Nora Ephron, Death and the Scarf I Wear to Cover My Face

The three items mentioned in my title may not seem to have anything to do with one another.

Let me explain. I watched a documentary on Nora Ephron, produced and written by her son.  It was fascinating.  She was fascinating. Several things coalesced in my head as I watched it.

I am watching this documentary because it's on my list for viewing during the course of the world wide lockdown. The documentary mentions something she wrote about death. Death is that which society seems to be trying to eliminate, at least in so far as this one pandemic is concerned. Nora Ephron wrote a little book called, "I Feel Bad About My Neck", musings about what it is like to get older. The scarf I favor when I go outdoors to cover my face reminds me of that book. Somehow it all feels oddly related.

I remember when the book came out. I had just bought it at Barnes and Noble in the still fairly new Grove in Los Angeles. I took it to an outdoor table near the Fountain, picked up a refreshment and began to read. I guffawed as she described the reality of the wizened loose skin that betrays a woman of a certain age and the efforts inevitably and futilely taken to hide it. I was just over 50 at that point but my neck had not yet sagged. Still, I recognized something not far in the future and I was appreciative of a fellow traveller just ahead of me in the road. These days, some 16 years after I read the book, it is I who now feels bad about my neck. My jaw is no longer firm, and unless I smile all the time, a practical impossibility, the jaw line merges into my neck and a scar from a 2007 surgery impinges on the flesh in such a way as to make the effect even more gathered. I can't stand wearing one of the pre-made masks, which cut off fresh air, and while a scarf isn't ideal either, it is less constraining and I manage it. On the bright side, it covers my now flaccid neck. I have to consider whether neck scarves will once again become a fashion accessory (they were when I was young in New York, and it was a matter of fashion, not a matter of disguise) after it stops being personal protective equipment. I am thinking it will be so.

Nora Ephron died of leukemia in 2012. She hid her illness from family and friends for several years. I resonate more than a little with that aspect of her life. When my own mother was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer in 1973, we were advised by her doctors not to share her diagnosis either with her, or her family. Even then I thought that was idiocy, and cruel. And ultimately I found out that my mother knew full well what was happening to her. She just never discussed it. I had no choice in the matter, but it always felt wrong. Some people in the Ephron documentary said it was her business, her life. Others said finding out when she was dying in a hospital was like being ambushed. As the person who called a couple of relatives from the hospital right after my own mother died, I tend to relate to those who would feel ambushed.

Back to the scarf. There it is. The only thing between me, and death. Well, not really.

When Ms. Ephron was in I think the early stages of the illness which developed into the leukemia that killed her at age 71, she might not have told anyone directly, but she was surely thinking and writing about life and death.  I always love her titles, this one, "Buy More Bath Oil".

She wrote some things I think are on point during this phase of American, of World, history, of the reality of being human.

"We are a generation that has learned to believe we can do something about almost everything.  We are active--hell, we are proactive.  We are positive thinkers.  We have the power. We will take any suggestion seriously. If a pill will help, we will take it.  IF being in the Zone will help, we will enter the Zone.  When we hear about the latest ludicrously expensive face cream that is alleged to turn back the clock, we will go out and buy it even though we know that the last five face creams we fell for were completely ineffectual. We will do crossword puzzles to ward off Alzheimer's and eat six almonds a day to ward off cancer; we will scan ourselves to find whatever can be nipped in the bud. We are in control. Behind the wheel. On the cutting edge.  We make lists. We seek out the options.  We surf the net.  But there are some things that are absolutely, definitely, entirely uncontrollable.

I am dancing around the D word, but I don't mean to be coy.  When you cross into your 60s, your odds of dying--or of merely getting horribly sick on the way to dying--spike. Death is a sniper.  It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know. It's everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be.  But then again you could be. And meanwhile, your friends die, and you're left not just bereft, not just grieving, not just guilty, but utterly helpless.  There is nothing you can do.  Nothing.  Everybody dies. "

Today, someone sent me the CDC numbers on Coronavirus deaths in the United States. There is no doubt that the loss of 37,308 individuals is terrible, and yes, as I have said, as others have said since the beginning of the focus on this particular potential cause of death, it was prudent to take precautions for the elderly, the infirm, those with co-morbidity, and even remind the healthy to wash their hands, so that each would have more days of life. But 682,438 other people have died of many other causes in the period in which the society has literally crippled itself. Those who say it is good will continue to say it is good. Others will ask why not all these other causes? What makes us able to eradicate death by coronavirus when we cannot eradicate in any other forum?

