but oh so tempting…would be even excusable….temptation in its most subtle form…I can’t. Or, is it “I won’t”, not today, maybe tomorrow…can’t/won’t, two sides of the same coin of Eden. The cry of Eden was and still is “I will not serve”.
Those words “I can’t” hovered in my brain on Friday, all I could think of was a month from that day was Justin’s funeral, October 2nd, the Feast of the Guardian Angels. Leaning my forehead on the door frame, willing the pain behind my eyes to go away…and thinking it, wanting to say it “I can’t do this God”…but a voice inside rises up and rebukes that spirit of unwillingness…and whispers the real plea of my heart….“I don’t know how to do this”. God can work with an “I don’t know how”…“I can’t” doesn’t give Him much but a hard heart of stone.
Several weeks ago I took down a poster from Justin’s closet door…it had been up for years..it was dog eared and torn…but he never took it down. Biting my lip, I gently removed the thumb tacks and folded it carefully. Tasks like this take so long to do, its easy to get lost in thought, you can’t see
for tears, you have to stop and find tissues and then gather the energy to finish…always the temptation to say “I will do it later”. It was a poster of the word “Can’t” with the international “no” symbol encircling it with an admonition below, “Don’t use four letter words”. He was quiet about it, but Justin lived that poster.
When faced with something daunting, I would watch the resolve in his eyes, especially if told something was too difficult or impossible…he would gently say “watch me”. He missed an entire year of college after his freshman year due to surgeries on his feet and ankles. The first surgery on the left foot in late April was not successful and he opted for fusion of the bone and joint. That was the summer of 2004, I remember counting the weeks until his return for his sophomore year and knowing it would be very close if he had the second surgery for him to be mobile enough to handle the rigors of walking the campus. July 28th he got the go ahead to try walking without the boot..still on crutches, he was to be at school just a month from that date….and we found out that he was rooming in St. Bonaventure, the dorm located at the bottom of the hill. Those of you who have been to Franciscan are familiar with the hill. I thought to myself…no way, he can’t do that, he is barely out of the boot, still on crutches. The grizzly momma in me was ready to get on the phone and have him moved to the upper campus, but Justin said no…let it be. No car, he had both boot and crutches with him…but he didn’t use them. He walked. He decided that year to study Computer Science. He had struggled with math in high school but decided to go after that degree and face the math. Took Calc, failed it…took it again and passed with an “A”. Took Calc 2 the summer of 2005, passed it…from there on out he enjoyed math. Graduated with a math minor, he learned that if you work hard enough and long enough at something…you can conquer it, the only limits that existed were those that you put on yourself. He started to talk grad studies and his dreams of achieving his doctorate so he could return to Steubenville and teach…share that same excitement of learning with others, the joy of discovery that Theology and the sciences absolutely belong together…for science makes no sense without God, nothing makes sense without God.
We miss him, with every breath we long for him…miss how he would look up at you, his glasses way down his nose, smile playing around his lips. I fold the poster back up and tuck it in my desk drawer, I will keep it close these next few weeks…a gentle reminder from my boy to not use four letter words.
