The End of the Year ... oh Momma ... oh Lord ... what's next?

The End of 2007 ...

The Eve of the Feast of Mary Mother of God ...

Oh Momma how I miss you ...

Really, it's not been a "bad day" ... I don't feel sad or depressed or anything, really ... I just feel blah ... and frankly lifeless, hopeless ... the bleakness and futility of the future seems summed up in the prospect of a New Year.

Still, this morning, I took pictures of Mom's grave, really lovely under a light, sparkling frost.

This morning, I heard a story on NPR about foods traditionally eaten in different places for the new year. Italians, they said, traditionally eat lentils and Italian Sausage. The lentils are in the shape of coins and signify the wish for prosperity in the new year. This sounds so natural and traditional that I can't help but be attracted to this ceremony. I was tempted to buy some Italian Sausage but didn't in the interest of keeping costs down as much as possible these days. But I fixed a big bowl of lentils tonite, mixing in onions & seasoned with onion salt, and really it was good. Oh Lord I do pray for prosperity in the new year, in accordance and concordance with Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve in Italy and elsewhere.

The dog and I went to Woodward Park for a walk this afternoon, and then this afternoon, we both visited Mom to wish her a Happy New Year and to give her a coo and say "Night night ... night night, Momma, and don't let the bedbugs bite," as she would say smilingly.

I thought of dismantling the Christmas Tree but didn't. Tomorrow ... but tonite, one last night of Christmas Lights on the Prettiest Christmas Tree We've Ever Had ... Momma, I know you would have liked the Tree taken down today, but forgive me, I so love to look at the lights even as I feel utter emptiness and devastation in this place in your absence, Momma ...

I watched Bad Santa, always a wonderful antidote to Christmas blues, and I worked on sorting through documentation needed to file for student loan repayment in the prospective new year.

Oh my dear Momma how I miss you so ...

O I love you Lord Jesus ... and please please please ... O Lord ... take good care of my dear Momma ... please ...

I love you Momma and miss you so much

I'm drinking some more egg nog in your memory O Momma and beg all the Angels and Saints who have gone before to celebrate the New Year with you dear Momma ...

And I look forward by God's Grace to celebrating a New Day and a New Eternal Year with you oh Momma ... God willing O Lord ...

I love you both ... I love you all.

Charles Delacroix
Feast of Pope St Sylvestre
Eve of Mary Mother of God

Beautiful ... just beautiful ... and sad ... so sad

I am sitting here looking at our Christmas Tree. I'll probably take it down today ... Momma, you always said that Christmas decorations should be down by New Year's. But for now ... oh how very beautiful.

The Prettiest Christmas Tree We've Ever Had ...

Or at least ... it would be ... if you were here ...

Maybe by God's Grace you are here ... then lovely indeed the Tree ... lovely indeed everything ...

But Oh Momma I can't see you ... and oh oh oh oh oh how I miss you ...

So so so so much ...

On this last day of the year ...

I want to say what a horrible horrible year, since this is the year that you were taken from me ... yet how selfish I know ... when it's time to go it's time to go and for you this must be good but oh oh oh oh oh ... I just miss you Momma so much ...

Oh and what a year ... there were many, many, many good things in this year, weren't there, Momma? This is the year I was given the privilege of being for you a small, small, small fraction of what you were to me for so many many years ... caregiver, caretaker ...

You always said it best: "I will always be your mother, and you will always be my son." This year in a very special way allowed me to clothe myself in this mantle, to walk this way of love, to gain God's Gift of you in a special way ...

All this is good, so good, but oh

oh oh oh oh oh Momma ...

How I miss you ...

Oh Momma I love you

Oh Jesus I love you

Oh Lord Jesus please please please please please ... take good care of my Momma ...

I love you

Charles Delacroix
Feast of Pope St Sylvestre
Eve of Mary Mother of God

Sound of Music ... and our Christmas Tree at Year's End

ABC was showing Sound of Music tonite. Oh Mom how you and I both loved to watch this, together. Mom you always thought Christopher Plummer so handsome and charming.

Oh and Momma as I watched this movie "on & off" ... I looked over at our Christmas Tree, the Prettiest Christmas Tree We've Ever Had ... and it does look so, so lovely.

Our Christmas Trees always looked so lovely especially in the dark, with hte Christmas Tree lights on. So beautiful, Momma.

And your chair is empty

And the tree looks so lovely ... and so futile ... so very out of place, for everythign is out of place with you not here ...

Emptiness and Dejection and Futility and Hopelessness ... isn't that what this life is all about O Lord

Oh Momma how I miss you

Oh Momma I love you

Lord Jesus I love you

And Lord Jesus please please please please please ... take good care of my Momma.

Charles Delacroix
Sunday in the Octave of Easter
Feast of the Holy Family

Feast of the Holy Family

Today is the First Sunday of the Christmas Season ... Sunday within the Octave of Christmas ... and the Feast of the Holy Family.

