It was Christmas Eve night 2001 when Mom and I said our goodbyes. Our family (my husband and our three daughters) had come to town to visit her for the holidays. Standing at her back door the night before Christmas, we made plans for Christmas morning, and then Mom and I said our good-byes.

She threw her arms around me, pressed her soft cheek against mine and held me tight as we swayed left and right. She unclasped her arms and grabbed my upper arms and pushed me back a little bit and looked into my eyes. She put her hands up on either side of my face and said, “My beautiful, beautiful daughter. I love you.”

She hugged me again and said, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” I responded in kind. That was the last visit I had with my mother. As good-byes go, it was the best.

It was my expectation that she’d live far beyond January 2002. She was so healthy and strong. I had no inkling or idea that Christmas Even 2001 would be our last goodbye. This was an impossibly hard lesson to learn. Sometimes, people go to bed at night and leave for heaven in their sleep. Sometimes, there are no second chances to ask one more question. Sometimes, the last words you may ever hear someone say are, “Shut the door fast and don’t let the squirrels get in the house.”

It’s been eight years today and I still miss her so very much.

My mother with three of her granddaughters (about 1986)

Mom with her new granddaughter in Summer 1987

Today’s headlines report that major marketers are withdrawing their prime-time ads featuring Tiger Woods. And the rest of the media headlines crackle with excitement over the man’s quick fall from grace. Comments posted at blogs and news sites are not especially kind either. In fact, some of them are downright ugly.

There’s a word for this:  schadenfreude.

It’s a German word that means delighting in the misfortune of others. I had never heard of this word until I was doing some research for my book The Ugly Woman’s Guide to Internet Dating: What I Learned From 70 First Dates. Before this, I’d heard it described as “The Crab Theory.”

Put one crab in a five-gallon bucket and Mr. Crab will do everything in his power to scale its smooth wall and crawl out of that bucket. Put two or more crabs in a bucket and when one starts to climb up, the others will grab him and pull him back down into the bucket. Unfortunately, humans sometime exhibit the same tendencies as crabs.

In my own life, I’ve struggled mightily with envy, and I’m sorry to say that too many times, I had a decided leaning toward the crab/schadenfreude side.

And then one day, I read a story in the Christian Science Sentinel about a woman who’d spent a lifetime cultivating the habit of gratitude. She said that her mother had taught her to feel sincerely joyous and grateful for the good things that happened in other people’s lives, and to take it as a personal promise from God that, if it happened for them, it could happen for her, too.

The Buddhist have a word for this: Mudita. It’s the practice of finding joy in other people’s success and happiness.

Tiger and people like him are human beings. And we’re all cracked pots and fallible and prone to foibles and missteps and mistakes and even lapses in good judgment. Who among us hasn’t lost our temper and said something we deeply regret? Who among us hasn’t surrendered to temptation when we could have done better? My point is, maybe the real need is to stop staring so hard at other people’s sins and take a better look at our own shortcomings and work on improving those.

Maybe we need to stop cultivating the habit of schadenfreude and work on mudita.

We’re all doing our best and we all make plenty of regrettable mistakes.  Why not let Tiger slip off the front page and give him some privacy to work out his many problems and shortcomings?

Speaking of which, time for me to slip into the closet of prayer and work on my own mistakes and problems and shortcomings and sins. That’ll keep me plenty busy.

My beloved mother died the first day of 2002. And then my marriage of 24 years ended abruptly. And then two of my children moved far away. And I ended up with 50% custody of “the baby” - my then 14-year-old daughter. This all happened in the first six months of 2002. Many nights, I wondered if I’d survive all this stress and change.

One night, during this difficult time in my life, I had a dream that I was in a burned out forest. Burnt-out stubs of trees still smoldered from the intense heat of the forest fire. Charred debris and pieces of still-smoking branches littered the forest floor. It was a scene reminiscent of hell itself. In the middle of this blackened landscape, I was lying on my side in a fetal position atop an oval-shaped oasis of green, lush grass. As I rose to my feet, I saw an angel stand up with me. I saw that I’d been shielded from the awful heat and flame by the wings of this angel, carefully covering over my body, protecting me as a mother eagle protects her young. As I stood up, the angel spoke.

“Every remnant of your old life is gone,” she said. “But a new life will grow out of the very ashes of this old life. The old has been cleared away to make room for the new. This is not just an ending but a new beginning. You’re going to survive this and the second half of your life will be very, very good. Hang on. Don’t give up.”

About two years after I had this amazing dream, I finally shared it with a friend. I was visiting his town to give a talk on Sears Homes and we had dinner together at a local restaurant a couple hours before the talk. I’ll remember his response for the rest of my life.

“Soon after Mt. St. Helens erupted,” he told me, “I visited that site. It was only a few weeks after the mountainside was decimated by flowing lava and fire, but already, down in the ashes of that burned out forest, you could see thousands of tiny green sprouts poking up toward the light. The ranger told our group that the ash actually fertilizes and prepares the soil for the new crop of trees. It’s amazing how fast a burned out forest can grow again.

“When people go through an experience such as you had, where they lose everything, they either get bitter or they grow and evolve in ways they never dreamed possible. You chose to grow. You chose to follow a dream and turn your dream into a career. You’re one of the most successful people I believe I’ve ever met.”

His comments touched my heart and soul. After our talk, I walked out of the restaurant feeling about 10 feet tall and I had a new view of myself. Later that night, this good and decent man attended my lecture and when it ended, he shook my hand and said, “It was an honor to meet you. You’re a remarkable woman and I meant what I said. You’re one of the most successful people I’ve ever met.”

I wrote those words down in my journal and also put a copy of my bathroom mirror. The lovely aroma of this man’s kind words have remained with me for many years.