If I were to say, "There's something else going on," I would be accused of being a conspiracy theorist. But, you know what, something else is going on. Perhaps it is what Ms. Ephron said (and for all I know she would be on the side of keeping the society shut down, I certainly can't say) that our leaders, and many of our citizens really believe that we are in ultimate control.

I don't know. Maybe Governor Newsom has found the secret to eternal life. Meanwhile I can't wait to be wearing scarves on my neck, and not on my face.

May Day Coronavirus Style

It was a quiet first of May, but not without its small enjoyments. I got outside today. I think it was a permissible outing, though perhaps not specifically on the list of activities approved by our Governor in one of today's press bloviations. I went to the post office to get postage for a package and to buy stamps. I walked. It was a lovely sunny breezy day. I affixed my scarf mask when I entered the Post Office. And breathed freely again, always at the appropriate distance from anyone approaching or behind me, when I got back outside. Then I took my car and went to the pet store. It was open so I assume that is considered essential. I got another hummingbird feeder to complement the other I have on my terrace. The birds have always provided a great deal of pleasure long before the days of coronavirus containment. Now, they serve the added role of a kind of anti-anxiety medication.

I was thinking about getting a tall large cat scratching post so my two cats could sharpen their nails and look out my bedroom window at the same time, but the posts were massive and I barely have room with all the things I seem to be acquiring from Amazon during this current crisis. So I didn't do that. But my on line over purchasing did not prevent me from going to the 99 Cents Store for some necessary items at a far lower cost than I might get at my local Ralphs. I would say that social distancing in the bargain store was a bit less well monitored than it ought to have been, but I was wearing my mask once again, and no one sneezed near or in my presence. And best of all, since I bought way too much, I had to use the shopping cart, the wheels of which usually lock up as soon as I am out the door, but actually stayed limber as I walked all the way to my car.  It's the little things these days that inhibit a sense of utter despair at the manner in which our leaders are destroying our society, for our own good, of course. I know. Lots of you don't agree. In locus parentis for everything is the wave of the future. Pelosi and Schumer make a wonderful mom and dad, no?  Or grandma and grandpa.  I am not sure which members of the family Messrs. Newsom and Garcetti would be--maybe bossy older brothers. But that's just an opinion amid a downpour of opinions in every conceivable digital and non-digital outlet.

Once home I poured myself a soft drink and watched the Mass from Bishop Robert Barron's Chapel up in Santa Barbara. I have tried to watch every day, but some days my other disappointment raises its head, and I find that I am blocked about "going" to Mass by I-Pad, and skip it. Not often, but enough to alarm me, as I have been a daily attendee and well, when we were allowed to be, Communicant.

When I saw that the schedule for the phased in reopening of California, the other day

CA Governor Lays Out 4-Stage Reopen Plan: ‘Months’ Before Churches, Gyms, Sports, Hair & Nail Salons Open

I was in need of something to inhibit the tsunami of despair which washed over me. But it was, perhaps oddly, less about the decisions of our government leaders than that I heard not a peep out of the leaders of the Church. Surely, this is the time to intercede for the faithful. Surely, someone would say, "Hey, maybe we can work out a way to serve the faithful AND protect them kind of like we do in the grocery stores."  (Well, not in the grocery stores, since at least one Ralphs right near me had 16 confirmed positives. Perhaps grocery stores need to be closed?) 

But I have heard nothing. 

