The First of September

The first of September is tomorrow, it is too much for me to comprehend. I am filled with thoughts of one year ago today, Justin was still alive, living in South Dakota, already back to taking classes and teaching classes.  I could call and hear him say “Hello, how are you”? He was always good to ask about your day, I always felt guilty when I would chatter so about all the little daily happenings, but he was just so easy to get on with, he was my son, but Justin was my good friend also, a good listener, wise beyond his years.

With fall so near, I know that I should be planning my fall cleaning, both inside our little house and outside in the yard. But I feel like we have been cleaning, sorting, giving away or storing since Justin’s death. I am tired and more than a little weary of making decisions on what to do with stuff.  I hate stuff. I am ready to get rid of stuff, after all it is just stuff.  I find myself growing quieter on the outside, but inside there is a great noise and activity, mental push brooms and vacuums sweeping up rubbish in my brain, great clippers trimming that which is excess, a mental dumping out of boxes which I may or may not remember what is stored in them, a great sorting of the mind. I know what I am about a little bit more as we near the one year anniversary of Justin’s death, but still not fully realizing the profound changes in who I am.

There are loose end being tied up with Justin’s estate, what a riot, the estate of Justin Jackson, a  grad student with threadbare sweaters.  Key Bank has been satisfied with their check for the student loans, through the kindness of our accountant, Justin’s taxes have been filed for 2010. They came in the mail yesterday, it makes you want to scream and bang your head against the wall, the having to continue to read the word “deceased.” There are still items on the to-do list , it doesn’t seem to have an end.

I have been told that the second year is harder, you have no reserves like you may have had the first six months, the anesthesia is gone, and the yet the pain has not diminished.  At times it is a daunting prospect, the thought of engaging in these next few weeks, thoughts and visions tumble in your head, not unlike a kaleidoscope, but the picture is not pretty or symmetrical, it is mostly jagged and sharp,colored in grays and blacks.

I have just finished a small book entitled “Taming the Restless Heart, How to Know God’s Will and Dwell in the Peace it Brings” by Fr. Gerald Vann, O.P.  There is a opening sentence to a chapter that I keep coming back to again and again, Fr. Vann writes:

‘If we set out along the road that leads to God, and to the loving union of our will with the will of God, we cannot get far without meeting a dragon.”

I miss being able to call Justin and share with him what I just read, he would have have loved the above quote, would have understood why it took me a week to move past two lines, I would have liked to have seen what type of dragon he might have sketched. What his thoughts were after pondering the above, I miss my good friend.

Fr. Vann’s short chapter on dragon slaying is simple and profound, I find myself reading it over and over again, it is all about love and our treatment of things, animals and human beings, discerning God’s presence in them, how that leads us to being less selfish in our love of them, less inclined to love them apart from God. He says:

“By accepting them lovingly and gratefully from Him when He gives them, you will find it easier to give them back to Him if He asks it of you. Your love will be less grasping and possessive and therefore more like God’s own love.”

How hard it is to open my hand and give Justin back to God, who were we to have been given such a gift in the first place?…still, how painful to trust and say “I want what you want God, I want to do what you want.”  Fr. Vann says that not to worry if we can’t mean it fully, but to keep saying those words, to hope and have faith and little by little, we start to live it and have peace.  One of his last lines in the book states:

“Only by fidelity in the small things can we ever hope to be able to do anything great.”

Heavenly Father, help me to know those small things I am to do, help me to be faithful to the small, help me to stay small so that I might be kept close to you like a very small child.