When I was about 8 years old, a boy spat in my face. He was a bully. My friends and I were playing in the playground, and for no particular reason he came up to me, muttered something inaudi- ble, and spat right in my face. I remember the shame I felt before my friends and the stench of his spittle covering my entire face. I remember hating him.
Some years later, after we had
moved away from the town I grew up
in, my mother was reading to me
from our hometown newspaper. On
the front page was a picture of a mangled car wrapped around a tree. The
driver had died. It was the boy who
had spat in my face. He was 20 years old when he died. I was 17. I thought
back to the incident when he had
spat in my face. I remember thinking
egotistically in my simplistic faith
that God had punished him for what
he had done to me when I was 8.
But now, at 35, I feel sorry for him. I think of him a lot. I wonder if he treated me in such a harsh way because that was the way he was treated. I wonder if the tragic death he suffered was more than merely the end of a sad life in which he felt unloved and uncared for. I pray for him, and in doing so I hope that he is in heaven or on his way there.
Someone else, who was very close to me as I grew up, also died a tragic death. She and I had been born a day apart in the same hospital, and later attended the same school. She was the smartest girl in our class and probably the nicest. Yet a recent letter from another classmate of mine informed me that she had taken her own life.
Suddenly I felt guilty. Why hadn't I stayed in touch with her? Perhaps I could have provided her with a ray of hope when she felt there was none. I think of her a lot, and I try to do now what I didn't do then -- pray for her.
When I was growing up, a visit to the cemetery was a weekly event, either to the place where my paternal grandfather lay in rest or where my maternal great-grandmother lay. The visit would usually consist of a walk around the plot to see the condition of the grass and flowers that grew in front of the gravestone.
If my great-grandfather was present when visiting his wife's grave, he would speak to her in his native Polish in a quiet voice as though he was informing her of the latest news. My father was more reserved in the visits to his father's grave, but somehow I knew that these visits somewhat the same purpose -- to keep in touch with those who had formed and shaped our lives by their presence. Even though they were gone, they were still very much present to us.
I have not forgotten those early lessons. Those who have died remain very present to me. If I am fishing, memories of my grandfather help me remember the best way to do it. My grandfather and I fished a lot when I was young; everything I know about fishing he taught me. Even though he has died, I still find he is very much a part of my life.
There are priests I was close to, both growing up and later in a Catholic college I attended. They have since died. Yet I find myself calling upon them for help. Their memory reminds me to pray for them, as they always asked me to while they were still alive.
Recently, the rock singer Meatloaf captured the essence of past memories and their effect on the present moment his song "Objects in the Rear View Mirrore May Appear Closer than They Are." In the song a man confronts his past: the death of a good friend; the loss of an early love; and the damaged relationship that he suffered from an abusive father. The chorus reminds him that objects in the rearview mirror may appear closer than they are; the past is always affecting the way we live out the present.
My parents and grandparents did not forget the past. The visits to the cemetery were an act of reverencing and honoring the memory that was still very much alive to them of their deceased par ents and spouses. They dealt with the image in the rearview mirror by pulling off the road and confronting the image ob an ongoing basis.
What allowed them to do this was a belief that life did not end in the physical death of their loved ones. As believers in God who had rescued their loved ones from death by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, they realized that those who had died were not gone.
That is not all. They believed tha they could still help their deceased love ones complete their spiritual journey toward God. These cemetery visits always concluded in the same way. All who were present would kneel on the ground over the grave, and we would pray, usually an Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be. These visits kept the memory of our loved ones before us as we remembered the way they lived and the impact they had on our lives as individuals. Th unfinished business that is always a par of every death could be dealt with as we practiced our faith which, because of Jesus' death, is not the final reality. We could still be of service to those who had died by our prayers on their behalf.
Yet such is not the case anymore. During the past 14 years, I have been involved in various forms of pastoral ministry. I have witnessed a new phenomenon that is the opposite of my childhood memories. Rather than remember the dead, people actively try to forget that their loved ones ever existed. The ideal funeral of the 1990s seems to be the following, according to my experience: The deceased is cremated soon after death. The ashes are strewn either over the ocean or over some other peaceful spot. The problem with this is not that it is against any prohibition of the Catholic Church (it no longer is). The problem is that there is no place to reverence their memory or the effect that they still have on our lives.
The religious ceremonies of the 1990s, if there are any, could be likened to a canonization. The persons who have died are now with God in heaven; we need not be worried about their fate; like Pontius Pilate, everyone connected with the deceased washes their hands of any further responsibility on behalf of the dead.
Underneath this veneer of sophistication is a primitive fear of death. People dare not face the bitter reality that life has an end, that death is real. Removing the body by cremation, turning it into lifeless ashes, is less threatening than a lifeless body that reminds us that the body we have will one day be lifeless, too.
Thinking that our loved ones have moved on to heaven and they are no longer here is a convenient late-2Oth-century way of dealing with life's problems. We move a lot: we do not like to remain in the same place all of our lives. So what better wa to think of the dead: they've just moved to a better retirement home with God.
But objects in the rearview mirror are in our sight whenever we glance over our shoulder to see what's following us. We cannot ignore them for long. We must make peace with our past, for we carry it with us everywhere we go.
I have sat with people who felt they were being haunted by a dead relative, usually someone whom they had not made their peace with before his or her death. I have often suggested tha: they go to the grave of the dead relative and speak to the person there. That's kind of ghoulish." is usually the response I get.
. "Being haunted very ghoulish," I usually reply.
The problem we face is that we do not want to face reality, and this is a faith problem. problem. If we do not face the reality of death, then what do we need Jesus Christ to save us from? If we do not need to pray for those who have died, what need do we have to pray for those who are living? What need do we have to pray for anything?