A while ago, I impulsively started a Change.org petition to reopen the Parishes, and posted on the public news feed on Facebook.  

https://www.change.org/p/archdiocese-of-los-angeles-governor-gavin-newsom-eric-garcetti-reopen-catholic-churches-for-mass

It's like over a week, and I have 23 signatures. I note that there are a few other similar petitions, but they aren't exactly being overrun either. I anticipate once again the possible response. "Well, people realize that we cannot allow people to go to Mass as long as one person might get sick and/or die." Then we are all going to have to stay home a very long time. Like Forever.  Because things that make us sick and die will exist always. It is deep end of the existential morass. It is despicable whether or not you or I believe in a theologically eternal resolution. What do we do? What was it we USED to do? We took reasonable precautions recognizing that in whatever direction we go, we could lose someone. 

Another one of the things I think will be happening. More and more Catholics will stay home, even after they are permitted to receive Communion again. We keep hearing that you can worship anywhere. Well, Catholics cannot receive Communion anywhere. This is the ESSE of our worship. This is not a small deprivation to the faithful--but after months of not going to Mass, and not receiving the Eucharist, it could easily feel like something that isn't so critical. 

The Church is the Body of Christ. The leaders of the Church are human beings, and I understand that they may be fearful, of the state they are trying to appease (hence they were the ones who closed the doors initially), of themselves, of lawsuits, but this is not the history of the holy men and women with which I am familiar. This is about modelling, and goes back to the concern I have that the parishioners will not come back having seen how their leaders did not even seek to adjust the Governor's timeline and allow intelligent people to figure out how to make it work for the safety of all. And, anyone who still feels afraid among the faithful is in no way coerced to attend, nor would there likely be any theological condemnation thereby. No matter. I am not in charge. Letting go of that need is one of the challenges of spiritual life, well mine for sure. 

Well, I did watch the Mass today, and I did say the Rosary, albeit in my usual distracted fashion. That's all the control I have, to pray. Luckily others are better at it than I am. 

And on a lighter secular note, I received two of my Amazon ordered items, a face cream to add to all my other face creams, and a small make up stool for my bathroom. 

Let us see what May the Second brings.

I have to tell you what came to mind though. It was Dorothy Parker's line, "What Fresh Hell is This?"

More prayer needed. Mine, and yours, if you are willing. 

When Will I --I --I Be Safe?

So, I was down in the laundry room in my building. I had to stay there while my wash cycle was going because the one usable machine (the other clearly had had a cycle problem so all the old detergent was encrusted in the basin, courtesy of one of my neighbors) tends to shake with loud bumps on the rinse and spin cycle. I rather have to throw myself on it to keep it from shaking. The space is like most laundry rooms in old buildings, dimly lit, and in that part of the edifice that fills up with cobwebs and dust. As I sat in one of the high chairs they have down there, next to the machine, so I could stabilize it, I started to think. I had forgotten to bring my phone and the medical guardian I usually wear because I live alone and if something happened to me, I could probably go days without discovery. And then I noticed the particularly thick layer of dust on top of the two massive water heaters, some of it hanging in fuzzy strings from the overhead covers. "Could cause a fire," I thought. No one ever cleans it, though we have people who come in to clean weekly. Then I thought, well, since I have none of my emergency devices down here and most people are ensconced in their apartments to be safe from the coronavirus, what if I had a heart attack?

Dennis Prager, a radio talk show host on the conservative spectrum (I know a lot of folks denominate him a "hater"; alas, that means I am also a hater, since I think he makes a lot of sense, though I think people who know me wouldn't say I was by any measure--but who knows)  also came into my head, as he was talking in the last few days about the illusion, or delusion, perhaps that we cannot reopen the United States for life's business, until we are "safe".

Then the tune from Linda Ronstadt's song "When Will I be Loved" came into my head. I started to sing to myself, in a variation, "When Will I--I- be Safe?"

He says "never". I think "never" is about as accurate as you can get. Society always balances interests and creates as much "safety" as is possible given the fact that without exception, every single one of us is going to die. Some die sooner than others. I know we are not allowed to raise it, but we even facilitate the deaths of our youngest citizens (the unborn) as a matter of right, and in some countries, and some states in America, the elderly. You are not necessarily safe either in the womb nor in the care of some of your loved ones.

