Motivation, Amotivation, and "De Futilates"

The trouble for me is that although I realize ... usually, when not too depressed anyway, I realize that there is some kind of purpose for me; that God really has something for me to do ... if nothing else I can chase after a car and tell the driver that she lost a hubcap back on 31st. That really did happen today .... .... but now that is in fact a good thing; and there are other good things that I can do by God's grace. But ... at another level ... why do them? Why? What's the poin? In this life? In the Here and Now I mean? Everything ... *everything* ... feels .... *feels* ... utterly bleak and futile without Mom here.

That's the problem with the whole idea that "the point is to move forward" or "the goal is to let go" or (more brutally) "you need to get your mind off of her so you can do something else."

Why? Why should I move forward? Why? What's the Point?

And ...

I just can't see this in utilitarian terms ...

The struggle is to find some kind of meaning in her loss before I can find some kind of meaning in anything else. Or that's how it feels to me.

Is the goal of Grieving to Get On, Move On, Get More Functional, etc?

Or is it to find a way to Honor the Meaning and Dignity of the Human Person that is Mom; and to Honor the Relationship that God in His Grace allowed ... to Honor My Mother, as Mother, and as Person.

I think the latter. I feel the latter. At a very, very, very gut level. The hell with utility.

Dignity and meaning are the challenges for me these days.

Yet even so ... beyond this ... this seeking Dignity and Grace and Meaning in the Life of Mom and in the Death of Mom ... beyond this I can see no path forward ... the minutes and hours and days stretch out bleakly and meaninglessly, at an existential level, far over the horizon ...

O Lord ... with Job ... with You in Gethsemani ... I feel so alone, so stripped of hope, stripped of meaning, drowning in futility ...

Yet I know that underneathe all this You Are. You Are the Foundation of all, of everything.

Help me to keep my eyes on You even when there seems no rhyme or reason to the Here and Now from which I gaze blinking into the darkness in which You dwell ...

And that is what St John of the Cross said again and again ... You dwell in Darkness, not Light, of Faith, not Sight, for here and now we see in a Glass Darkly ....

I love you Mom
I love you Jesus
I love you God
I love you in all your saints and all your angels
I love you
I don't see you
I don't see anything
I don't see the path
I don't see even the Cross You place on my shoulders
But I feel it
And by Your Grace I bear it in love
Your love
Your faith
Your hope
You alone God
You alone
You

In Jesus Name,

Charles Delacroix
Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels