Taking Stock at One Month

I was at my hospice-sponsored Grief Support Group today and was asked how I felt. I answered that I felt Hopeless; that everything looked Hopeless and Pointless, even though I know at some level that this isn't so.

Don't get me wrong. Faith and Hope in God I embrace although, I'll admit, I may not "feel" such Faith and Hope very much these days. Yet I choose such Faith and Hope by Your Grace, as a matter of bare intention, just for today.

The problem is that I really plain don't see a way forward in this world. It would be different, I would think, if I had the resources of Family or Friends, Work or Church, with which to support me as I lurched forward after Christ. But I don't. In my Grief Support Group, everyone seems to have friends, family, and more, to help them on their way. I thank God for this, and for them, and recognize that they without question are showing a degree of fidelity and confidence in God's Providence that I can at this point only dream about. But can one pilgrim traveling alone follow suit?

Definitely the answer is Yes ... if you are an Ignatius Loyola, if you are a John the Baptizer, if you are a Romuald or Bruno or one of the Desert Fathers who Followed Christ in solitude. These wonderful saints to me are ikons of the via solitaire in Christ. But they are also, it seems to me, made of a rock-ribbed toughness, matched to their solitary condition, that is not part of my character at all, to say the least. I learned long ago that the austerities of the Via Negativa were episodically accessible to me, by God's Grace; but also that the Via Negativa simply could not be my ordinary "Way to the Way" exactly because I plain didn't have, and don't have, the requisite hardiness of character and spiritual stamina, if those are the right terms. A more humble and more widely accessible Via Positiva is my ordinarily best Way in Christ.

But that Via really does take some plain old natural sources of support, either by way of family or friends in Christ. And of this kind of support, this kind of life, I am at this point, absent my mother, very deeply in Despair.

Now as I said in my last entry, this kind of Despair isn't necessarily a bad thing at all. Despair of this world coupled with Hope and Faith in God are usually strongly recommended as a very good thing indeed. This coupling appears in Thomas à Kempis' Imitatio Christi, and in Lawrence Scupoli's Spiritual Combat and Jean-Pierre de Caussade's Abandonment to Divine Providence and in the Apophthegmata Patrum. To name a few.

The problem for me is that although I do honestly believe that God will not send us temptations without giving us the strength and means to resist (1 Cor 10:13), as a practical matter, I just plain haven't shown the kind of Stuff you see in folks like (say) St Ignatius Loyola, living as one dead on a daily basis. Like the Via Negativa, the Via stripped of natural support of friends or family doesn't seem like a good match for Charles as a sheerly practical matter.

Yes Lord I choose to pick up my little cross and Follow You as You bear your Great Cross. But I am very, very feeble. What can I say.

What to do? I plain don't know.

I guess I don't have to know today though. God knows. And perhaps He will reveal this in His Time.

I can, though, in the meantime, pray "Lead Kindly Light" and Wait for the Lord. As in Ps 130 in the Office for the Dead.

Meanwhile, for now, I plan to continue my little Vocation of Mourning, in Sr Rupp's words.

That means:

* Visit Mom's Grave twice daily. Say OOR from the Proper and MP from the Office for the Dead at my Morning Visit. Say EP from the Office for the Dead at my Evening Visit. On major Feasts, I will use MP and probably EP from the Feast instead in accordance with Deacon's suggestion. Talk to Mom as well as to God on Visits.

* Take care of the Dog. Walk her daily, in the Morning and in the Evening. As per my promise to Mom.

* Keep in touch with Aunt Edna. As best we can.

* Keep blogging. This sort of public "telling my tale" is said to be an important part of grief healing.

* Keep looking for and using resources, especially those specifically Catholic resources.

* Keep up Grief Support Group on Thursdays.

* Keep trying the RCIA on Wednesday's. Per Deacon, I'm now on the RCIA Team. They seem like nice people. I need to try to allow them to be nice, and try to serve as best I can.

* Slowly ... as in *slowly* ... work on setting Mom's things. Especially I need to work on her memory books and the like. The issue here is Anamnesis and it's really very, very important to me personally to remember and stay as close to Mom as I can in her Death as in her Life.

* Need to slowly start the "business" end of things next week. Oh God. But just got to.

* Keep seeing movies when need to keep stress down.

* Keep doing diabetes managment thing.

But bottom line ... the only thing I really have to do is die, in due time. This I think I can manage. By simply living until then. Not of course by any self-injury; I'm not a bit suicidal. One can, clearly, Despair of this life and not be in the least suicidal. That's where, by God's Grace, I'm at.

Enough for now .. time for me to hit the sack.

I love you and miss you Mom ... please Sleep the Sleep of Death in Peace. And may God send to me as well a good night's Sleep in Him.

Love in Christ,

Charles Delacroix
Feast of St Vincent de Paul