Do this….

This week has been the first time where I said inside,  “I don’t think I can do this.”  “This” being living with this wearying sadness, this drought in my soul for my son.  This…being ambushed in your own home,  memories lurk around every corner and in every room.  A simple trip to the attic becomes a fearful task….your heart twists in knots because you know in the attic once treasured memories and smiles are now no longer cause for sweetness, but sorrow.  Oh I know…be glad you have those memories, isn’t great that you can look back, aren’t you grateful that you had a child..I mean, sure he is dead and all…but some people never have a child…at least you had a child…at least you have boxes filled with crayon drawings and first books.   Yeah, I get it….and I could concede your point, but until you stand staring at those boxes, forgetting what you originally came looking for….looking to your right and seeing the memory boxes,  to the left of those boxes sits his first trumpet….over in the next container are much loved Legos….old Halloween costumes that won first place…..and your heart yearns for the one you cannot see or touch….until you stand there having lost all your energy and courage…..do not remind me that at least I had a child, I know well my blessing…..it it does not invalidate or somehow eliminate the need for the grief process.  The question is begged…why keep any of it, no one truly cares to look through banker’s boxes of first grade drawings, middle school writing projects….just a foolish mother saving stuff with the thought that one day, perhaps a grandchild would enjoy seeing “daddy’s” stuff..it is how we dream and think I guess.  I suppose I could…should throw it all out….but I am not there yet.

And yes, I know I have a child who is alive…he is the reason we breathe.  He is also the reason we don’t breathe sometimes, or the reason why your stomach twists and knots when you don’t hear from him in 24 hours…that precious life makes me easy prey for the stalking fear of losing him as well. I often think now when we hang up from a phone call, was that the last time I will hear that voice, that laugh?  Life is so fragile.  Life changes in an instant.  Life changed with  few words, “I am sorry to have to tell you, your son Justin is dead.”…that is all it took to irrevocably change our lives.

“I don’t think I can do this”…it keeps rolling over in my mind, the juxtaposition of my thought pattern with what Jesus told His disciples at the Last Supper…“do this.”  He had been preparing them for His betrayal, arrest and death…and He gave them a command…“do this.”   Two little words that are stuck in my brain…“do this”…with the vision of our priest praying those words of consecration “do this”…..where do I hear those words, the counterpoint to my interior dialogue of my “do this”…the Mass, the Holy Sacrifice, the Consecration.   Jesus made it simple to remember…“do this”, when you cannot bear another moment, when all seems lost…when your head hurts from unspent tears and you don’t think you can hold your head up for one more second…“do this”….come to Me, come place it all on the altar…allow My love to consume your misery.  The Blessed Mother knew this too…at Cana…no wine, they came to Mary…she said “DO whatever He tells you to do”…the servants were obedient, they had wine, beautiful, luxurious wine in abundance.  “Do this in memory of me.”  Father raises the Chalice of Precious Blood…I have no need to do anything else but be still….“do this”.

Justin knew this, he knew it so well.  The last Christmas he was home, Christmas 2009. We had a very simple, humble Christmas…we were unemployed, but our boy came home from South Dakota and we savored those short days with him. He had to go back all too soon, he was taking classes and teaching…so his holiday was short.  He called us when he got to Omaha,  the plane had arrived safely…but his car was snowed in…and snow plowed in, oh he made it sound like high adventure…but we knew he was cold, tired and digging out his car with no shovel in the dark.  Dug out his car to find the battery dead, ah those midwest winters.  He didn’t get far that night and stopped in a hotel…roads were icy, we were grateful he stopped.  The next day was Sunday and he was in the middle of nowhere looking for a Catholic church for Mass.  He rang his dad and Doug brought up Google maps and they plotted a way back to Vermillion via a Catholic Mass.  Roads were bad, there was snow…Churches far and few between.  We even suggested to him as he stopped to call us that he most likely had a viable reason to not make Mass and that he was making a valiant effort.  No…wouldn’t hear of it…find him a church where roads were passable.  God bless Doug…stayed on the phone, got him routed…boy made Mass at the Cathedral of the Epiphany in Sioux City, he said it was a lovely Mass…no, he wasn’t worried…all was well, he would get to South Dakota eventually…and he did.

Lord, help me to remember that I only have to “Do this”, to shut out all the other voices vying for my attention, keep me close to you as a small child is kept at their parent’s side.

“How lovely your dwelling, O Lord of Hosts,

My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the Lord.

My heart and flesh cry out for the living God.

As the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest to settle her young,

My home is by your altars, Lord of Hosts, my king and my God!

Happy are those who dwell in your house!

They never cease to praise  you.

Psalm 84:1-5