Some die at a very old age. My father lived till 90 and probably would have lived longer had his doctors not been dismissive of him (and me) and our concerns about their ministrations such that he died of sepsis. My mother died relatively young of cancer at age 48. One of her sisters at 59, another at over 90, and the last is 93 and kicking.

I feel really sorry for people who suffer from hypochondria. I used to be one of them, pretty much through my late teens, an early signal of the obsessive compulsive struggle I have had all my life. I used to fear choking. I was always checking how I swallowed. And if I was able to. That went on for a long time. Then, after my father had a heart attack, I was convinced I was going to have one. I think that spell was about a year.  I could swear I felt palpitations all the time. Around the same time, I noticed quite a few people were committing suicide, and so I became terrified, since I was actually also depressed, that I might commit suicide. I couldn't be near any high place fearful of an impulse I couldn't control. I went about my business oddly enough, and even successfully, but I saw the world as if through a haze the whole time. This was all through my lapsed period of religious faith.

I still have a residue of that old anxiety, and I actually have to watch out for the triggers.  My best friends laugh at the fact I don't cook. There are lots of reasons for it, but one of those reasons only the fewest of the few have known up to here, is that when I cook meat or fish, I am always afraid, even if I have cooked it to a crisp, that it might not be sufficient to have warded off trichinosis, or food poisoning, or whatever can kill you. And it's why I don't cook when I do have guests. I order the food, which I know doesn't mean that all will necessarily be well, but at least I would not be directly the cause. I am afraid to cause harm to others but in a compulsive, irrational sort of way.  I especially avoid pork for that reason.  Just the other night I had a couple of salmon patties and became worked up that they weren't done enough. I almost threw them out as I have often done in the past. I suppose it is a sign of some improvement that I didn't. They were tasty, and I lived.

Right now, I cannot watch the news at all, and I keep apprised of what is happening out there by reading headlines, and listening to some talk shows, not because I am in a high risk group (though I am), but because the pounding of the media, despite the statistics which dispute them, a knot will suddenly rise in my chest and my stomach drops.  Some of the pundits who are certain of their position as the rest of us are not allowed to be, say that if you dispute the nature of the response and its perpetuation, that is total shutdown, you deserve to die. Maybe I shouldn't say what I think, because then I might die, and whether or not I died of Coronavirus, the pervasive "theys" would say, "See, she deserved it; she didn't believe rightly." Yeah, the magical thinking of my cooking life looms here too. So even though I am obeying the rules, my mere thinking that the measures might be over the top, and certainly my saying it, is tricky.

So, I can imagine those poor sods who still have a raging case of anxiety. What has been done to them, and even to me at some much smaller level, cannot be undone, even if things are opened up again. Human beings are walking bundles of germs. That isn't going to change when or if the authorities, and the scientists, none of them consistent from one day to the next, get a handle on this particular virus.

I don't see myself going out with a mask every day, after all of this. I have a terrible time wearing one, and taking back in my own breath and sweating into the material.  But I know that I will never shake hands again. I said this in some other entry, that one of my psychological quirks (sometimes I wonder that I was ever able to function in life at all) was that I don't particularly like being touched (I am no David as in David and Lisa, an old film with Keir Dullea, but that film and his extreme difficulty always resonated with me) and I have never liked shaking hands, always aware of the transference of germs, particularly so when the other hand is wet. I have always been grateful for a dry hand, and made an effort to be sure that mine was dry.  I have routinely gone into large venues, which never, perhaps oddly, particularly distressed me--maybe the need to ride subways and busses as a kid was a cognitive desensitizer--but will I again? At this point, more than seven or eight weeks not doing so, there is a part of me that is now accustomed to the absence. In his old age, my father never liked to go to public events. I am very much like he was in personality, so it is conceivable that I could easily forego them. And as the years have passed the routine of going to large concerts which was more so when I was young, has diminished significantly, except maybe for the Hollywood Bowl. But there is the movie theatre. I guess I can go when others are at work, when they go back to work. Usually the theatres are empty then. I don't know. As I said, I am a lot less obsessive about my health than I used to be, for all the therapy and other resources I took advantage of over the years, and maybe because with older age comes some soupcon of wisdom. And of course immersing myself in my religious faith, which, as also I have noted in prior entries, intellectually at least, I have come to accept that death is a door that leads to Eternal Life since the Act of Redemption. But I realize that with my--eccentricities still lurking--I am a walking contradiction, fearing and believing I need not fear.

