Four Years

I have been busy most days the last several weeks, but today, I had no appointments, and, after Mass, reminded that today was precisely four years since Monsignor George Parnassus' death--he was pastor of St. Victor's from 1977 until 2000--I thought that, after lunch, I'd make a visit to Holy Cross. It would be three visits I decided, one to Monsignor's grave in the priest's plot right in front of the large main edifice, then a swing over to the newer mausoleum, where my father's remains reside in a Columbarium, and then to the other side to the Our Lady Grotto, where Monsignor Murphy was, of the three, most recently buried.

It was a spectacular Los Angeles Day, the sky the kind of blue that makes visitors want to become inhabitants of the city. And the breeze was perfect in its temperate caress. I decided that I would do the rosary as I visited each grave, just one, splitting up the decades of the Luminous mysteries, two at Monsignor Parnassus' space, one at Dad's, and the remaining two at Monsignor Murphy's. I found flowers at Monsignor Parnassus' grave. I knew there were others who remembered. Next week, after the 8 a.m. Mass, there will be group visit for the Rosary of some of them. Monsignor Murphy's name is still not on his grave, next to his younger brother who died in 2015. He is the one near the Grotto.

                                         
                                         

                                                 

It's so odd to feel the calm I do at Holy Cross, actually, at any cemetery. My own tiny square is next to my father's in the Columbarium. And though my anxiety rises at pretty much anything, at this it did not rise.  After I said my hellos and prayers, I wandered about as I do, and once again, noticed the names of other people I had known during their lifetimes, and several celebrities whom I had not known, Jack Wrather, Bonita Granville Wrather, Rita Hayworth, "Bing" Crosby, although the nickname is not on the marker.

Time passes. Monsignor Parnassus is gone four years. My father, nearly ten. The celebrities, some of them for twenty and thirty years. Time. We walking above ground take time so much for granted. I know I do. And in that place, in that cemetery, where the outside world no longer matters, time stands still. I am not sure how to put all that together for this blog entry today. Except I liked the suspension. I went to the Grotto again. I took some pictures. I watched dragonflies and turtles in the little pond by the Grotto.

All three men, my father, and the two Monsignors, they weren't what you'd call "at ease" in life. And yet, I have this image that their souls having left the earth and greeted by our Maker, are now at ease sufficiently to hear my concerns and to act as intercessors with Him, for me. It was Monsignor Murphy who said that the dead can be our intercessors. And now he is one of several of mine.  I talk to them now as I could never do in life, bound as we are by the burdens of the earth.

I like that. But I still miss them.