About two years ago, my wife and I mounted a six foot long white board on our office wall. We got it for free from some local medical students who had never managed to hang the giant object, and for months it was home to anatomic diagrams of cows and horses and medication lists for cats and dogs.
More recently, though, it’s become the household organizational hub. It holds a list of dates and destinations – externship destinations for my wife who is finishing her veterinary degree and work travel for me. This is the whirlwind that comes with this sort of ending; instead of the dances, concerts, and ceremonies that cap many other graduations, my wife has been jetting off to spay street dogs in Ecuador and work with the ASPCA’s forensics division. “Next time I have a chance to extern wherever I want,” she said to me, as she packed her suitcase for the third trip in 6 weeks, “I’m staying home.”
We’re eager for this ending. After 18 years of life together and almost 10 years of marriage, it’s time for what’s next. But in this season, I also think of the anxious undergraduates trying to find their adult footing, the high schoolers being launched into the world, and the parents watching kindergarteners grow more independent as they learn to read and tie their shoes.
Alternative Endings
Endings and transitioners are fraught moments. But the ones above are also best case scenarios. Those graduation festivities, those unsteady pages read from picture books – those are the stories where things eventually went as expected. The mainstream classrooms, the steady attendance uninterrupted by hospital stays or moves due to unstable housing, the sometimes-remarkable stories of triumph over adversity, but triumph nonetheless. They’re the stories not everyone gets.
It was to these not-so-easy outcomes that Sister Emily Cooper, remembered on April 16, was sent to minister in Kentucky. It was 1880 and the newly founded Home of the Innocents served to care for babies and children who had been abandoned, neglected, were medically fragile, or whose parents, for whatever reason, could not care for them.
Home to Kentucky’s first kindergarten, Sister Emily’s care was comprehensive. Not only did she care for the material and educational needs of the children at the Home of the Innocents, she also assisted with the baptisms of 284 children and the burials of even more. Emily was the one to name so many of those children in baptism, ensuring that they were uniquely known in the family of God.
Marked As Christ’s Own
Kindergarteners are tiny humans beginning to carve a really independent identity as they spend more time away from their families, but the kindergarteners and younger children who populated the Orphanage of the Good Shepherd and the Home of the Innocents were living a very different sort of life. Many would die young, buried in unmarked graves. I imagine it was painful work—a ministry many would shy away from—and yet lifegiving. When illness necessitated her retirement, Emily remained in residence in the Orphanage of the Good Shepherd until her death.
To be known and loved is the foundation for everything else, whether a child is expected to lead a typical life or is living with a terminal illness. Emily’s ministry, however, served as the foundation for ongoing service to the children of Kentucky. The Home of the Innocents persists today, providing pediatric complex care and respite, residential therapy, support for families impacted by foster care, parent education, and more, serving thousands of children and caregivers each year.
The modern Home of the Innocents is part of the harder stories, the ones that don’t necessarily have easy endings – where literacy comes late or may never come, where graduation may never mean holding a job or living independently. Now a secular organization, it nonetheless reflects our baptismal promises, the ones that Emily Cooper held so dear.
Like Sister Emily, who ensured each child was truly beloved, by God and by her, the modern Home of the Innocents is committed to bringing hope, health, and happiness to everyone it serves. The once-simple orphanage has grown into a significant regional hub that continues to honor the dignity of every human being, no matter what their story looks like. Its staff truly see the children and families it serves, those who are pushed to the margins, who need extra support to thrive.
Sister Emily Cooper was buried at Cave Hill Cemetery, surrounded by at least 220 children’s unmarked graves. These children didn’t get the easy or “expected” endings, crossing the stage for a diploma or finding that first apartment. Still, they got the only ending that mattered: one in which they were loved and known until that end, having been marked as Christ’s own forever.
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