.”

One of the most important amenities Camp Comfort offers its guests is a ready-made buddy. At check-in on Friday evening, each child was assigned a dedicated guide and companion to help orient them to camp life, listen to whatever needed listening to, and generally behave as a good buddy should.

“Leaving home after a parent dies can be scary, and we want the kids to feel safe and secure and to know that we’re going to take good care of them,” Snow explained. “The buddies are theirs for the weekend, and their only job is to devote all of their attention to the child and do whatever they want to do. Buddies are all volunteers, and they aren’t counselors, per se. They’re here to be the child’s friend.”

And that’s exactly what they looked like. Walking side-by-side and sometimes hand-in-hand, little people and their big people were everywhere seen smiling and chatting like old chums. Jeff’s old chum happened to be Golden resident Pat O’Connell, who’s finishing up his 6th year as a Camp Comfort buddy. While O’Connell freely admitted that a free weekend at camp is its own reward, he wasn’t in it for the s’mores.

“I had a friend who passed away many years ago, and another friend said I should do Camp Comfort,” explained Pat, standing just out of range of Jeff’s flailing hook. “It’s a good perspective re-set. It really makes you re-focus on what’s important.”

Across the way, the Owls assembled in the art cabin to paint colorful pictures of everyone in their lives who still loved and cared for them. With just two days to reach diverse wounded psyches, Camp Comfort takes a layered approach that seeks as much to engage as to educate. Once the markers come out, kids who could hardly utter a sound in the feelings workshop become eloquent in bright blues and reds and yellows.

“Children express themselves in different ways,” Snow said, “so we reach out to them in different ways.”

Somewhere down the valley, beyond the aspen groves to the east, a sudden eruption of squeals and hollering indicated where the “Eagle” group was trying out Rocky Mountain Village’s combination climbing tower and zip-line platform. One by one, the fledglings climbed about 25 feet to that high aerie, hooked onto a stout metal cable and took wing. Within the space of 100 yards, screams of utter terror became screams of ecstatic triumph and ended as the kind of joyous, non-specific screams that nobody over 18 can truly comprehend. But is pure exhilaration and childish delight really pertinent to Camp Comfort’s worthy mission? Absolutely.

“If this was just a grief camp where everybody sat around and cried, nobody would come, and it wouldn’t do the kids any good,” said Snow, as another shrieking meteor zzzinged overhead. “Fun is a great way to deal with grief, because it gets you out of your down-and-out mood. And it’s a good lesson for the kids that it’s okay to have fun even if you’re sad. It’s okay to feel happy.”

If smiles and good cheer are anything to go by, Camp Comfort works. Nearly 50 young children, each with a very good reason to feel angry, depressed and bitter, went home after last weekend’s adventure far stronger and healthier than when they arrived.

“The other day a mom called me,” Snow said. “She told me her son hadn’t cried since his father had died, but when she picked him up from camp he started talking about his dad and crying as soon as he got in the car. They talked about him and cried the whole way home. She was just so glad and relieved. What happens here is so important, and so wonderful.”

If Snow has a filing cabinet full of success stories to warm her during the winter months, the story that most closely concerns Evergreen resident Bill Lathrop is his buddy Trevor’s. Trevor was just 10 years old when his big brother, Tyler, was struck and killed by a motorist while riding his bicycle near his Arvada home two years ago.

“It happened on the last day of school,” Trevor said.

Last weekend was Trevor’s second tour at Camp Comfort, the same as Bill.

“The first year was really hard, but it’s easier this year,” said Trevor, softly but steadily. “I like having a buddy, and because I was here before I can help the new kids. It’s a little scary, at first.

“I wasn’t really sure I wanted to come here the first time, but now I’m glad I did. It really helped. I feel a lot better.”