Doing and Not Doing

Time sometimes seems to crawl past so very, very slowly these days. And it's not as if there aren't things to do. The biggest ... the thing I think ... I say I *think* ... I want most to do and need most to do ... is to work some more on the pictures I've taken for my albums about her. But oh every time I start to sit back down it hurts so much ...

Most things are like that. One friends says I need to get a job. I'm sure I do. Yet every time I think of it I feel exhausted.

Partly it's because my profession as a therapist or counselor feels like something I'm just not up to right now. When I think or feel or stumble across anything that reminds me of anyone else's loss, I think of my own. I saw the new Jodie Foster movie that's out the other day. "The Brave One." And felt like I was watching my loss again. Saturday night, I went and saw a "sneak preview" of "The Kingdom." Again, loss there, loss here. Can I sit and listen to someone speak of his or her own tragedy or loss without being overwhelmed once again by my own? And is it even ethical to try to sit as a counselor helping someone else with his/her tragedy when inside I'm screaming and crying and wailing and aching over my own? The dangers of both countertransference and transference seem to me very great.

I keep thinking a part time job might be good though. Partly for financial reasons. I'm OK for the moment in terms of money, but of course all my living expenses are coming out of savings, and continually drawing down that very finite resource is not perhaps such a great thing. I wonder if I could get a part time job at a store or even at a movie house - I saw they were taking jobs there a few days ago.

But then even doing fairly simple daily living things these days just seems exhausting and I keep forgetting what I'm doing and messing up. I go to the store and get a few things and come out exhausted. I buy some gasoline for the car and do the pump thing and can't be bothered to clean the windows though they need it. And when I sit back down in my car I feel exhausted. Everything's exhausting.

Then again, doing nothing can be exhausting too. I was sitting at home most of the day yesterday - Sunday - and felt tired and depressed and more and more sad. I finally went to the dollar movie, a comedy, and couldn't hold my attention to the screen, finally walked out in the middle, and went back to her grave. Then I cried and cried and told her how much I missed her. Only then did I feel some kind of relief. Not that that weight was gone, or that horrible fear-like clenching in the stomach, or the exhaustion. But it felt right to go see her and say how I felt.

To her and to God. I find myself talking to her and to God at the same time at the gravesite these days. That's something I'm doing. Every morning, about 5:00 or 5:30 AM it's up, get the dog, and go to Woodward Park for a "walkie-walkie" - as Mom called it - for the dog. We've lately been doing a "brush-brush" - as Mom called it - brushing Spooky's fur - as well. Then back here. I eat breakfast & get breakfast for Spooky. Then to the gravesite for Office of Readings and Morning Prayer. That's about 8:00 or 9:00. OOR I take from the Office for the Day; Morning Prayer from the Office for the Dead. Then it's a matter of getting through the day. Then in the late afternoon or evening it's back to the grave for Evening Prayer, from the Office for the Dead. And I take Spooky for another "walkie-walkie" - usually over at Waite Phillips Elementary School - and then back home.

Home. This really is Home, or Home away from Home, our True Home. In this world that is of course our place of Exile, having this Place ... what Mom called Home, what I call Home too ... is a Blessing. A Challenge but a Blessing. Maybe because it'a a place not only to either Do or Not Do. But because it's a place to simply Be. Maybe that's what she liked about it most. A safe place for her, a safe place where she could Be.

Me too, Mom. Me too.

I love you and miss you so much.

St Robert Bellarmine, pray for us.

Oh by the way, I went by the Catholic Bookstore on Friday and picked up a book by Robert Bellarmine. The title: "The Art of Dying Well." This I think you above all showed me by your own end, Mom. But naturally a title like that gets my attention and I hope to see what this good Saint and Doctor of the Church has to say on the subject.

Lord Jesus Christ, be with her, be with me, be with all of us. Mary, Seat of Wisdom, pray for us.

Charles Delacroix
Feast of St Robert Bellarmine