Our family ... such as it was ... would not be the kind of family that anyone would even consider comparing to the Holy Family.

That includes me ... well me at one time anyway ...

But things have changed. For me they have changed enormously, beyond words. My mother's decline and death ... and the days and weeks and months since then ... have left me with a very, very, very different view of my own family than I had in the past ...

Mom ... and (yes) Dad ... and Grampa and Grandma ... maternal & paternal ... and all their forebears ... those I know a little about ... and the many, many, many I know nothing about ... not even their names ... all of these have from me today really nothing but deepest, deepest, deepest gratitude.

Thank you dear dear dear Momma.

Thank you all.

I keep thinking of this picture of Momma in her picture album. It's just after WWII. She and Dad have set up their very first house in Columbia. It's winter, and Momma is looking back at the house, ice and snow everywhere. The caption of the photo says that the tree by the house is bent low under the ice. You don't in the photo really even see Mom's face very well. But her bundled up figure, and the way she's twisting back to look at the bent-over tree and the house ... her very first home for what she planned to be her new family ... oh my my my ... Mom looks so wistful, so full of hope, so full of young energy ... energy she placed at the service of a dream, a dream of family, a family under God. Oh my. That was ... when? 1946? 1947? Ah me ... so long ago ... but that photo ... oh I've been thinking about it since I saw it, looking at photo albums a few days after Momma died 4 short months ago ... and even if our family turned out in some ways tragically ... even if all families turn out, in the end, very tragically indeed ... even so ... even so ... isn't there so much to admire in a woman and a man who labor to build a family with such courage and tenacity and perseverance and joy and sadness ...

Oh thank you Momma ... thank you so much. I will never, ever, ever be able to express the smallest fraction of the gratitude I have in my heart for you. And for your God, and my God, who vouchesafed you to me. Who allowed little Charles Delacroix the sheer privilege of having you for a Momma. Who allowed me the Grace ... the sheer Grace ... of being your son.

Oh but Momma ... how I miss you ... I miss you so much ... so much ... so much ...

I'm going to the grave to pray for you now dear Momma. Yesterday morning, Aunt Edna and Cousin Rose came by the grave. The funeral home lady came by to inspect the grave marker. I thanked her, and asked her to thank all responsible, for managing to get it placed there the Friday before Christmas. Aunt Edna and Cousin Rosanna both said that they think the marker looks wonderful. So do I. I am so grateful, Lord, and so grateful, Momma. Thank you thank you all.

But oh how I miss you Momma ..............................................

Lord Jesus please please please please please take good care of my Momma ...

I love you Lord Jesus
I love your Most Holy Family
I love my Momma, true if tragic Ikon of your dear Mother, O Lord

I love you all

And am grateful to you all

Charles Delacroix
Sunday within the Octave of Christmas
Feast of the Holy Family

Pygmalion ... PS I love you

The OETA Movie Club is showing Pygmalion (1938), tonite ... the version with the great Leslie Howard as Henry Higgins, and Wendy Hiller as Eliza Doolittle. See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030637/. Frankly, this wouldn't be Mom's favorite version: she and I loved My Fair Lady (1964) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058385/ with the redoubtable Rex Harrison as Higgins, and the delightful Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle. Still, she and I would have talked about Leslie Howard ... a wonderful actor, who Mom and I both most associated with Gone with the Wind (1939) and The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934). What a wonderful actor in particular from the movies that Mom most knew and loved ...

I also saw another movie today ... PS I Love You (2007) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0431308/ with a delightful Hilary Swank starring. I liked the movie very much ... I'm not sure Mom would have, to be honest, but I liked especially the sense throughout that Life and Death are closely, closely intertwined. The vision of Death affecting everything, the sense of a relationship sundered but not over; the overwhelming Job-like anger and despondency and demands for explanations of the Swank character ... all this of course touches me very deeply.

For what doesn't seem meaningless, valueless, worthless, hopeless, dry and dusty and tasteless ... in this life with Momma no longer here ...

Oh Momma I miss you so so so so much

Oh Lord Jesus please please please please take good care of my dear Momma.

I love you Momma

I love you Jesus

Charles Delacroix
Feast of St Thomas Becket
Eve of the Feast of the Holy Family

PS ... I love you!

Thomas Becket, the Holy Family, and the Prettiest Christmas Tree

Today I see is the Commemoration of St Thomas Becket ... Mom & I both loved Becket the movie, and this saint's struggles to be as Wise as a Serpent and Innocent as a Dove I think always resonated for Momma ... as it did, and does, for me.