Lawyers talk about reasonableness as a measure of action and lack thereof as a matter of liability. The question that has been flying about during the last nearly two months of course has been whether it was reasonable to shut down the world because of this particular disease. Lives were saved perhaps on one end. Lives were lost on another.

So, here I am, about to go back downstairs and get my hopefully now dried laundry. This time I will take at least my telephone. When I get back up here to my apartment, I should be safe, right?

Well, as long as a small plane doesn't crash into my apartment (happened on my old block some years ago; a man taking a nap in his bed was killed), or I don't slip in my bathroom and break something (about a year or so ago, I walked in, slid and fell on my ample butt, luckily), or die on the toilet (very common locale).

So, like Dennis says, "never" appears to be the reality of my, and your, absolute safety, even if we surround ourselves with bubble wrap, and close the society every time there is a virus. But we do the best we can. And it's all right, isn't it, if we disagree on what is the best way to do what is "reasonable"?

Back to Jerusalem from Emmaus: The Right Direction

It is particularly nice when I can say in these pages, "I was there!". And "there" in this instance is Emmaus, just outside of Jerusalem. Well, by car or bus, just outside, about 11 or 12 miles. But back in 33 A.D. or so, that was quite the walking haul.

Just so happens that today's Gospel is about the two travellers on their way to Emmaus after the the Crucifixion of Jesus. One is Cleopas; the other is unnamed.  They are dispirited individuals. They have left Jerusalem. One might even say they are giving up. The person in whom they had put their hopes of the salvation of Israel, of all men, is gone. A man joins them. He seems not to have heard of the cataclysmic events and they pour out their hopes and consequent disappointment.

They ask the man to join them for supper. And so he does. It is only at the moment that He breaks bread, as he had done the night before He suffered, that they realize with Whom they eat, the Resurrected Christ, The God of Israel made Man.

Picture at the outdoor Church at Emmaus 2018

They are fed, and they are renewed. Christ disappears. They now set out to go back to Jerusalem, their hopes restored.

When my bus companions and I arrived in Emmaus, it was just after dark, perhaps around the same time that 2000 plus years ago, the two travellers and Our Lord sat down to supper. Our group's priest prepared to say Mass, so that we, too, would be fed that night, and so we would have the Grace to restore our hopes.

I remember. I felt so at peace that night, in that place, in part because I was, in a small way, participating in what is one of my favorite Gospels. .

That peace has been escaping me during this last nearly eight weeks. I have had a harder time than even usual in praying. I have tried to live stream Mass every day, replicating, albeit remotely, my usual activity of the nearly last 9 years. But some days, it has seemed that I was distancing myself, kind of like leaving town in a spiritual way.

"I don't need to watch Mass today," I have quietly thought. Faith is, for me at least, though I think I have read this somewhere, is a matter of habit. One must make the effort, regularly. My practice has been disrupted.  No doubt some will relate to this.

People who eschew religion, either out of contempt or out of indifference, or some philosophy that makes it unnecessary to their lives tend to think being religious is some kind of palliative. It is hard to maintain one's practice of faith on a good day. On days like the ones we have been having, it is like climbing a mountain.

But today, aside from the blessed reminder of Cleopas and his companion, I got the chance to be close to our Lord, in a sense to have Him travel with me, by sitting with Him in His Presence in the Blessed Sacrament--all while adhering to the social distance mandate.

At least, for the moment, I am going back toward Jerusalem, in the right direction.

