59/365 History of a lunchtime

I may have been 25 but I was so young. Naive, really. I didn't think about the chances of miscarrying and so when it happened to me, I didn't have a back up plan. My doctor reassured me that this was the kind of miscarriage that you wanted to have. I got caught up on that sentence even though she explained what she meant. What it meant was that I could get pregnant. But what it meant to me was something different.

I ran through all my friends pretty fast. It's hard to continue to grieve with someone for very long. Everyone else was ready to move on and think about the future. I was caught in a loop. Some hard things were said to me, things I carried around a long time until I finally decided that it wasn't worth the hurt.

I called the rectory. Fr. Bill answered--he answered twice in the entire history of my calling the rectory. The first time was when I was looking to join the parish. This was the other time. I told him what had happened. It was summertime and so I wasn't at school and I frankly wasn't at church much. He asked me to go out to lunch.

I sat on the stoop waiting for him to pick me up. We went to a place a few blocks away. I had chicken salad. We talked about pain, but more than that, we sat in silence. He had a book for me to read. He was so sorry.

He dropped me off at my house, but as I was getting out of the car, he took my hand. "Don't isolate yourself. Call me if you need anything. You are very dear to me," he said emotionally, not at all strange.

"And you, to me," I replied awkwardly. I let go his hand and got out of the car.

I thought about that lunchtime a lot. How he didn't offer excuses, platitudes, or solutions. He listened and didn't gloss over my experience. Years later I look back at this as the best moment I ever had with him as pastor.

Because things would soon enough not be good moments. But that doesn't negate this one.

106/365 At my funeral...

At my funeral, no one will sing "On Eagles Wings". Under penalty of severe haunting.

At my funeral, no one will sing "Amazing Grace" either.

At my funeral, if at all possible, I want Psalm 139 instead of Psalm 23: Behind and before you encircle me and rest your hand upon me.

At my funeral, I want people to pause between readings and the psalm. Between the second reading and the Alleluia. Between the gospel and the homily. Between. I want some space between these things.

At my funeral, I want someone to read well. Slowly. Perhaps something from Isaiah 35 or I Corinthians 13 or something cozy from Proverbs or Wisdom. Maybe the Gospel of John. I'm fuzzy on these details--there are many good things I would choose. I just would like it done with a meditative presence.

At my funeral, I want a homilist who won't give pat answers or tell people to rejoice or talk about what a great person I was unless he really knew me.

At my funeral, if someone gives a eulogy, it should be simple and to the point. Thoughtful. Something to ruminate upon.

But at my funeral, under no circumstances is anyone to use the moment as a platform to push his or her political views. Politics are verboten. Don't criticize the government in the homily, the eulogy, the worship aid, the bulletin board at the wake with my photos. Nope. Nada. Don't do it.

112/365 Fine Funeral, Fine Funeral

"How was the funeral?" people kept asking me.

"Oh it was fine. Nice. It was fine," I keep replying. I'm reminded of my father-in-law, quoting the man who used to run the spelling bee down in Cairo. A kid would spell a word and he'd say, "Very fine, very fine. But wrong." Jeff does the timing just right.

That's what the funeral was. Very fine. Very fine. But wrong.

It was lovely. It's a nice church, climate controlled. The funeral choir was spectacular for its genre--no reedy sopranos or heavy organ music. The soloist for Ave Maria was well-practiced. The congregation sang some.

But there were three things that tripped me up. The first is typical of all weddings and funerals where folks who usually don't step forward in church have starring roles: the readings were hurried and there were no pauses between things. Everything was in a rush. This always catches me off guard because our church is so good at silence. And silence seemed most appropriate at my aunt's funeral.

Bigger than that, the priest was in a rush. He knew the family well and obviously had affection for my aunt, but he was one of those young priests who is very impressed with his priesthood. His homily sounded like he ordered it on HomiliesRUs.com and then tweaked to add my aunt's name a couple times. I was about to write him off entirely but he ended with a poem that wasn't half bad. And who knows? Maybe he was in a rush because my mom's cousin told him to speed it along. He was just...the kind of guy who would seem rehearsed in casual conversation and overuse your name in a bad attempt to make you feel comfortable.

But the part that was really jarring, the part that made other things not even worth mentioning, was the eulogy. There were three eulogies. The first was from my aunt's grandson's wife. It was good. Touching. Short. The second was from my aunt's son-in-law, which was well written and from the heart. And her son-in-law is a socially awkward amway salesman so that's saying something. After them, though, her son got up. My mom's cousin, in his mid-sixties. At first he just filled in a life for us--her father dying when she was 19, precluding her college admission. Marriage, kids, family, interests.

And then he mentioned her active role in the pro-life movement. Which is true. She was steadfastly a part of Birthright and other support groups. She called her congressman and senator and the White House and prayed and all that. But then he took a dark turn and used the rest of his time in front of us railing against the current government and how angry my aunt was with the way things were headed "in this country."