Tomorrow is Sunday within the Octave of Christmas ... and the Feast of the Holy Family. Oh Momma ... our own ill-starred family may have been far, far from the Holy Family in so many ways ... but oh your courage and your determination and your love and the sheer strength of your efforts to make a family are all to me the greatest of gifts and I feel such deep deep deep gratitude ... thank you Momma oh thank you Momma ... and thank you Lord Jesus for my dear Momma ... and Oh Lord Jesus .... please please please please please ... take good care of my dear Momma ... please ...

Momma, I have the Christmas Tree lit .. and think it's just beautiful, just so lovely and special ... and oh I think I will miss it in a special way ... as we both did every year when it came down ... and Momma oh Momma I do think if you were here that we'd both agree smiling at each other, perhaps with tears in our eyes, that this is the Prettiest Christmas Tree We've Ever Had ...

Oh Momma how I miss you so so so much ...

Chubby is here ...

The Little Pink Piggy is here ...

The Little Blue Monkey is here ...

The Christmas Penguin is here ...

Spooky is here ...

Those Cotton Tailed Bunnies that Aren't Hardly Worth a Nickel are here ...

Our Christmas Tree is here ...

Your beautiful things so full of memories are here ...

And Oh Momma I am here ... I am here ... oh Momma why are you not here ... oh Momma ...

Oh Momma ....

Oh Jesus please take good good care of my Momma ...

I love you Momma I love you so much ... so much ...

I love you Lord Jesus oh I love you so much ...

I love you Momma I miss you so so so so so so so so so so much ...

We all miss you so much ...

Love always,

Charles Delacroix
Feast of St Thomas Becket
Eve of the Feast of the Holy Family

4 Months Since the Funeral

Mom was buried on the Feast of St Monica - August 27; and today, the 4 month anniversary, is the Feast of St John, the Apostle of Love, the special adoptive son vouchesafed to the maternal care of Our Lady by Our Lord Himself as He Hung Dying on the Cross.

oh Momma how I miss you. Everything still seems just so very, very, very bleak. The New Year approaches ... without you ... so ... what's the point?

Oh well ...

Mahlesh ... :-] ...

I love you Momma

I love you Jesus

Please please please please O My Lord Jesus Christ ... take good care of my Momma ...

I love you and miss you so much

Now and always

Charles Delacroix
Feast of St John

Christmas ... and Momma

I spent my Christmas morning at Momma's grave, and really, on the whole, am very very glad. So many, many tears; but it all felt ... I was going to say Right, but of course nothing feels Right with Momma gone. But it felt less Not Right than otherwise.

I took along Chubby bear, and the little pink piggy, and the little blue monkey, and the Christmas penguin ... so Momma was surrounded by the stuffed animals she and I came to love so much. I took along Momma's bunny slippers too ... those "cotton tailed bunnies that aren't hardly worth a nickel" as we joked from time to time. Momma would of course say in due course, "Oh Charles ... you know ... maybe they're worth a nickel ..." Oh Momma what a big, big heart you had ...

I took along the picture of the mother bear and its cub, too. You loved that picture, Momma. So cute ... but of course that's how you always saw motherhood ... and me too ...

I took along two cards. Both are Charlie Brown cards. We both loved Charlie Brown, you see. Well, one card was from last Valentine's Day, although the front of the card, full of seasonal red, really looks like a Christmas card. On the front, though, it pictures Linus with his Blanket and Snoopy, and starts out with the capion, "When I count my blessings ..." ... and on the inside, reads, "I think of you!" It's addressed inside to "Mom!" and is signed by me on behalf of myself and the many loved ones around us:

Love,

Charles Lee
Spookey
Little Blue Monkey
Pink Piggy
Birds
Rabbits
Cotton-Tailed Bunnies Not Worth a Nickel

She liked that card very much, and it's been sitting on top of the piano. So's the 2nd card, which shows Snoopy and Woodstock sitting on top of Snoopy's doghouse. Snoopy has his typewriter out, and has typed out:

"It was a dark
and stormy night,
but Mom was
there, so it
wasn't scary
at all.
The End."

On the inside it shows Snoopy with his arms wide, saying "Thanks for always being there, MOM" and its signed by me and Spooky. I think this card is from last Mother's Day, though it might have been before that one.

I also took a teacup and saucer and set them just in front of her marker, and poured out for her some hot Earl Grey tea that I had brought in a thermos. I drank some tea, and took pictures of Mom's grave with all the animals and cards and tea set out for her. And I cried and cried and cried and took so many pictures.

I said OOR for Christmas this morning and MP from the Office for the Dead as usual. But in OOR, the 2nd Reading, that of Pope St Leo the Great, has our dear sainted Holy Father say that there is no place for Sadness today, on this glorious Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord, the Feast indeed of the Incarnation. Oh yes, dear Holy Father, yes. But oh. Forgive me, Holy Father, ands forgive me, dear Lord Jesus, for the great sorrow I do feel today.

Oh Momma how I miss you. But thank you thank you for the wonderful gift of your time with us ... all too short was that time ... but oh thank you for every minute you gave.

