The Broken Places

In 1918, Ernest Hemingway briefly worked for the Red Cross on the Italian Front of WWI as an ambulance driver.  In 1929 his novel about a young American on the Italian front, A Farewell to Arms, was published. Hemingway’s writing style, perhaps more than any other American author of the early 20th Century, defined the ethos of his generation. He was a master of words, brief and long form. An urban legend exists that he wrote the saddest short story ever on a bet, comprised of exactly six words:  “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” It is a matter of great debate whether or not this story is true, but the fact that Hemingway could say more with less is indisputable. 

A Farewell to Arms contains a single paragraph that in less than a page drops more truth about love, life, depression, death and the vagaries of fate than some authors manage in an entire novel. Nestled in that paragraph is a line I’ve been thinking about a lot since the hurricane: 

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” 

Panama City is broken.  The place we call home is in pieces. My neighbor said as much to me last night: “everything is broken.”  Every day I drive down Harrison Avenue and there’s a new empty lot where a building used to stand.  The psychological beat down one takes every day just going about their usual business is immense.  There’s no escaping the destruction.  It is everywhere. The landscape has changed. Lives are changed forever. Nothing will ever be the same.  That right there—the knowledge that there is a before and an after and no other option—that takes a piece of your heart. 

But being broken is not the end of things:  even bone is strongest at its broken point during the healing process.  Cracks let the light shine through. The Gospel of John says “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”  Our broken pieces are just letting new light in; it is going to be different for sure but whether it is better is still up to us. 

We can let this adversity overcome us, or we can prevail and be strong at the broken places.   

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Isler & Sombathy, P.A.

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