The Final word is never that ...

 

Obituaries, like resume’s and eulogies, never tell the whole story.  I remember being told of a man who was eulogized long and fabulous by a clergyman at the funeral.  His sister-in-law, really his closest relative since his late wife passed a decade before, commented wryly, “That was a very nice speech.  But I don’t think he was talking about my brother-in-law.”  And there you have it.  None of us ever really has the whole story on someone’s life.  But we can put the pieces together from the legacy they left behind and have a pretty good idea.  Then you can come to some kind of general conclusion that sits with you as the frosting on the cake for your own remaining days.

At the cemetery recently with family members, we had a funny set of exchanges. 

My father: “Look, the whole right side is still empty.”  (ie. There are available burial plots.)

Me: “No dad.  There just are no standing headstones.  There are flat ones…” (and I’m thinking they are less expensive and make it easier for the caretakers to cut the grass, because I am all about cost & efficiency relative to decisions.)

Some other family member: “Some of those monuments are …”

Me: “I definitely want a monument.”

My Younger – and Only – Sister: “Yeah, and do you want it to say, ‘Joan of Arc was an amateur’?”

My Mother just laughed and enjoyed the ribbing I got.

Me: “No, really.  I think I just want a statue of St. Francis and the Wolf.  That would say it all.”  (oh, on so many levels.)

As we left the cemetery later, my father commented on what a nice job the priest did at the church when he eulogized my precious aunt.  And he was right.  The priest, from meeting my aunt at church in prior days and from comments provided by the family, pretty much captured the type of person she was in the limited time he had. 

There is an old saying: “Ah, to live in heaven with the saints in all their glory; but to live with them here on earth is quite another story.”  And while that is true of, oh, pretty much everyone I have ever met, it was most decidedly not true about my aunt, my godmother.  Of her, the writer of Hebrews 11 spoke when he wrote after eulogizing great Old and New Testament saints of the past: “the world was not worthy of them.”  That was her.

So, in a sense, I just want to write a few things from those of us in the Unworthy World…

My mother remarked that her sister was “always in your corner.”  And by that, she meant EVERY FAMILY MEMBER’S CORNER.  She was an encourager.  While she lived a simple and cautious life, she delighted in our successes and sighed for our misses.  When I in my youthful drama would wail about something, she would assure me, “This, too, shall pass.”  And she was certainly right about that – but I could not see it in my younger days.  She had the gift of being a supportive friend to all of us.  She wasn’t the kind of adult that acted like a kid to be accepted by the kids; she was an adult who was aware of being in her own skin, and treated us as individuals – with respect, affection, and guidance on an as-needed basis.  She did not have the ability, nor the desire to, elevate herself or her authority at the expense of our feelings and self-esteem.  She had an almost indigenous sense of Matthew Kelly’s concept of encouraging people to be “the very best version of themselves.”  Maybe somehow she realized the true path to wholeness and holiness lies in becoming who God crafted you to be, and finding the way to that is the work of a lifetime.  Yes, she was truly “in our corner.”

She was the biggest fan of my writings.  She looked forward to getting my blog pieces mailed to her on a regular basis, I think, because she could enjoy a good story.  Really, when I started to more intently put pen to paper about six years ago, I needed just ONE person to motivate me to write.  I needed to know that from ONE person, the praise would be fair and any critique would be gentle.  This gave me the courage to let my mind flow freely.  I can pretty much type as fast as I can think – make of that what you will – so I needed to write for someone who wouldn’t further bog me down with any unfair comparisons or dampening criticism. 

I initially started writing as a young girl by leaving notes to my Uncle at his house.  He worked crazy shifts for the electric company and my mother and I would go to his house when he was gone and leave him desserts and clean a little … and then I would leave him notes telling him of any sightings of turtles at his pond or chasings of the ducks, etc.  One day, he left me a very small white-with-gold-gild diary.  It had a lock and key on it too.  As a young girl I found this very cool.  But I did not use it much.  The need to write didn’t hit me as hard as it does now.  Sometimes I wake up at night and an entire article is in my head banging to get out.

Over the years, I have kept a journal.  That was mostly encouraged by those in the spiritual/theological circles in which I traveled.  Later, in an English Communications class, our teacher who was the writer of the script for a famous Marian religious movie remarked to us: “write every day.  It will help you get better at it.”  That was the most important thing I learned in that class.  I have also realized that if I want to prevent zealots from chopping my bones into “relics” after I die, I need to leave some written ruminations and remnants of the mud in my life so they will conclude I was not their kind of saint.  I can be a saint, just not that kind of saint.

My aunt was a saint.  But she was not a plastic dashboard saint.  She was aware of her reality and it kept her humble.  She was also a saint with a sense of humor.  She stayed married, to the same man, for over 50 years.  She raised four children.  For that kind of longevity, you need a sense of humor.   She loved every grandchild, niece, and nephew, and any friend we brought in the door to meet her.  You could have hung a sign over her doorway that said, “All are welcome in this place …” Her kitchen table was always a place of hospitality.  She always had time to sit down.  “Sit down, tell me what’s new in your life…”

When I lived at home, my favorite place on Saturday night was NOT out haunting the night life with other teenagers:  it was at the kitchen table with any available family member gathered at my aunt’s house.  Later as adults, we walked in the door with wine, cheese, cookies.  She had her own stash of desserts waiting for us.  She was the hub of the wheel of our lives.  She was the center of the circle of love, but she would argue the point that it is JESUS who is in the center.  But maybe He was the center because she invited Him there, and she brought Him there by the way she loved.  In fact, in the last decade, she began to refer to us as her “special circle.”  If you thought you might be in that circle, rest assured, you were. 