The Christmas Tree looks lovely, Momma. I think you and I would agree that it's the Prettiest Christmas Tree We've Ever Had. Although nothing really looks right without you here Momma. But oh. It has the ornaments you loved on it and I think it looks lovely ... lonely ... but lovely.

I've been listening to Christmas carols on the radio and watched part of It's a Wonderful Life last night on TV and keep thinking, "I'm going to do this if it kills me." It's painful but would be even more painful not to do these things. But Ohhhhhhh Momma ... how I miss you, how I miss sharing these precious, precious things with you. Oh Momma.

I spent yesterday afternoon at Aunt Edna's with our cousins. They were so nice, and so welcoming. I kept thinking about you Momma and I ran to the restroom to cry every now and then but I stayed and took pictures. You would love to see how big Ethan and Andrew are now. I got them a toy plastic earthmover/bulldozer and a toy helicopter and a set of large sized, children's sized, dominoes. They really seemed to like all of these and it was fun to watch Ethan playing with the bulldozer. You would have liked to see them too I know Momma.

I went to see Atonement today, too. What a lovely and moving movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0783233/. It's the 2nd time I've seen it in 3 days. It's a beautiful story ... and in so many ways, Momma, it's really about you ... and Dad ... and your generation. How deeply, deeply, deeply grateful I am, Momma, for all you did ... for all your whole generation did ... for all of us.

Oh Momma I miss you so much.

I love you Momma.

I love you so much.

I love you Jesus.

How I do love you and need you O Lord Jesus.

Please please please Lord Jesus ... take good care of my Momma.

O I miss her so.

I love you all so much.

Charles Delacroix
Feast of the Nativity of God

Her Grave Marker Is in Place ...

This evening, when the dog and I visited Momma's grave, I was surprised and ... in a way at least ... very glad to see that Mom's grave marker is now in place (!)

Somehow every step like this feels like one more nail in a coffin I never thought I'd see nailed shut. Oh my. But it looks nice, I think, it really does. Oh Momma. I think she would like it. I think.

I called my aunt and had a wonderful conversation with her. She said that when she was a child, she and lots of kids in Hornersville would, for something to do, visit one of the two cemeteries there. One's on the North side, one on the South side. She said Momma often went with them too. They would read the epitaphs and inscriptions and Bible verses, and look at the etchings and pictures sometimes a part of those old time grave markers. They found these fascinating, she said. And she said Momma did too. My aunt said she herself must have read them all hundreds of times.

My oh my. Sounds ... yet again ... as if I have something I never even knew I had in common with Momma ...

How many times have I gone for walks in cemeteries in Knoxville and here in Tulsa ... and read the inscriptions again and again. So many times. Am I crazy? Well maybe. But oh what great fruit for meditation in those visits to these wonderful reminders that "here we have no lasting place" ... these wonderful places, as well, of celebration of the lives of so many of our brothers and sisters who have gone before us. I think one of the greatest gifts of my own strolls among the dead has been the wonderful reminder of my own connection ... all of our connection ... to the Body ... as the Theology of the Body of Pope John Paul II reminds us ... we are all sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. Oh my ...

But what a wonderful thing that your marker is in place, Momma. Spooky was with me and we both admired and thought about you. Spooky made some paw prints on the muddy surface of your grave and I just know that you would be absolutely delighted. How many times did Spooky, coming in from a muddy afternoon, to be brushed by you, Momma, how many times did you find muddy pawprints on your pink jacket ... and you'd say, "Oh you ...!" and then would explain to her, once again, that she's the prettiest girl in town ... :-) ...

Oh my dear dear dear Momma ... oh God oh God oh God ... how I miss you Momma ... the lights are on the Christmas Tree now Momma and I'm looking at them ... and how I miss you not being here to look at them too ... I turned on the lights tonite and looked at the tree and said "Oh this is the prettiest Christmas Tree we've ever had" and thought oh if you were only here so we could say this to each other and laugh and carry on ...

I love you Momma ... I miss you so much ...

Oh my Jesus please please please please take good care of my Momma ...

I love you Jesus.

Love,

Charles Delacroix
Feast of St Peter Canisius

The Prettiest Christmas Tree We've Ever Had

Every Christmas, I would buy a Christmas tree and set it up in our living room and trim it, with Mom sitting and watching and smiling ... and we'd talk and carry on ... and at some point, one of us would say, "Oh I think this is the prettiest Christmas Tree we've ever had."

Every Christmas ... *every* Christmas ... our Christmas Tree was always pronounced by both of us to be the "prettiest Christmas Tree we've ever had." We'd laugh and carry on, but our evaluation of what was our prettiest Christmas Tree never wavered. We may have said it a little tongue in cheek but we meant it, too.

