God is Truth

Well, I learned my lesson a few days ago and am composing this blog in MSWord…instead of online. I did several blogs which disappeared into thin air with a Blogger response something like…’Houston, we have a problem, we know it, we are working on it, we won’t get back to you on it…so try again later.” I was so irritated having spent so much time on the blogs. Then I saw that most of my posts to other sites also never made it…although I got no such error message! It is sort of like being in parallel worlds, but we don’t know when the lines converge.

I was reading on of manababies blogs regarding her relationships with close and distant relatives and the death of her grandfather. I have had so many of the same feelings. I am the one blood relative of my immediate family (now that my younger sister passed away) that lives on the East Coast, all the rest of them live in Colorado. They have gone through various stages of their relationships with each other. I have missed it all being out here living my life. I miss that, and while I have tried to keep my children close to them through expensive plane visits over the years and picture exchanges, etc., it is not the same thing as living within driving distance. I often wonder what I have missed and how my feelings for them would be different if we shared more of our lives.

I do know that the death of my sister a few years back really brought us all much closer together. It was the big neon sign on the wall that said ‘Time is passing…How are you living out YOUR life?’ We started emailing more often and trying to make plans together. Then the recent death of my mother brought my sister and I much closer as we went through the process of obituaries, dinners, etc. I began to realize that my sister is a very unspiritual person. She gets irritated by religious myth and really irritated by people who practice religion on holidays and family funerals only. She got into a little spat with my sister-in-law who was raised as a Catholic but doesn’t attend church anymore and hasn’t for decades. My sister-in-law at the last minute wanted to have us ‘light a candle’ for mom at a church in downtown Denver. She clearly wanted us to go with her. I am pretty anti-Catholic…but only for myself. What others believe, what ‘myth’ they follow, that is their choice. Clearly my sister felt this was very hypocritical of my sister-in-law and said she was going to stay home and finish the obituary for the newspaper. This was not a word fight—just subtle tension one notices under the service. I saw my sister-in-law’s request a little differently. I didn’t see it as my sister-in-law trying to take control of stuff or being hypocritical, just maybe a calling deep inside her from a prior Catholic life to do something symbolic. I went with her and actually felt it might be good for me in some spiritual way. Unfortunately it was Sunday with back to back masses and so we sat through a mass and didn’t get to light a candle as we had to leave early. (The sermon was on the ‘dictatorial relativism’ that was pervading our society…the priest was clearly talking to all the liberals such as I at the service.)

My brother (the conservative one) was with Mom when she died. She passed in a matter of an hour or so, he and Dad were the only ones there. He says that she squeezed his hand and looked up at him, briefly and smiled just be fore she died. I am assuming that she actually did that, as I don’t think he would be trying to make it easy for us. Mom was cremated at her request. We had a small viewing at the funeral home for immediate family but no funeral or memorial service. The big family dinner was mostly people looking at pictures and reminiscing. It was not a formal sit-down but a buffet at my brother’s home. There was no real opportunity for words to be spoken in memory of my mother. Clearly some of the old Italian relatives there were confused about the informality of it all. My dad was probably relieved as he hates ceremony of any kind. I wished there had been an opportunity which forced me to say something…but I am getting more Buddhist and realize that the center of me is at peace and what surrounds me and what decisions are made outside do not need to be fought over. Not in this instance anyway. My mom knows I loved her, my family saw me give six weeks to her care and they know I loved her, I spent many hours with her, so I am at peace and do not need symbolism to solidify it. On the other hand, if we would have had a funeral Mass, I could have dealt with that process also. The priest would have called my views here dictatorial relativism…nope, it is truth. An as Ghandi said, God is truth.