Of mornings, moons, dogs, and comic strips

There was an amazingly beautiful pre-dawn sky this morning. Mom you would have loved it. Looking southeast from your grave, there was a clear, dark sky with an exquisite sliver of a crescent moon haning above the horizon. There was a bright, bright star above the moon. And after morning prayers, I saw a pre-sunrise array of lavender and purple and grey in the sky just beyond that early morning black silhouettes of the trees across the drive from your burial section.

I took the car to get it fixed ... your car Momma ... and while I was waiting at Whataburger, eating breakfast and working on my computer, the store manager loaned me a morning paper. It's been awhile since I've looked at a plain old morning paper, so it was nice in a way ... yet I kept breaking into tears looking at it, because I kept seeing thing that reminded me of you, Mom.

For example, there was a special feature on dogs ... oh Momma you and I would have both talked and laughed about it. Then the comics in the back of the paper: we would have talked about Garfield, you loved Garfiled. I read Beetle Bailey, another old favorite, but I couldn't hold back the tears, as it showed Beetle at home, with his Mom & Dad, on a furlough. And then I read Red and Rover. I don't remember what it was about; I don't know that I ever really cared, but what I liked was the motif involving a delightful relationships between a little boy and a dog. I would read it, and then I would say to you, "Momma I just think Red and Rover, they just go together!" And you would smile, and say, "Sure they do!"

Oh Momma tomorrow is the Epiphany ... and Christmas Season will be over ... usually a relief for me ... but this time ... it just seems like one more "end", one more "last time", one more turning of a page that says that you are gone, that we are separated, apart.

Oh Momma how I miss you

Oh Jesus I love you

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

I love you Jesus

I love you Momma

I love you Mary

I love you all saints who have gone before

I love you

Thank you now and always ...

Charles Delacroix
Eve of the Feast of Epiphany