Well ... since you are gone, Momma, I've committed myself to celebrate this Christmas as an As If" Christmas. Christmas as if you were here. Oh Momma ... oh Momma ... it just isn't the same ... not at all ... not by a long long long shot. But Oh. It's better to celebrate a Christmas As If you were here than a Christmas As If you were not here. Oh Momma how I miss you.

Well, Momma, our Christmas Tree is now up and decorated.

And ... and ... and I don't know how I can say this ...

But I don't know how I can not say this ...

Oh Momma ... I think .. I think this is the prettiest Christmas Tree we've ever had ...

Oh but why oh why oh why are you not here ... to look at it ... to smile ... to say that this is the prettiest Christmas Tree we've ever had ...

Oh Momma ... how I miss you Momma how I miss you so ........................

Well, Momma, our lovely Christmas Tree is decorated and really does look so, so pretty ...

It took me awhile ... I intended to decorated it few weeks ago when I got the tree. The tree's been up and sitting there ... but I just haven't been able to bring myself to decorate it. It's just so so so painful ... so painful ... but oh it's more painful not to do this. So I did it. And Momma ... all our ornaments are on it ... you weren't here for me to ask, "Should I put a bulb here?" And you weren't here for me to say, "Where should I put this little Alvin the chipmunk on the tree?" You weren't here to tell me. But Oh Momma ....

That little red Star that's all but falling apart, it's up at the very top. You aren't here, though, for us to talk about it ... and how we've had it for a long, long time, as you would say ...

That little red bird is in the top of the tree too. You loved that little red bird. He's so cute, isn't he, and just goes there ... at the top. We always agreed. Why aren't you here to tell me it's in the right place, though.

Those ornaments that we always talked about ... every one wiht a memory it seemed ... they're on there Momma ... but oh you aren't here to talk about them and when you got them and where and how and why ...

Those silver tinsel ropes ... especially those two that you and Dad had way, way back ... the ones almost denuded of tinsel anymore ... the ones we always put up anyway ... they're there, Momma ... they're there ... but you aren't ...

Those little ornaments that go at the bottom of the tree are there. They go there because, as you said every Christmas, "they're there so the kids will get them instead of getting into the presents or messing with the Christmas Tree." That little monkey almost falling apart by now ... that you've put down there since I was what, 2 or 3 or 4 ... it's there, Momma ...

I had the Christmas Music on all while I was putting our ornaments on the tree ... just like we always did ... but you weren't here to talk about Bing Crosby and White Christmas ...

The Tree is just a few feet from your chair, Momma, just like always ... so you can see it and enjoy it ... and your chair is empty ... it has that little cushion in it you loved ... but you aren't there ... oh I just don't understand ...

Momma it's after dark, now, and I'm sitting here looking at the beautiful, beautiful Christmas Tree .. it's lit up with those bigger lights in all colors and with those little bitty sparkle lights in all colors ... oh it's beautiful Momma so beautiful ...

Oh Momma I think this must be the prettiest Christmas Tree we've ever had ...

But oh Momma how I miss you how I miss you ...

Oh Jesus ... please please please please ... take good, good, good care of my Momma.

I love you Momma so much.

I love you Jesus so much.

Oh Momma ... oh Momma ...

Charles Lee

Charles Delacroix
Eve of the Feast of St Peter Canisius

C'est l'absurde ... still ...

Everything still feels very, very, very strange ...

The universe seems wrong, out of kilter, without reason. Absurd. Meaningless. Pointless.

Actually it's nothing of the kind ... but that's how it feels. With Mom not here. In a way her not being here is exactly an Ikon of the rend in the face of the universe that is our Fallenness in this world. She's not here ... and therefore the Cross, the Sign of Contradiction. She's not here ... and nothing matters or makes sense ... apart from the Cross. Only the Cross connects anything at all. Especially now. But now is itself an Ikon for all times, and all places.

I've got a job pending ... report-to-work date is January 2. I received the news on Monday while I was at Mom's Grave ... which was nice, I could tell her immediately. But of course it's not the same without her here in a very different sense ...

I bought some eggnog today. But why? She's not here to enjoy it with me.

The Christmas tree has been up for almost 2 weeks. But I still haven't been able to bring myself to put any ornaments or lights on it.

I do think her vase arrangement looks really nice ... some little ornamental placements that look like little, miniature wrapped Christmas presents ... and little, miniature candy drops and sugar canes ... and a large, lovely poinsettia. I think she would like it. I pray so.

Oh Lord Jesus please please please take good care of my Momma

I love you Momma

I love you Lord Jesus

Charles Delacroix
Wednesday of Week 3 in Advent

I found

Of Golf, MASH, Friends, The Robe ... and Momma

This afternoon, I turned on TV to find a golf tournament being televised on one station. I watched for a few minutes and remembered how much I enjoyed a little routine I had with Mom when Golf came on TV.