Der Oberst (The Colonel) by Constantine Gochis

I know for a fact that my father was an officer at a Prisoner of War Camp in Florence, Italy during World War II, during part of his tour of duty. He told me some stories over the years. One was that one of the prisoners was an artist, who did portraits on copper of his German contemporaries, did a portrait of my father while he was in the camp. My father got that item and others of potential nostalgic value back to the Bronx, where, to his lifelong sadness, it was burned in a refrigerator fire in his family's apartment. Overall, the impression I got of my father's time working in the camp was that he was enamored of the prisoners, both German and Italian. This story suggests that early in his experience there, just after as he calls it "a major breakthrough" by American troops, he was less enamored of at least one German officer. The thing is, I know the context is true. I also know that he saw things that he didn't like to talk about, like most returning vets of that era and eras before and after. But whether he had this encounter with this particular prisoner, I cannot say. He never told me this particular story.

DER OBERST

I was the Receiving Officer of the Prisoner of War Camp when our troops made a major breakthrough.  My compound had ten stone-topped tables, perhaps chest high to the average man.  Each post was manned by a non-commissioned officer and a Private soldier to assist in searching the incoming prisoners.

My function was supervision, and in this regard, I went from one post to another, depending on the necessities of the moment.

The ten lines were practically interminable.  As far as I could see, the uniforms were the gray of the "Wehrmacht", the German army, now thirsty, hungry and compliant.

My attention was suddenly caught by an anomaly.  Post three was in the process of searching a bedraggled Italian soldier, almost hidden in a shabby overcoat that was several sizes too big for him.

Behind him stood a tall, resplendent "Oberst" or Colonel, immaculately correct in uniform, from shiny boots to an impressive array of campaign ribbons, including an Iron Cross.  

"What a contrast," I thought.  One of Hitler's "Herrenfolk" a veritable Siegfried, leaning over a mud-caked, reluctant co-belligerent, who clearly, in the lottery of life might have been a Caruso, perhaps a Caravaggio, or even a Lucky Luciano, the latter having expiated some of his sins for which he had been deported to Sicily, by assisting our OSS in the invasion.

The Italian was emptying his voluminous pockets of dark grey shears, perhaps several dozen, when the wooly repository was emptied.  This was probably loot from one of his past campaigns.

"Why shears?" one might ask.  "Why not," one may answer, "if that's all there is to collect as a conqueror."

The "Oberst" leaned forward to get a better view of the merchandise, lifting the visor of his exquisitely embroidered cap. 

"Ach," he said, "Inferior Italian manufacture."  His English was flawless, though accented, as if just out of Hollywood casting.

It was now his turn.  He stood briefly erect as if expecting his usual assistance, then reluctantly bent to empty the magnificent leather luggage at his feet.

Clearly he had done better than the Italian soldier.  The first item he produced was an ornately engraed silver scabbard that housed a stiletto.  Without doubt, it was pure silver, the design worthy of a Benevenuto Cellini.  It may have been a Cellini for all I know.  There followed fins of gourmet identity, a jar of Russian caviar, and lastly, a bottle of champagne.

"I will be allowed to keep this," he said, his hand still clasped around the neck of the bottle, more a statement than a question.

I shook my head in the negative.

"You know I have rights under the Geneva Convention," he said.

I thought of a moonless night on an Italian hill, where some months before, a German soldier tossed a "potato masher", a German grenade, where I was standing with my machine gunner and another soldier.  The image of this eliptical trajectory came to me in slow motion.  I recalled that I did not hear the explosion, but I was still alive.  The machine gunner and the soldier were dead; the machine gun itself no longer functional.

There followed the inevitable mortar attack.  The missiles, equipped with whistling devices to augment the terror, rained on us mercilessly.  Then silence, the sound of dying, the pleading of the wounded, some calling my name, some the usual cry "Medic! Medic!"

But there was no help.  The night was long.  I could not move one way or the other without body contact with the dead soldier on my left and the dead machine gunner on my right.  In the morning, the dead were borne on their GI blankets, one soldier on each corner, to a slatted six by six truck, piled like cattle for disposal.  The soldier on my left was a big man, and heavy. One combat-booted leg scraped the ground, as he was borne, like Hamlet, to the "battlements" of the truck.

The resplendent Colonel waited imperiously for my reply.

There are no words that can frame a reply, even to this day.  I took the bottle of champagne from his reluctant grasp and smashed it against the stone table top.

"I will speak to your Commanding Officer," he screamed.