I recently visited a monastery not far from where I live. I was hoping to join the monks in their chanting of vespers (evening prayer). But this particular monastery had fallen on the hard times that affect us all. They were not praying vespers this particular evening; instead, they were playing tennis.
So I decided to visit a shrine that existed on the property of the monastery. There were signs directing me to the spot where the shrine was, but evidently no one had been there in a while. The path was grown over. I eventually came upon a particular spot that was well mowed and cleared, so that golf carts could pass easily to make their way from one hole to the next on the monastic golf course. Then the overgrown path continued.
The shrine had obviously seen better times. It had been built during and after ~ World War II. The names of men killed in World War II from the area were engraved under a statue of Jesus at the entrance to the shrine. Making my way through the brush, I bent over to read the inscription. The people who erected this statue made the connection between the death of Jesus and the death of these soldiers; they gave their lives so that others might live.
The rest of the shrine spoke of a time when faith had been alive in this area, but it spoke now of the absence of faith. No one seemed to care anymore about the past, or for that matter, the future. The present seemed to be the only thing that mattered, and that apparently had little to do with this shrine.
The memory of another monastery, one that has not forgotten the past, gives me hope. I attended school there in the early 1980s, and have vivid memories of how the feast of All Souls was celebrated. We would gather in the chapel and pray the special office of the dead for all those who had died.
Then, in a candlelight procession, we would travel in silence to the graveyard where we would place the candles on the gravestones of the individual monks who had died. Prayers would be said for the individual monks. After spending sufficient time, we would leave the graveyard. We also would leave our candles on the gravestones, which were all carved out of a nearby quarry in the shape of the cross. The cross on their graves served as a con- stant reminder of Jesus' victory over death.
The memory of looking back to that place of darkness in a southern Indiana night, ablaze with candlelight, still fills me with hope; hope for my own resurrection from the dead because of my belief in Jesus Christ; hope that someone will remember me when I die; hope that they will pray for me.
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It's not as much about an individual's desires, but about a culture's respect for the dead.
Everything that bearing is saying about the dead and graves could be said about God. God is everywhere. Why churches and shrines? God can be present to you where you are, certainly - why not just sit in your living room? Why designate a place as a "holy place?"
Imagine a world in which there were no graves, no cemeteries, no markers were the bodies of the dead rest. Where everyone was cremated and scattered to the winds and we just went on our way.
What would be missing from that world?
It's an interesting thought exercise.
The earliest Christians obviously valued the bodies of the dead and the places in which they lay. THere is something to listen to in that history.
An individual's stance is one thing - people feel all sorts of different things. But when a culture either fetishizes the dead or erases evidence of their bodily existence..that might indicate a problem.
My wife's grandmother died recently and one of her granddaughters created a memorial site for her at:
http://tribute.perfectmemorials.com/
I found it to be a wonderful way to remember a loved one that's passed on. It provides a way for family and friends to post their memories and comments and photos. It also provides a way for families who are not close either geographically or emotionally to share rememberance and mutual respect and love for someone deceased.
I think it's true that we can be "haunted" by someone we haven't made peace with who is gone.
Amy - it must be both rewarding and bizarre to be able to have such a reservoir of your husband's writing and thoughts throughout his life. Such a many-layered thing is grief, and life, and spirituality, and religion.
I find your sharing about Michael to be so wonderful. So poignant.
I often watch my husband typing away outside on the back porch, with his laptop, the birds chirping and either the sun warming the bricks or the rain pounding down and misting the technology as he inches back under the overhang.
And, I wonder what it all is...job? Heart? Pondering? As he walks the path of Deacon Aspirant I know he is thinking, writing and reflecting in ways he might otherwise just let drift around inside. Instead he is having to put his thoughts, feelings and ideas down on "paper."
So when you share Michael's work I feel so grateful, in a new way, for this path he is on.
Amy- Thank you so much for sharing Michael's words. What a beautiful legacy of spiritual depth and thought for his family, his friends and for us. It sounds like Michael's continuous faith had cut through the weeds and has cleared a present day path for all of us to reflect on.
When my father died I kept having the same dream that his truck was still parked out in front of my house. The strange thing was that his truck was parked facing toward the wrong direction. In the dream I was aware that my father had died so I would go about my busy day ignoring the truck.
Finally, one day I walked up close to the parked truck that was still facing the wrong direction and looked inside. I was absolutely shocked to see my father who was just sitting in the passenger seat. The driver seat was empty. My father looked at me with the most sad and helpless eyes.
I remember saying to my father in the dream, "Dad, I had no idea you were just sitting here! I would have never allowed you to just sit here for all of these days had I known it!"
My father needed prayers!
Thank you again Amy for this heart and soul gem. Michael's article summed it all up. I will keep Michael and you, Amy and your family in my prayers.
In another post you asked for insights on how to help your sons deal with the death of their father, your husband...one small, yet meaningful, way we have helped our children through grief, over the loss of several family members, is by visitng their graves. One of the most significant times we do so is Christmas Eve, when we place lighted luminaries on the graves and pray for their departed souls. This family tradition began after reading that more souls are released from Purgatory on Christmas than at any other time of year. We have also made it a practice to pray for the souls of the dead as part of our mealtime Grace.
The prayer of St. Gertrude the Greatfor souls in purgatory is a favorite:
Eternal Father, I offer Thee the most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the Masses said throughout the world today, for all the Holy Souls in PUrgatory, for sinners eveywhere, for sinners in the universal Church, those in my own home, and within my family. Amen. (Our Lord told St. Gertrude that the above prayer would release 1000 souls from purgatory each time it is said. The prayer was extenede to include living souls as well)
May the Lord grant swift release from purgatory for your beloved Michael and may your earthly purgatory of grief be softened through the many prayers being said on your behalf.
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