La Conditione Humaine

I feel a little better at the moment but really feel a need to keep talking this out. For the past day and a half or so I've really just sort of been sitting and moping. I'd like to think this was good clean grief ... and I think partly it was ... but also it was partly a kind of giving in, a kind of giving up, a yielding to not Grief, but almost its opposite ... a sort of using Mom to keep from looking at ... at what? At Life, at the Wounds that are the Wounds of Life, not the Wounds of Mom herself or the Wounds of Charles shorn of his mother.

Look. The bald fact is that Life is Pain; and Life is a preparatio mori or it is nothing at all. To Live is to be on the Road to Death. And you know, I think there are two things in particular, in looking at my Mother's "reminders" these days, that cause me most pain: and both are to be sure genuinely Grievous losses connected with my own loss of Mom. But they are also genuinely Grievious lossess connected with La Conditione Humaine, losses that are as universal as they are human and as human in general as they are Mom in particular.

The first thing that really sears my soul and brings forth tears is looking at things like pictures of her life as a young woman in her prime. There's a photo of her in 1945 standing in front of a house in Columbia, Missouri. Her first home with her husband, my father-to-be. She has a note on the back of the photo saying almost breathlessly that the tree in the picture is really as tall as the roof, it's just weighted down by ice and snow. She seems just full of joy and wonder and hope and anticipation of her future.

And in the final analysis ... all of these things end in the Grave. "Peace is in the Grave, the Grave holds all things beautiful." What a tragedy ... but now, not just a tragedy for Mom. But for us all. Who doesn't stand in front of something symbolizing his or her hope for a future in this life ... only to have it dashed away in the fullness of time?

The second thing is seeing things around the house here reminding me of that intense, loving, and very difficult time we had together in the past 5-6 months or 11 months. Much closer to "here-and-now" losses are involved. I fixed pancakes yesterday morning ... and this morning .. for myself. And almost became sick with sorrow. For she's not here to share my pancakes. She's not here to tell me what she thinks of them. She's not here to tell me she likes them. And we can't eat them together, we can't talk jokingly to one another as I hand out some of them as a "bitesey" for the dog.

And yes this is a very personal, very individual loss. But isn't it true of all losses in the Here-and-Now? Every moment is passing even as we speak or don't speak. Everything is rushing past us so fast that we can just glimpse it as it passes and then it's gone. Everything in this world slips away so fast, so fast ... doesn't it?

The pictures and things my Mom wrote in 1945 ... and the reminders of only weeks ago (today is 2 weeks since her death) ... are all things full of pathos indeed but not only for me and for my Mom but for us all.

I went to her Grave this morning and this time took something different. I took along St Augustine's Confessions and De Caussade's Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence. As usual, I prayed today's Office of Readings; and then the Morning Prayer to the Office for the Dead. I cried and cried ... and went back to the truck to get something ... and found that I had managed to leave the lights on my truck on and run down my battery ... and had to get jumped off ... and had to ask someone to help. Not easy for me anyway but I felt like a walking Death's Head and it all felt very painful. So I drove off to get the battery juiced up again and when I came back, it was raining hard. I sat in my truck not far from her grave and read St Augustine and de Caussade and still felt horrible but at least not horrible and alone. Life goes on for us all. Death goes on for us all. My Tragedy; your tragedy; everyone's tragedy: The Human Tragedy.

Mom, I miss you so very, very much. I ask Lord that you take good care of her wherever she might be. I ask that you take her Home to you. I ask that you help me to recognize in my little tragedy nothing other than a very real, very pesonal, very individual microcosm and Icon of the Great Tragedy. Help me to surrender in this the all-too-tempting longing for Human Legacy of a mortal kind that is simply not an option. Help me to see in this Tragedy the seeds of Hope. For if Peace is in the Grave and the Grave holds all things Beautiful, then by Grace I believe that the Grave is neither more nor less nor other than a culmination of Life: for Life is a Grave. Life is a Holy Saturday, a Door, a Passage, a Waiting for a moment before the real Peace, the real Beauty, that is You.

"Peace is in the Grave, the Grave holds all things beautiful and good." Well, I couldn't recall where this quote came from, so I googled it, and it's from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.

Thank you Lord Jesus Christ for being Here and Now; and There and Then; and please help me through my Holy Saturday as you have guided my dear Mother through hers.

Charles Delacroix
Wednesday of 22nd Week of Ordinary Time