by Mary Bamburak
Cleveland
“Steer clear of Mary” was the near-official preamble of my department’s orientation for new nurses. “She’ll bite your head off.” I welcomed the warning, which kept the new hires away. Until, one day, we hired Phyllis, someone so dense my resentment of her company seemed not even to register. She’s pretending, I told myself. No one’s this oblivious. But dimly, in the far reaches of my mind, I heard a different protest: No one is this kind.
In February the same year, 1983, a friend of mine, a fellow nurse named Iris, fell ill and rapidly declined. In a matter of months she was on death’s door. Though I’d seen many people die, the thought of her death for some reason struck terror in my heart. I’d never seen Phyllis be strict, but she was with me then. “If she’s your friend,” she said, “you’ve got to see her. I’ll go with you.” Iris was unconscious when we arrived. Beside the bed, I overheard Phyllis murmuring into her palms, some kind of prayer: Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Phyllis, as it turns out, was a Buddhist. With her encouragement, I began chanting on my own. When one of my typical outbursts led to a three-day work suspension, I told Phyllis I wanted to receive the Gohonzon. Frankly, I didn’t notice any immediate changes, but one day overheard the nurses, crowded around Phyllis in the hall, asking whether I’d started chanting. “She has!” she replied. “Well, don’t let her stop!” Eight months later, I was named employee of the month.
My second husband, Tom, soon joined me in the practice. Gradually, I began to see and hear for myself the changes others had noticed in me. All my childhood, all I knew was anger; the only time I was ever touched was when I was getting hit. As a child, I made myself a promise, When I’m a mom, I’m gonna love my kids. I was 22 when I had my first child, and by 24, had my other two. My kids were beautiful, funny, smart and kind, but despite my childhood promise, they never heard it from me. I loved them and yet could never bring myself to tell them. A major transformation through Buddhist practice was my learning to hug my children and tell them just how much I loved them.
In 1986, my world shook when Tom was accused of a crime that carried a potential life sentence with no parole. Knowing the accusation was false did nothing to ease the tidal wave of emotions: anger, embarrassment, confusion, hurt. I was chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, it seemed, 24 hours a day; I even woke up chanting in the middle of the night.
Twice we went to trial. Our first lawyer was known as one who’d never lost a case. Only when offered a plea deal did we discover why. Take it, he warned—if we didn’t, Tom would spend his life in prison.
On trial was not only Tom but, as it happened, our faith. “The chanters” the prosecuting attorney called us, invoking an image of something satanic. The only people who stood by us at the time was our SGI family. Again and again, my women’s leaders came to chant with us. “If Tom is innocent,” they told me, “then we agree—don’t settle for less than victory.” The first trial and four grueling days of deliberation resulted in a hung jury. Afterward, our lawyer informed us that just one of the 12 had voted “not guilty.” Were we interested now, he asked, in a plea deal? We began searching for a new attorney.
Poring through the names of local lawyers, one rang a bell. He was a man I’d met years ago in the hospital in 1984, the same year my colleagues voted me nurse of the month. Admitted with an aggressive oral cancer, he’d regained both his health and his voice to make a swift return to law. He remembered me. He’d take the case, he said, and it would be his last. After this—retirement. A week later, he took the floor. With the same burning resolve that we’d brought night and day to the Gohonzon, he argued Tom’s innocence. In 70 minutes, the jury returned with its verdict. Unanimous: not guilty. Through tears, I watched our lawyer, daubing the sweat from his brow, cross the floor to chat with the jurors. Over the sound of the blood rushing through my ears, I overheard him vouching for me as a person, about how wonderful I’d been to him when he was my patient.
I kept a journal during that time, in which I recorded passages from Nichiren Daishonin and Ikeda Sensei that gave me hope. One was: “Now more than ever, you must neither show nor feel any fear. … You must grit your teeth and never slacken in your faith. Be as fearless as Nichiren. … Death comes to all, even should nothing untoward ever happen. Therefore, you must never be cowardly, or you will become the object of ridicule” (“Letter to the Brothers,” The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, vol. 1, p. 498). Through this battle, I learned that determined prayer can move the universe. It was a lesson I’d rely on every time I faced impossible odds.
I got the call from my eldest son, Adam, in the spring of 2010. He’d just received a diagnosis that I needed to hear. I asked him to wait a moment—decades of nursing sent me after pen and paper. When I had both, he told me he’d been given four months to live.
Time didn’t stop—it skipped. I stared down at what I’d written on the paper, scattered across the page: Adam. Cancer. Adam. Cancer. Adam. Cancer…
For several days I couldn’t bring myself to chant, couldn’t even open my altar. My women’s leaders came to encourage me, and within a few weeks, I sat before the Gohonzon and, full of doubt and fear, began to chant. Slowly, as I did, my fears quieted down. There was no use worrying, I realized. The matter was simple: victory or defeat. I began to chant in a way I never had before—not even during Tom’s trial. As I chanted, fear gave way to a ferocious resolve. I remember at one point addressing the universe—the negative functions of the universe—at the top of my lungs. “NOT MY SON!” And it was just roaring daimoku from there on out.
For the next four months, Adam went in for regular checkups. And then he went in for a fifth month, then a sixth. Month after month, he outlived his prognosis, surprising his doctor each time. Eventually, his condition stabilized and his doctor declared the cancer in remission. Fifteen years have passed since. When his doctor retired in 2023, he confessed to Adam, “This is not how I imagined I’d be saying goodbye to you.”
Something else happened that same year, which I imagine is related to my do-or-die daimoku for Adam’s life. Chanting in the relative calm that followed, I had a clear, diamondlike realization: My mother did her best. This earth-shaking realization was followed by another: I’m free. My life is mine. I can do whatever I choose with it. Even if my mother never changed, I realized, I could. Generations of hurt, angry women end now, I decided, with me.
Not long after, at a family gathering, my mother reached for my face and, instinctively, I flinched, thinking she meant to hit me. “I want to touch you,” she said. “You’re so beautiful.” I stood there dazed, as she brought her hand gently to my face. “You’ve become the woman I always wanted to be.” She’s changed, I realized. She’s no longer the person who raised me. Since, I’ve watched her coo and laugh and hug her great grandchildren, unimaginable to me as a child. Her warmth to me is proof that I’ve changed the karma of my family, “of the preceding seven generations and the seven generations that followed” (see “On Offerings for Deceased Ancestors,” WND-1, 820). The life I live today is worth every tear I’ve ever shed. With this wonderful Gohonzon and Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, I completely changed my family’s suffering into love and happiness.
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