the relationship still exists..

In the past week and a half, my husband and I have gone to four funerals and missed one sitting in an airport.April, what's going on ?All but one of the deceased were younger than me.All were loved and leave a big hole in family and church.But as with all things, there were blessings.

 The beautiful wife of my daughter's first boyfriend came to me at his Mother's funeral and quietly said, "You have no idea how my husband needed to be with your family during those high school years."She appreciated us providing some stability in that time for a lost teen.I never knew and was blessed by her tearful sharing.Connecting with him and other cross country friends from thirty years ago was a true gift and we are planning a reunion.

Today, the Mass was for a twenty-five year old who died in a construction accident.The pain in the church was palpable.At the end of the homily, the priest shared from a book on grief these thoughts:"the people you love are never cut off from you.You will always be connected and it is up to you to keep that connection."At the end the priest said, "You are still connected to your son.That will never be broken." What comfort to believe that. I hung on each word because I had never heard this spoken before although this has been my experience.

Several years ago, I was on a retreat when this assignment was given: name three things that keep you from being a completely open channel for God's love.Immediately, without thought, I wrote: "That I didn't love my family enough;didn't make their lives better, happier with my love."I was shocked at what I wrote and pondered it for a long time.It was true, but I only treated them the way I was treated and I never deliberately withheld love, just never thought much about it. This obviously was not good enough, I now knew.The challenge lay before me: what to do? Slowly, quietly and in my own time, I told each one of the three deceased members that I was sorry for the missed opportunity to make them happy with loving actions.

  I felt forgiven.

 Loved ones who have left this earth are still with us. How to connect? You can ask for help and then do it.

a wicker basket of blouses..

Memory is a large wicker basket, tan, shining in the sun, filled with clean startlingly white blouses scented by the wind.You pull one out ,shake it and hold it to your chest and remember.This happened today after a lovely cyber friend posted a picture of a group of women dancing on a beach in Fort Lauderdale in the 1940s.

One day settles on my mind as if I drove home yesterday from Jones Beach on Long Island.

It was early September in 1961and my high school friends and I all have scarves around our heads in this black and white picture of mine, so it must have been a blowy day.The beach was empty, so perhaps it was a during the week.I know that the sea ,the glorious Atlantic, felt warm on our legs after the months of summer sun.

Did we have a radio or did we just dance to tunes we sang out at the top of our lungs?How to describe the joy,the freedom we felt, the lifting laughter that seemed to have no end.These girls of sun and beach are lost to me now.One went into the convent, much to our dismay, and died young.Maureen, who was kind and true.Carol, dark hair and dark eyes, very smart, could not be found by the 50th reunion committee a few years ago although she is thought to live in Maryland.I had to try to find her as well.Oh, to hear that voice again.I think of her incredible humor:the lift of her eyebrow could send us into uncontrollable laughter. Blonde athletic Mary Lou passed away from breast cancer a few years back.She was so angry at that disease that as a radiologist she had found in so many scans.The last was my beautiful, blonde best friend Patti.She is alive, well and retired in Texas.We speak occasionally on the phone and always end the conversation in tears.I'm not sure why.

This memory has no end.Soon I will pass it on to a new friend who I have never met but who shared a picture that turned over the basket.She would have fit in nicely on that day, that beach.

the desert, and a fatal mistake

I can't get it out of my thoughts.It is the Grape Hill Trail that haunts me.One of the easiest paths in the park.That day, we walked on it for a mile up to the balancing rock.This was Big Bend National Park in Texas;it was winter and even then, the sunny part of the walk, which was most of it, was hot.

Texas is not Georgia.The sun is brilliant and in the park, the only shade available is in very early morning or late afternoon when the rocks block the sun.Mid-day is sun.Period.And sand.

I knew the story of the man from New York who had perished here in May of 2004 but to walk and see the exact spot where he made his fatal mistake was jarring.I was with my son who knows this park, my husband and plenty of water when we started out on this flat, interesting trail.Then we got to a place of narrow winding rocks going up and before long I was on my hands and knees.That's when I fore swore going any further and plopped down and waited for their return.Fear of heights is a burdensome thing but also perhaps a warning from my psyche that a fall from here at my age would be dreadful in many ways.

I was in the shade of the monumental rocks and not unhappy to wait and let the breeze blow on my cheeks and look at the magnificence all around.And, it is just that.Soon, they were back, and with helping hands, I got back to level ground.The sun was falling behind the rocks as we walked so there was more shade and that is when we came across what looked like another path.

On that May day,when the 42 year old lawyer from New York hiked solo up  the rocks, the temperature was over 100 degrees.A man who passed him coming down the trail said that he observed no water and a very red face as he said hello.The lawyer had reached the top and mentioned it was worth the climb.When the second man came back down, he observed only one other car in the small lot at the head of the trail and suspecting it belonged to that red faced man, wondered where he had gone.There was only one path to the cars.

I saw the spot where he kept going, down a small sandy wash, a dry stream bed, that looked just like the trail.He kept walking and, as this wash went down, he didn't see the cars above him to the left.His car, his escape.He kept on and rescuers found him the next day, two miles down the wash, face down, swollen.They have since put a small string of rocks to block that wash from being mistaken for the trail.

I stood for a minute at that small group of rocks thinking of the man who succumbed to the heat of the desert so rapidly that day.He was coherent when he passed the other walker and a mile later when he crossed a road which had not been on the path when he went in, he kept going which tells us that, by then, his thought process was impaired.His small journal, found at his side, hurt me when I read it:"9:40 started trail to balance rock.""think I'll be back by ten?""11:00 no car,go path, mtn nearby.""should be back by 11:45.no problem.""Call for help."" rest in shade".The last entry simply said:"12:40".