I asked her once if there was a specific reason she thought of us as her circle.  She couldn’t really answer the question.  Perhaps I phrased it poorly.  And I needed to be content with that.  However, I will reference the lyrics of the famous camp hymn, “Will the circle be unbroken, by and by Lord, by and by?  There’s a better land awaiting in the sky Lord, in the sky.”  Perhaps this song is the closest that Protestants get to our Catholic idea of “the communion of saints.”  We believe that we are linked by both love and prayer to those who have gone before us.  It is not linear, it is circular.  I pray for you- you pray for me -and it all circles back around until we are united in love with our Creator.

Speaking of which, my precious Aunt had a marked deepening of her faith at one point – most likely before I came into the world because I always remember her being devout…. And that’s a 58-year memory.  As a result of her faith, she learned to ground herself – and all the rest of us – in prayer.  It was not uncommon to be visiting at her home when we were kids and be invited to join her for the family rosary.  It truly was a speed-rosary, taking maybe 15 minutes, but it was an important point of teaching the young that we can stop and pray at any point in the day and give our attention to God.  It also was fairly common for her to slip away from a conversation and say, “just help yourself to the snacks, and stay as long as you like, I’m going to do my devotions.”  And that meant she had a certain collection of prayers she would say, and then she would review her little book with her prayer intentions hand-written in it with God.  Have I seen the little black book?  Yes.  Do I remember what is in it?  Only one thing:  she was praying at one point for a tumor that had appeared on our collie’s eye.  Other than that, I suspect all contents of that book are relegated to the realm of sacred things like a Catholic confession:  once you see it, your mind erases all memory of its contents.  All you know is it is God’s Stuff and not your business.

One of her young grandsons was sitting quietly in his room at home one night.  His momma asked him, “What are you doing in here?”  He replied with all the frankness of a little guy: “I’m doing my devotions.”  Enough said.

I credit my aunt and uncle with giving me one of the best stress-reducing techniques I have in my arsenal:  the Sunday drive.  They used to just slip away on a Sunday afternoon and visit various spots in New England, and grab a sundae at Friendly’s “ice cream parlor,” and return home.  As a young teen, they often took me with them.  Perhaps that was not very romantic for them to have a niece along for the ride, but they always made me feel welcome.  It was this uncle, and my other uncle (who gave me the diary) that gave me most of my road-time as an early driver.  They had great patience with me.  As a result of their example, I myself was able to teach two other young people to drive.

On one of those drives we ventured up to Weston Priory in Vermont on a fine summer afternoon.   The grounds were lovely.  The buildings were, well, kind of barn-ish, rustic.  It fit for Vermont.  We walked around and intriguingly, saw no monks.  This was curious.  The monks had been pumping out records/cassettes for over a decade – most songs written by Gregory Norbet OSB – and here we were at their monastery and there was no sign of them.  My uncle went up to the window of a shed.  He balled up his fist and rubbed it in a circle on the window pane to get a better view inside.  My aunt chided him, “Dear, please!  What are you doing?”  He began, “I was looking to see if the pottery was here, from Brother Thomas, …. You know, I’m missing the World Series because we drove up here … and I don’t see monks anywhere (as if they were on exhibit?!)”  as the words came out of his mouth, a look of horror crossed his face: “they’re inside somewhere watching the World Series!”  My aunt had to think quickly to re-route his disappointment. She responded, “Dear.  Please.  I can tell you know nothing of the life of prayer and penance!”  He jokingly retorted, “Sure I do.  I married you!”  She gave him what I would classify as a “disparaging look.”  That was the end of that.  And we packed up and headed home.  Three months ago, I drove through Vermont and tried to find Weston Priory.  For some reason I could not, it was as if it had vanished off the face of the earth…. Or more likely, was tucked behind some mountain in Vermont.  Maybe some memories are best left in the past, but that one has always warmed my heart.

I am aware that each of us has our unique memories from the beautiful people that touch our lives.  I feel blessed beyond measure that she was godmother to me, because I know for a fact that her #1 priority was making sure my life was pointed in the right direction to get to heaven.  And in all of our restless human longings, is that not what the great ones before us have always taught us: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee, oh Lord”?  The resting doesn’t mean the Eternal Rest of death; it means the resting of a soul filled with God’s Life – a soul that has no need to sell itself to a world that will give it less than God Himself has to offer.  My life was better, easier, happier because of what this amazing woman brought to the Table of Life.  Each of her family members were loved greatly – really, without measure – by her, and yet each in a unique way.  She prayed her socks-off for most of us.  I hope to God that we live in a way that is worthy of her, worthy of the Father in Heaven she devoted her whole life to, worthy in an unworthy and at times difficult world.

I will continue to write.  I will continue to think of her when I put the finishing touches on pieces that I compose.  I will remember all of the good, all of the love, all of the joy that she brought to me, to all of us.  And for that I will be forever grateful.

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ps. they are gardenia blossoms.