Now, my aunt was 93 and an eternal optimist. I don't think I ever saw her angry about anything. Ever. She defended criminals and her crazy (actually crazy) brother and lied about uncomfortable things and over all was the most pollyanna person I've ever met. I can see her saying things like "Well, I hope they realize what they're doing wrong" but nothing stronger than that. Really. But to hear her son tell it, tea-party-esque hatred of the government was the central focus of her life.

Maybe it was. Maybe I let our relationship go more than I thought I did. Maybe she was more honest with other people. But even so. Come on. The eulogy is not the time for self-congratulatory angry upper-middle-class lamentations.

I went to the cemetery afterward and stood next to another elderly relative. "You're still a liberal, right?" I whispered.

"Oh, heavens yes," she exclaimed. And we both shook our heads and sighed.

Very fine. But wrong.

157/365 Nightmares, Dream, Milieu

Six years ago this week, my sister's friend, Jesse, was found dead between two houses just a few blocks from where she (my sister Bevin) was living. His throat was cut so deep it nicked his spine. Bevin and her roommate identified the body from a photograph. There are moments in a life that can be pointed to and said, definitively, this was the moment when nothing was ever the same. I have a few of those moments, although most change is gradual. But for Bevin and her friends, for a long long time, this was their moment.

"Yeah, the whole neighborhood's covered in luminal. It's like we're living in a Law and Order episode. And that's all we can manage to watch on TV. We have to show an ID to go down our street after class, to get home. Cops drive by all night long."

Bevin tells me they're all having nightmares. Jen: "It's like, I couldn't breathe, like someone was sitting on my chest." Jesse shows up in some of them. They've all grown completely terrified of the basement--it's an old house that's been added onto several times, and one basement room has a pile of dirt 4 feet tall. Bevin won't even show me when I come up a year later for the trial.

"He was standing in that doorway. And he told me it was going to be ok. He walked away. That was the last one I had."

I think back to that time and I think about dreams and nightmares. I think about our brains and why they work the way they do. Why do people dream about people who have died? Are we working out emotions and things left undone? Is it reassurance, like Bevin's last dream? Wish fulfillment? What do dreams want from us, anyway? Sometimes the world seems so clear, so obvious, and then something like this happens and your head gets mixed up in circumstances and primal emotions.

The Magi experienced a dream, the moment when they were grafted onto the People of God. It was a warning not to return to Herod. So they went home to their own country by another route. And I've had dreams that seem so clear, so very real. Some even on the edge of terrifyingly true to life. So when Jesse is in Bevin's head telling her it's going to be all right, is that just Bevin hoping it's true, or is there some sort of knowledge she's tapping into? Because even though it will never be all right, for two families and for dozens of friends and their families and ripples through the pond all the way up to me writing this blog entry, many things they worried about after his death were resolved: his killer was found and convicted, and even though he had to be retried, he was convicted a second time. Things were resolved, even if they were not made whole again.

I think about recurring dreams I have had about a church called St. Rose of Lima on a street in south St. Louis that does not exist but I swear I could drive you there if only this or that road didn't end or twisted differently. I can describe the interior and I know how it feels to stand inside and run my hand down the back of the pews. There were several months back before I had kids that St. Rose's showed up on a regular basis. Most of the time I had to find something inside or meet someone there. Sometimes I just walked along the dead-end street looking at the cars parked along the side. I have some ideas what this meant, but it freaks me out, more than a little, that it was always the same church, the same setting, and it's a place that doesn't exist. I worry that it does and one day I'll walk in and know it.

And I think about the typewriter dream, back before I got married. I was looking to get a copy of my grandparents' wedding album because I was getting married at the same church. But my (now ex-) aunt was a major roadblock. She claimed she didn't know where it was. "Maybe it's in the garage?" she suggested. I was so angry and frustrated. And then I had the dream: I walked into my grandmother's bedroom, and there was a typewriter on the bed. And it typed out a message all by itself: check under the stairs in the basement. And I went to the house (my aunt and uncle were living there after my grandparents died) and asked if maybe I could just check the basement? My uncle let me in, and there it was, in a black trash bag under the stairs.

Maybe it was just putting the pieces together, thinking about where things might be, where things could be stashed. Maybe it was freaky luck. Or maybe something rearranged in my head and the stress and frustration did, what exactly?

And I have a choice about how to think about these experiences: I can be terrified, I can be overly rational, or I can just live. For the most part, I've chosen the last one.

185/365 Ten Years Ago

And the moral of this story
Is I guess it's easier said than done
To look at what you've been through
And to see what you've become

Ten years ago this week, give or take a few days, I miscarried my first pregnancy. I was due February 11, a date which lives in infamy in my family: Mike's grandmother and my grandfather both died on February 11, 2004. But that was later.

I never grieved for anything or anyone like I did for that pregnancy. I remember the blood tests and the "we'll see" looks from the doctor, and then the rambling apologetic message when I got home--she'd done the test already and it was bad news.

I called the woman who would eventually be Maeve's godmother, Liz, to cancel tutoring that afternoon. Funny how I took care of small bits of business first. Liz, of course, was devastated to hear my news and she came over later in the summer and sat at my kitchen counter when other people were done talking to me.

I called my aunt Gracemarie, who had miscarried several times herself. And standing far removed from my present in her own future, she took the long view. It didn't help me at the moment but it helped later.

