July 22, 2011, The Feast Day of Mary Magdalene
(revised August 1, 2011)
Dear Michael,
What shocking news it was to hear last night about the return of the cancer and the decline of your health. Oh, Michael! The shock hit me like a torpedo to the heart. How saddened and sorry I feel!
Before Cousin Joan called, Raphael and I were sitting at a picnic table on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Raphael, curled on the grass, was supervising the seagulls and the ants, while I puzzled out the cloud formations. A textbook 750 F. fanned us with its perfect melding of cool-warmth.
Swaying serenely, the Pacific reminded me of a giant well of brilliant blue Parker (or Pelikan?) fountain pen ink, the kind Carol had to use in black-and-white composition books at St. Mary’s High School. Occasionally she would send me down to the stationery store on Park Avenue (in Rutherford) to pick up a new ink bottle, the colors dazzling my imagination: Turquoise, Red, Blue-Black, Peacock Blue.
Earlier I had left Joan a message in answer to her message. Maybe she’d still be awake, now about 9:00 p.m. on the East Coast. Several times I lifted my cell phone in mid-air, then dropped it as I reconsidered breaking this enchantment. I mentally “tried on” going to Adoration at St. Paul’s, but decided instead to remain under “this most excellent canopy”—Nature’s cathedral.
The muted little ring broke my reveries. Joan’s unmistakable voice made her self-identification unnecessary, and so made me smile. The rest of me, however, was braced for…for something ominous, I suppose. Lord—I’ve been so worried about you both!
And then I heard what I did not want to hear.
How astonishing that those invisible psycho-spiritual lines that connect families and spiritual friends still beacon to us at a cellular level, no matter the history, the distance, the problems or the shape/essence of that bond’s current externals. Michael, you are family to me, as surely as are Carol, Angel, Joey, and their spouses and children, et.al. And not only are you a major player in the family, you are the best thing that ever happened to it, as Angel was (is still, I’m sure) fond of repeating.
Though uninvolved in each other’s everyday life, we were born involved with each other. That will never change, and I don’t want it to, whether with you, Carol or all the others. Despite the distances, geographical and psychological, I love you very much. You have made a big, positive impact on my life. By just being you, Michael, you honor me, and all those around you.
A slight chill rose from the cement bench as the fog bank crept closer to shore at the tiny Shell Beach park. I watched that fog a long time. It is an emissary of gloom for some, but I have grown fond of summer fog here, its soft silence like snowfall—without the snow or the cold. That’s the perfect blend for me, now an average Californian to whom harsher climates are mostly mercifully distant memories. The fog can offer a welcome, cool curtain that softens the brittle-sharpness of blinding reality; or it can muffle, confuse and sadden. At that moment, it was doing a little of both.
Raffy shook himself slowly up from the grass. Like most animals, he knows the time for things. I stood up. “Come on, Pumpkin. Time for church-y church.” (Raphael is an immaculate Catholic boy who knows the Mass ritual inside-out, as well as the difference between Mass and Adoration. We’re working on teaching him how to bow in front of the altar to complete his Catholic Formation.)
The interior of St. Paul’s is hushed, but outside the evening birds are warbling to the sunset. We bow before the Blessed Sacrament which easily outshines its showy monstrance. I sit as Raphael stretches full out sideways on the floor at my feet, then curls in a fetal position and conks out. A tear wells up as I see his service dog vest flop over: He has definitely lost too much weight during this last crisis. My plush angel with the poorly fitting robe and the unfairly short time span on earth.
Alone before the Holy One, I think about how there are prayers, prayers and prayers. In my personal liturgy, the first prayers always ask for an all-out miracle. The next prayer begs for healing in part or in full. The third is “Thy Will be done.” Yet unable to let go of the supplications, I add, “…in the gentlest, happiest, and most graced way.”
Michael, my thoughts and prayers are with you every day, just like this.
This cross, made of local driftwood, is a physical manifestation of my seaside Thursday and its attendant prayers. I hope you like it.
Carol, I have enclosed a card for you. Please teach me how to help you! Meantime, I pray the love of God strengthens and reassures you.
You are both in my thoughts and heart always. The tide may ebb or flow, but it is eternally alive, like the flame of love.Love,
Maria Christina