Years ago, I saw a movie (Marx Brothers? Jerry Lewis? can't remember) in which a woman at one point humorously describes the game of Golf as "grown men hitting a little ball around on the green grass" ... or something like that. Since then, I would repeat the joke with Mom ... golf would come on TV, and I'd say, "Look, Momma, there's a bunch of grown men hitting little balls around on the green grass." And she'd laugh and I'd laugh. Sometimes we'd wonder out loud if golf isn't really an excuse to get out and walk around on a beautiful lawn under blue skies in lovely sunshine. Mom sometimes averred that fishing was similar: an excuse to get out and relax beside a beautiful stream. We were only half serious when we had these conversations; certainly no offense was meant to the noble endeavors of golf and of fishing. But it was part of our argot to say these things to one another. A sort of game that involved the same thing ever time ... and we always loved to play our game.

Well ... when golf came on I both thought of these things ... and O how I miss you Momma. I said the same things to your empty chair that I have always said. I don't know that you don't still hear what I say as before. But the game is no more: it takes two to banter as we did; and your chair is silent. Oh Momma ... how I miss you ...

I watched Friends and Cheers tonite ... oh Momma how you would have loved to watch these, together, with me ... and then the OETA Movie Club (PBS) came on and they are showing The Robe (1953) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046247/ , with Richard Burton and Victor Mature and Jean Simmons. This is one of the many post-WWII generation of films made in the 1950s, often with Bibical themes. Mom liked The Robe, as did I. We both loved Ben Hur (1959) and the Ten Commandments (1956). So many things ... so many movies ... we enjoyed and shared together. No more.

I love you Momma and I miss you

I love you Lord Jesus

O Lord Jesus please please please take good care of my Momma

I love you

In Jesus Name,

Charles Delacroix
Eve of the 3rd Sunday in Advent

Death of a Peasant

I always thought that Tolstoy's Death of a Peasant was so moving.

And I've been thinking about it every now and then.

In a way, my own death is something like the death of this peasant.

My death is slow ... but of course inexorable, inevitable, as all of our deaths are inevitable. In the meantime ... in the meantime, what does the peasant do, but lay where he's laying as he awaits death to come?

Same here. I really have nothing else to do but wait ... I can visit Mom's Grave and say the Prayers of the Church and go to Mass and I can await the inevitable end of this fatal journey we call life.

The peasant in many ways died alone. Except for God.

I too am dying in many ways alone. Except for God.

Is that so bad?

How could it be?

Life is both a gift and a curse, but it is what it is, and that's that.

Meanwhile, like the peasant, I huddle a bit to stay warm while I await the slow approach of the Grim Reaper. Very slow in my case: it might be some years - a decade or two perhaps - till God calls me from this exile.

In the meantime what is there to do ... but to huddle in the warmth, and pray, and wait.

O I love you Lord Jesus

I love you Momma

Please please please Lord Jesus ... take good care of my Momma.

Charles Delacroix
Feast of St John of the Cross

De Futilitate ... yet again ...

I went to see I Am Legend, which just opened today. See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480249/ ...

Wonderful movie ... and I couldn't help crying when the Will Smith character's dog, Samantha, died. She was his one and only companion for so long. And then she was gone. And as he drove through the empty streets of post-apocalypse New York, he looks over at the passenger seat ... where his dog used to sit ... and the seat looks so horribly, horribly empty.

Yes ... same with Mom's car. I can drive it and she's not in the passenger seat ... and everything once again seems so utterly, utterly wrong ... wrong wrong wrong ...

And that feeling of futility comes back.

Oh I can do things. But why. What's the point. Momma's gone. My insides have been kicked out. And what's the point really of anything.

O Lord I know you are there. I just don't know why you are there, or why I am here.

During the ice storm, I am very grateful, O Lord, that you enabled me to be able to visit Mom's grave. Just like always: morning and evening. I say OOR & MP in the morning, and EP at night. MP and EP are from the Office for the Dead. And although I feel so horribly alone and feel like nothing matters, for some reason, this seems like the right thing to do. And O Lord even when I am there praying the Office alone before her grave, I know You are there, and in praying the Office I am joining my feeble feeble prayers to those of the whole Church. I am not alone. I am not alone when I pray with the Church, the Prayer of the Church.

And why not. Nothing seems right and there doesn't seem to be anything for me to do now really. Except to pray the Office for the Dead at her grave.

I don't see any reason not to continue to do this for as long as I can. God willing. Why not. It gives me something to do. And it lets me visit you, Momma, even if it's really not the same of course as you being here like before, still, it's something.

But Ohhhhhhh,,. ... Lord Jesus ... I miss her so very, very, very much.

But O Lord thank you so much for the gift that was ... and is ... my Momma.

Thank you Lord so very very much.

And Thank you Momma.

Thank you Momma for everything.

Oh how I miss you.

I love you Momma.

I love you Lord Jesus.

Please please please take good care of my Momma, Jesus.

