Objects of Memory

I am a memory keeper. Cards, old papers, photos. Of late, I have tried to pare down, but there is always something, a letter, a matchbook (where you can get them nowadays), a voice message to keep. I was in New York last May and I went down to the site of 9/11 and the newly built One World Trade Center. I didn't make a prior reservation for the museum, so I couldn't go, but I ran across a DVD or two in the gift shop that reminded me of the power of objects in bringing to mind the lives of those who die. A bent steel beam, a Fireman's hat, a license that floated from the top floor as the two towers fell to dust, those are the objects that we cherish because they assure us that once a building and the people in them stood in ordinary days no longer taken for granted.

I was thinking about the force an object has to evoke memory in relation to Monsignor Murphy, the pastor of St. Victor, who died last Wednesday afternoon.  Objects, (as well as locations) which Monsignor had used to continue to celebrate Mass during his years' long illness, which I had paid little or no attention to just a few days before, became critical for me to document after Monsignor left us, unexpectedly, for he always seemed to bounce back from the critical bouts with his illness. The objects marked not only his struggle in the shadow of the Crucifix under which he celebrated Mass, but the glorious persistence of his ministry, not unlike that of Saint John Paul II.  On Friday, I decided to take a few pictures of these items before they were inevitably removed, no longer needed ritual items within the ritual.

I suppose it began with the mechanical chair. For a while, because the disease which struck Monsignor, began with his arms, he could still go up and down the few steps from the sanctuary proper to the altar. But then his legs began to be affected, and it became dangerous for him to manage stairs and the little chair appeared. As the removable railings which Monsignor Parnassus had used when his illness made walking difficult did, the chair became an integral part of the area, a necessity, but a discreet one.

After a while, the chair was no longer enough, Monsignor became wheel chair bound. He could no longer approach the altar through the back of the church, because of the steps, but a ramp allowed him to come to the side door, the outside entrance to the children's room, and one of his devoted helpers, whether it be Virgil Sr., Virgil Jr., Jayvil or Joseph, or a friend who was visiting for the day, would wheel him past his beloved potted plants and bougainvilleas of red, pink and white, to vest him. He often could be seen, after Mass, in his wheel chair, with a straw hat protecting his face, instructing one of the guys on pruning the plants and re-potting others.

When the weather was warm, when I was waiting to help at the weekday 12:10, I liked to sit outside on one of the tree stumps lined against the outer wall, watching the hummingbirds, or starlings or whatever the creature was hopping on the soft patches of grass.  Monsignor would come up the path and ask if there was one to see, and if so, I'd point it out. Monsignor had us servers trained, to get him vested quickly and out into the sanctuary. "Let's go!" he'd say if one of us was dawdling.

He had a choice of many reading glasses, but he simply favored one wired pair, that seemed to me to ill fit him. More than once I got the frame hooks in his ear instead of over it. And they would inevitably slip. Sometimes we servers would notice; sometimes not, at which time, we'd hear a whisper "push my glasses up" before he read the collect or the Eucharistic prayer.

Sometimes Monsignor was patient; sometimes not so much as servers turned the pages of the Sacramentary for him, often not quite discerning the labyrinthine layout for the Ordinary, or a Memorial, or a Feast, and having the ribbon markers in the proper place. The service began at a little table near the lecturn stage left, piled with the book for readings, the Sacramentary, and the intention for the day, and then moved to the a small altar that was erected out of a long portable table, that would accommodate Monsignor's wheel chair.

When that altar was placed in front of the main marble one, there was a bit of a stir I heard through the parish grapevine.

Some folks were "scandalized" to have this makeshift altar. Others, including many of our visiting priests, liked the way it brought the celebrant closer to the people. As in all the things that have happened during these last years, for me, the adjustments that were made to allow Monsignor to do that which was his life's blood, the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, became second nature. And for many others of us as well, I know.

All these objects made Monsignor Murphy more precious to us in this last more than half a decade. And maybe, for those I call the "St. Victor regulars", those parishioners who attend the variety of services and Holy Hours which provide sorely needed Graces as we tentatively walk the Royal Road of the Cross, the example of this priest and the objects he used to assist him in his ministry made us more precious to each other. We are a family in mourning for ourselves because he is lost to us in this life, but we are a family in joy because Monsignor has been freed from suffering and has entered Eternity.

The memory evoked by these small objects will keep our hearts warm until we join him.