I loved Big Bend and the wide open spaces of Texas.The fact that this land is so wild and untamed and we don't "own" it.But, Douglas Pappas from New York haunts me.And teaches me.

a story of Lent

Southwest Texas is more beautiful than I imagined.A stark, wide open beauty.A recent trip there brought back memories.While sailing through childhood in that smoky, small and tense ship that was my home, I found winter time to be the worst.Other than snow days, we kids were trapped inside with unhappy adults.The sun set at 4:30 and the cold was unbearable.The maples that lined our street turned into iron pillars and when, at 9 P.M., my mother would yell that it was time to take the dog out, I almost wept.

There was, however, a way to escape that I appreciate now more than I did then.The brown plastic Philco radio.When not tuned into Yankee baseball, we were allowed to listen to some shows that with the help of vivid and well nourished imaginations, took us to the canyons and the arroyos of Texas. How far from Long Island I traveled!

When Lent drearily came around the year I was 10, at the exhortation of the nuns, I knew immediately what I was to "sacrifice."I had to give up my favorite show,The Lone Ranger.I was well aware that giving up Brussels(yuck) Sprouts would not cut it.It had to hurt and it did.Especially because of this:that year, an episode would tell what caused the Texas Ranger to wear a mask, be "lone" and have an Indian side-kick.NO!!!!

I was tempted mightily that year to cheat just that once, but I held firm.I could hear the noise of the show unfolding downstairs but never a clear word of it.

I told this story a few years ago, on-line, and then the inexplicable happened.I opened Facebook to find a message from a young friend, Kris.Attached to the message was a radio show.I didn't even know that was possible.When I opened it and heard the William Tell Overture, I cried.She had found that episode, attached it and sent it to me. I was back riding the range, ducking the tumbleweed and looking for bad hombres in the canyons of Texas.

I had to laugh at her note hoping she wasn't messing with Lent karma.No, Kris, the karma is all good.I smile and feel warm at the thought of that which I gave up over 60 years ago coming back to me ten fold, pressed down and overflowing.

Visitation

photo by Kris

                                            Visitation

                                    An ordinary Mass.
                                   I kneel, eyes closed
                                   and there is your Face.

                                        I know it's you.
                                   I feel your otherness,
                                           deepness.

                                     Your eyes are closed,
                                         no sharp features.
                                 I think later; poor, peasant face.

                                  You are right with me
                                another world around us.
                                  The flock stands and I
                                         want to stay.

                                I obey, up and you are gone.
                                   something to regret always.

dancing in the Light....

Dance-Matisse

Behind the altar of our humble church are floor to ceiling windows and outside those windows that is a tall rock garden with a waterfall.I have witnessed a butterfly land there one hot August day; the day of a friend's funeral.Her funeral program had a butterfly on the cover.An occasional squirrel will scramble to the top to eat a nut of some kind.Neighbors.

Today, the water was beautiful, glittering and frozen solid.It is the closest we Georgians will get to frozen ponds.The psalm for today is perfect for what I am feeling:"You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation."

I have written before about the young man who attends our church when he can.He, who helped me become aware that my mother had been with me in Australia by means of a butterfly visit.

After mass, he asked this question:"Do you have a deceased sister?" "Yes," I said."Did she die of something to do with the liver ?" "Yes."Did her life involve a cane?""Yes,"I said, stunned.

Before I continue, I need to tell you that I adored my older sister, my only sibling, four years senior.Also, that we rarely got along.I often wondered why and then found the answer in a novel, of all things, and it rang true.When there is little nurturing or love to be had, siblings become competitors.The best time was after she married, left our 8x10 bedroom and became my confidante.I treasured her wisdom and her openness to all my foolishness.She brought a brother-in-law and nieces into my life that I love deeply.So there was good times, too few.I prayed about the lost years  in a chapel once and heard this:"You will get that time back."I don't know what that means, I don't have to.

A few years before she died in 2008, she tripped over a laundry basket and broke her ankle and walked with a cane from then on.

Anyway, my friend Tim said he saw my sister with me at Mass.I believe that the space between the here and gone is very thin but what I heard next brought tears.She had her cane outstretched between her hands and was dancing.He said that she wanted me to see that.

winter's tale

A time of bareness.Insideness and early dark. Bluest of sky but little warmth from the sun.New beginnings.Crows in the trees and turkeys boldly coming to the door and looking in.Frozen birdbath with crows wondering where to dip their corn.

Advent is over and, quite surprisingly, the days and the journey led to unexpected places.I have joined three groups on line:one to do with the Rosary, one with Christian writers and another exploring the life of Blessed Charles de Foucald.Having done that, I am being richly rewarded with postings from many different seekers throughout the world.The blessings pour into my already overflowing wooden bowl.

Beyond the mystery of rosaries said, poems read and prayers written in the Algerian desert; in the midst of the wonders of crackling brown leaves, grey, bare tree branches, a bright hawk circling over head, a brown colored river that starts near the Atlanta Airport in a debris ridden seepage, is this:
  
 A family at church suffered a setback just before Christmas.I felt strongly that we needed to give an anonymous donation since they have children and it is the time of gift giving.My husband was totally agreeable or I am not sure it would've happened.The day after Christmas, a check arrived for that amount plus a hundred dollars from American Express.A refund from an error we knew nothing about.