Charles Delacroix
Feast of St John of the Cross

Candles from Mom

Well, I'm back "up" ... Sunday through Wednesday (2 days ago) my house was without power ... and here I was almost going through withdrawals from not having Internet access.

The reason I was down is the same reason that most of Eastern Oklahoma, plus parts of Kansas and Missouri, were down as well ... due to a severe ice storm that has left enormous damage to trees, bushes, poles and powerlines ...

I really have no reason to not feel very, very grateful, though: so many were far worse off than me. And so many are still far worse off: many still have no electricity.

No power means for most of us no heat ... in subzero temperatures.

I kept warm by using lots of blankets ... including blankets that Mom had gotten years ago.

And I kept lights burning by using candles ... candles that Mom had collected and saved over the years.

Mom learned to hang onto candles a long time ago ... when we were overseas, living in Libya, power outages weren't all that infrequent. And we would use candles till lights were restored.

After returning to the States, Mom kept saving candles. There was a whole shoebox full of candles on a bottom shelf of one of her cabinets here. And there were two brass candle holders made for carrying candles ... you know, the kind you see in the movies, the kind that Scrooge held in his hand when walking through his dark house at night.

So yes ... yet again ... yet again indeed ... Momma has been taking good care of me.

Thank you Momma.

I love you Momma.

I love you Lord Jesus.

Please please please take good care of my Momma, Jesus.

Charles Delacroix
Feast of St John of the Cross

Feast of the Immaculate Conception ... and of the Christmas Tree

Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee ...

I'm so sleepy now ... but bought and got up a Christmas tree.

Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me

Please please please take good care of my Momma ....

I love you ...

In Christ,

Charles Delacroix
Feast of the Immaculate Conception

Feast of St Nicholas

I'm really sort of enjoying the gradual accession of lights and other manifestations of Christmas coming in this time of Advent.

And I had my first job interview today since Mom's death.

So much I would have had to talk with Mom about.

I love you Momma.

O Lord Jesus please please please take good care of my Momma

I love you Jesus

Charles Delacroix
Feast of St Nicholas

Momma and Advent both teach me ... that Everything Matters

Today's OOR gave a passage from St Augustine and made me think of St Augustine's many Advent and Christmas homilies on Truth Shall Spring out of the Earth.\

It's painful in a way to look at each note and each little object that is in Mom's house and think, "This matters .... this matters ... this matters because it mattered to her .."

But this is really an Ikon ... for everything, but everything, matters ...

Oh I love you Lord

I love you Momma

Lord Jesus please take good good good good care of my Momma.

Charles Delacroix
Eve of the FEast of St Nicholas

Walking under a Spectacular Sunset Sky

The dog and I went for a walk under this amazing sky ... with a glorious sunset setting fire to the west, and allowing a poignant reflection in somber lavendars and violets and blues in the east.

Oh Mom how you would love this sky ...

Truly nothing too good or too bad can really be said about this world ... tonite it's nothing too good ... what spectacular loveliness ...

The sky overhead was wide, bright, clear, with the most vivid sky blues, set off by boldly high flying cirrhus clouds, made into vividly glowing whites and pearls.

There were high, high, high streaks of brillieant white trails from jets high overhead. I saw a passenger jet making its approach for landing and thought about how Mom said I used to call aircraft, at a very young age, "air-panio's" ... pronounced "air pay nee oh's"

Oh how I miss you Mom. Yes yes. You may see all this now ... perhaps better than ever ...

But you are not here ...

Not here to share these things ...

Oh Momma ... I love you ...

I love you Jesus

Please take good good good good good good care of my dear Momma

Charles Delacroix
Feast of St John of Damascus

Pantophobia ... that's it!

I'm watching A Charlie Brown Christmas ... which was actually on TV just a week or so ago, apparently this popular program commands quite an audience.

And I so agree with that audience ... and so would Mom. We both loved the Charlie Brown Christmas programs.

There's one scene in which Charlie Brown confesses to depression while in session with the psychiatrist, Lucy. Lucy decides to identify what Charlie Brown is afraid of ... and after naming off a number of sophisticated sounding terms for different phobias, she asks Charlie Brown if he could have pantophobia. "Pantophobia?" says Charlie Brown, "What's that?" "Fear of everything," responds Lucy. "That's it!" cries Charlie Brown with such force that Lucy is sent spinning away.

I think I can so identify with this pantophobia in so many ways. But then again I'm willing to bet that almost everyone feels that way sometime or another. There is something of Charlie Brown in all of us ... surely that's why he's so popular.

Oh Momma I wish we could both sit here enjoying Charlie Brown this very night.

But then I freely admit that it was sheer grace that God allowed us to enjoy Charlie Brown together so many Christmases past.

Thank you, O Lord.

Thank you, Momma

And O Lord ... please please please please ... take good care of my beloved Momma ...

I miss you so much Momma ...

I love you Momma so much ...

