Here, my story ends, as it must, for the man I am now, husband, father, university professor, writer, has no intention of telling you about himself. He wouldn’t know how, and he would only burden you. If he has recorded the first twenty years of his life at such length, it is because he believes they no longer belong to him as an individual but are an open book, for anyone to read who cares to. His dearest wish was to show, if only in part, what these years held of life, light and joy by the grace of God.

And now, in conclusion, why has this Frenchman from France written his book in the United States to present to his American friends today? Because today he is America’s guest. Loving the country and wanting to show his gratitude, he could find no better way of expressing it than in these two truths, intimately known to him and reaching beyond all boundaries.

The first of these is that joy does not come from outside, for whatever happens to us is within. The second truth is that light does not come to us from without. Light is in us, even if we have no eyes.

I finished the book by Lusseyran. I am glad it took me so long to get to it because I couldn’t have been more ready to receive the full wisdom of his words and experience. His account of life before, during, and after the WWII German invasion of France, the rise of the Vichy government, and imprisonment at Buchenwald yields a provocative counterpoint to our own times. I confess, with an immense amount of gratitude and some guilt, that I don’t really mind the new “normal.” In fact, I sometimes find myself dreading the day when it will end. But, I believe that my ability to adapt to sheltering-in-place has been in part because I was and am able to let go of the way things were before.

I was utterly struck by Lusseyran’s explanation for how he survived the concentration camp where so many others died:

To forget was the law. We had to forget all the missing, the comrades in danger, our families, the living and the dead. Even Jean must be forgotten, and not just to keep off suffering— in any case suffering had settled in with us as if we were a country under occupation—but rather to hold on to the strength to live. Memories are too tender, too close to fear. The consume energy. We had to live in the present; each moment had to be absorbed for all that was in it, to satisfy the hunger for life.

To bring this about, when you get your bread ration, don’t hoard it. Eat it right away, greedily, mouthful after mouthful as if each crumb were all the food in the world. When a ray of sunshine comes, open out, absorb it to the depths of your being. Never think that an hour earlier you were cold and that an hour later you will be cold again. Just enjoy.

Latch on to the passing minute. Shut off the workings of memory and hope. The amazing thing is that no anguish held out against this treatment for very long. Take away from suffering its double drumbeat of resonance, memory and fear. Suffering may persist, but already it is relieved by half. Throw yourself into each moment as if it were the only one that really existed. Work and work hard.

Life has been whittled down to its essence. Family, food, home, and opportunities to learn and make a difference, however small, in the world. I thought that I already knew this and was living my life accordingly. But, after weeks of sheltering in place, out of the notice of the public eye, bit by bit I have let go of the things that I thought the Platonic ideal of a stay-at-home mom should do. For now, I only do the things I want to do or need to do. And, life, right here, right now, is good.