And then I lay on my bed and cried. I have never been more angry with God. I had often bargained and cajoled and pretended, but never been so angry. As I spent the entire month of July miscarrying, I went through several classic stages of grief, but that anger didn't subside. It didn't subside when I didn't get pregnant in September. It didn't subside when it seemed that everyone around me was having babies. It didn't subside. I went on the women's retreat that fall and flaky Missy reclined on a couch telling me how wonderful it was to be pregnant, to really know she was part of God's plan of creation, and I wanted to stab her. I remember later when she wound up with an awful case of post-partum depression, and by that time I was healthy and pregnant with Sophia, I thought, good, it wasn't all you wanted after all. I was so angry and bitter and sad.

In the end, the miscarriage was pretty routine from a medical standpoint--I wound up with anemia and the doctor had to do a procedure and an ultrasound at one point, but I didn't have a D&C because I wanted to get pregnant as soon as I could (D&Cs take longer to recover from). And I had confirmation of a heartbeat two weeks before Christmas. All was well.

Except not all was well. It took me a long time to let go of that anger. It took a long time to let go of grudges I had against people who said this or that to me--I won't repeat some of the stupid things people said. And I never connected to Sophia's pregnancy. It was like I was waiting for it to go wrong. And this disconnection is part of, although a small part of, why her birth was so awful. And her awful birth is a large part of why I'm the parent I am today. I can look back and reflect on how I came to be who I am and where I am, and there is the root. I miscarried in July 2000 and everything else sort of tumbled out of that spilled cup.

I like who I am, I like my kids, I like my life. It's no longer on the front porch of my life--it only struck me that it was 10 years ago when I read something on another mom's blog about miscarriage. But even though it's not in my daily thoughts, it has colored things along the way. I think this loss softened some edges that never would have been ground down by anything else. I try to tread gently with other women, other mothers. I think before I glow about motherhood or bitch about motherhood. And I don't take these things for granted.

217/365 Mother

"It probably isn't cancer because thyroid cancer is rare," my doctor shakes her head. "And highly curable."

But once someone puts the word cancer into the conversation, it kind of derails your day. It makes you have one of those "life before your eyes" moments, well, hours, in which you debate how you have been living your life and how, perhaps, you should start living your life.

"I'm really glad you said something about the swallowing difficulty," she says, completely seriously. And hands me orders to go to an ultrasound place to have a scan.

On the way home, kids in the car, I started going down that terrible road. If I were to die, Leo wouldn't know me at all. Maeve would have nothing more than snapshot images and amalgamations of memory and photos and stories she was told. Sophia would remember. And maybe that would be worse. I tried to think of motherless children I knew growing up and I realized I didn't know any. Fatherless, yes, for various reasons, mostly due to abandonment. I thought about my ex-boyfriend from high school and my best friend from high school and friends from college. I thought about Nikki when her dad left for good. But that was different. He packed his bags and drove away.

I know my kids are loved and people would sweep in and protect them and be there for them. I know. But for the third time since Sophia was born, I had that moment of, oh no. All the things I wouldn't be able to say, all the things I wouldn't be able to be there for.

And then I pushed it out of my mind with a list. A is for albatross, B is for bunting, C is for cardinal, D is for duck, E is for...egret. Yeah, egret.

319/365 First Sunday of Advent

Waiting.

It's palpable this year. I have to wait to get home to call Cardinal Glennon to sit on hold for how many minutes to talk to a receptionist who will schedule an appointment some time in the distant future for a doctor who will make us wait in a windowless featureless room for an interminable amount of time and then will tell us, best case scenario, that we must wait.

Nine hundred miles away, a young couple is waiting, too, for news that will devastate them and whirl them around. As if they needed more difficulty. I saw what they were going through as round two in a long road to adulthood and now, tomorrow, they will learn that they have to wait and and then spend probably most of their lives waiting.

It's enough to make you go in haste to the hill country and hide. And wait.

320/365 Choir loft in the early evening

I had to measure the first banner so I could make the other three the same length. No time like the present, I headed out after taking Sophia to practice. I let myself into the dark church and made my way up the steps--Jack said there are 39 but I keep forgetting to count which says something, let me tell you.

My tape measure is cracked and will not lie flat against the banner. I rip off the end and do the math in my head. I measure it: 10 feet from the edge to the hemmed edge below; 17 inches from the edge to the curtain rod.

The church is silent. Dark and deep, Frost would say. It's Advent but in my heart it's still the crappy end of November with drizzle and grayest, impossibly gray skies. The neurology nurse didn't call. The ice water in my veins from Friday has melted into a muddy puddle, waiting for the dry skin-cracking air to evaporate it away. I'm not adjusting to the post-Thanksgiving pre-Christmas time very well. It's all going too fast but takes forever.

Numbers in my head, I walk back down. I toss the broken tape measure. I walk outside, past the dark rectory and the busy street. My car is still warm. I need to go to the grocery store. I note the boy scout tree lot with silent contempt and pull out onto the street in the darkness.

I know I will eventually exhale. It's the getting there that takes so long.