I love you Jesus so much ...

Charles Delacroix
Feast of St Francis Xavier

Come, Lord Jesus, Come!

On this first Sunday of Advent, I awoke obsessively worrying about my conversation last week with my former supervisor; and worrying about getting a job.

The whole prospect ... like the whole prospect for anything in this life these days ... seems so bleak. For I was thinking about Mom during this whole terrible rumination ...

And I thought, O Lord, I know this life is your gift ... but what a horrible, horrible gift ... so horrible and so excruciatingly painful ... and without Mom ... how in the world do people do this? How do they manage? How do they get along? How can I get along?

And ... why? Why? Why should I get along? In a world as horrible as this? Why?

Then I remembered something CS Lewis said once: that about life there is almost nothing one can say, either good or bad, that is not in some sense true.

Glorious and miserable. Beautiful and ugly. Full of delights and full of torture.

It's all true. All. That and so much more.

I went to Mom's grave and stood in my shirt sleeves ... it's unseasonably warm this morning ... and said, for the first time in my life, an Advent OOR over her grave. Then the Office for the Dead MP ... and it looks like the Office for the Dead during Advent is the same as the Office during Ordinary Time.

I wept and gave Momma a coo on her grave marker and left thinking Of Course ... this is the way it is and always has been and always will be ... until You, O Lord, Come. For this Advent Season is really a celebration of the Advent that is Life. A Life full of Holy Saturdays of Waiting and Longing is surely as well a Life full of Advent Longing ... for You to Come, O Come, Emmanuel.

The Office reminds me that in a way all pain and suffering in this world is a form of the Pangs of Longing for YOU to Come, O Lord. To Come and rescue us. To bring Justice and Mercy.

Justice ... O Lord come ... set things right ... the universe seems revealed to me as a horribly wrong, wrong place with Momma dead and gone. Nothing is right without her. O Come. I know tthat this sense that all is wrong is at least to this extent true and accurate: nothing really is right without You here. So Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Come with Justice and Righteousness and restore what lays in ruins, restore me, O Lord, who lays in ruins. Come O Lord and Make All Things Right. Including me, O Lord. Slay me, O Lord, if that is Thy Will, but Make All Things Right. For nothing seems right without my Momma here. But then nothing is right wihtout You here anyway.

So Come O Come Emmanuel
Come, Lord Jesus, Come
Maranatha, Lord Jesus, Come

And O Lord bring justice

And please o please o please ... take good care of my Momma.

I love you Lord Jesus.

Charles Delacroix
First Sunday in Advent

A Personality Only a Mother Could Love ...

One of the areas in which Mom and I differed greatly was in social popularity.

Mom was popular growing up: she was affable, fun, outgoing ... everyone liked her. She was a leader in her class, and had jobs (in Jefferson City and Tulsa) where ability to get along with a wide variety of people was important and valuable. By the early 1960s she was President of her church's Women's Society and has a photo in the newspaper in which women around her are clearly laughing easily and sincerely at something Mom said.

I, in contrast, was never popular. I grew up full of social anxiety; for I was "one of those kids" who other kids tended to pick on. My social skills never developed very well and my personality was ... in general ... repellant. This was always so painful for me. By my teens I was finding my life in books, and found myself attracted to those figures who seemed to affirm my isolation in some way or another: Tarzan, Harry Haller (in Hesse's Steppenwolf), Holden Caufield (JD Salingers' Catcher in the Rye) ... and the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount, who blessed the "poor in spirit" ... with whom I then, as now, identify strongly.

In many ways I've managed to develop a much better connection with society. In my profession, there are colleagues who I genuinely like and who genuinely (I think) like me: but the latter connection is really more generosity that reciprocal friendship. My social skills in common social situations remain backward, and I have almost no personal friends at all. In fact only one: another person with a generally unpopular persona.

I'm not sure how much of this Momma was really aware of. I remember talking with her, though, as a preteen in anquish ... and she tried to advise me as best she could ... though I suspect that she might have felt uncomfortable that a "weirdo" should be in her family.

But she never, ever evidenced anything of the sort. Instead, she was always ... always ... proud of me. she said so, again and again. And always, always, when the world seemed most horribly cruel and alien ... I could always, always go to Momma and she always loved me ... just as I was.

We used to joke that some puppies had faces that only a Mother could love.

And I always knew that in reality I myself had a personality that ultimately only a Mother could love. Only a Mother ... and Jesus ... He Who is Hope of the Hopeless, and Supporter and Love and Advocate of the Poor in Spirit.

Oh Momma how I miss you ...

Oh Momma how very deeply, deeply, deeply grateful I feel for your love of me over all those years ... me with a personality that only a Mother could love, mirroring indeed the love of God.

Oh God please please please take good care of my Momma.

I love you Momma.

I love you Jesus.

Charles Delacroix
Eve of the First Sunday of Advent