He did.

I was reprimanded by the Commander.  

As Good a Time as Any to Think About Death

Our parish may be closed, but fortunately, the core of the regular parishioners try to remain in communication with each other as lockdown physically separates us. Today, the communication brought sad news. One of our long time attendees, Bob DiFrancesca, died at midnight of the cancer he had been fighting for many years. If there is a service during this period of containment, it will only be at the graveside, 10 individuals permitted to be present at appropriate social distance.

As with so many others I have known, I think of myself as having been more than an acquaintance to Bob but not quite a friend, meaning that, outside of parish events, and seeing him at Mass and having pleasant conversations, we didn't actually spend a lot of time together. But I knew he was kind. I knew he was faithful to his Catholicism, and quietly so, one of those who would sit in the back during Mass and come to pray when there wasn't a crowd. As always with such individuals, when they pass away, I regret my having not sought out a more frequent association.

He died during the pandemic, but not of the pandemic. Gives me pause.

Don't get me wrong, the need to guard the public health of our citizenry, including myself, is not to be dismissed. But something odd there is about the herculean, cataclysmic effort to prevent people from getting or dying from the coronavirus, when there are just so many darn things that people are dying of as we speak. It is almost as if we humans can control this potential cause of death, go inside, lock our doors, then perhaps we will escape those other causes. But that's the thing that seems, at least to me, to be crazy making. We won't. We can't.

I used to have night terrors, well into adulthood, alas, when they long should have subsided. They almost always involved sudden impending death. I would wake up screaming (I have a few stories where it happened, believe it or not, amusingly, when others were present). I don't like to fly, not so much because of the dying part, but the awareness of the seconds before the dying in a tin can.

My very faith makes death not only an inevitability, but a door to eternity.  So, over the years I have tried to practice the concept of Memento Mori, Remember your Death. The idea is that keeping death before your eyes (Benedictines also highly recommend it) you live your life better in preparation for it. You will be motivated to live a good and full life. I haven't been good at the practice. Like most of us, I tend to focus on the fear part, not the motivation part. I haven't been good at taking creative or even some physical risks (not wild ones I might add but to me almost anything is wild, raised as I was in a be careful style of parenting). Living a good life? I don't know. I suppose I have done a little bit of that, but I can tell you my motivations aren't as pure as I would like.

As I write I have been remembering a painting I stood in front of a long time when I was in London in 2013. It was in the National Gallery. I had never heard of it, though it is very famous and highly discussed. It was painted by Holbein, the Younger. Him I knew of, at least in theory. Anyway, it is a painting of two well dressed men, an ambassador and his friend. They are clearly rich. And they are clearly men to be well regarded. Aside from the sharpness of the color of the paint, so much so that it almost felt like a photograph, I was intrigued by this almost flat, ghostly, floating skull in the foreground. I stood there a long time. I got close. I got far away. I think it was after that, reading about the painting, that I learned of memento mori.

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/famous-paintings/the-ambassadors-holbein.htm

The thing about it, this way of thinking, is that if your prayer, or meditation, brings fruit, it will be that you/I will let go of the need to hold on so tightly to life that you pretend it won't end, and you can actually, I can actually, enjoy that life instead of shrivelling up in a futile effort to protect myself.

Besides, as to me, if I believe in the Resurrection, then there was never anything to fear. Remembering death is to remember the promise of eternity.

Well, that's at I have come to think. I wish I could live it better. Hopefully, there is still time.

An Essential Infusion

I have always admired those religious people, in my case, fellow Catholics whose practice seemed truly touched by an intuitive certainty such that to watch them in prayer was to see their very closeness with God. I think my admiration though has always been tainted by a sense of suspicion, and that suspicion is enforced by the secular world, the world that laughs with its opposite certainty that those people "are crazy".  I think, then, that I have lived a push pull existence within my faith. Besides, the idea of being close to anyone, let alone God, has always been a source of discomfort rather than joy. Oh, there are all sorts of explanations for it. They are not relevant anymore if ever they were. So, my way of approaching God is more in my head, and not in my heart.

Although I have been an active parishioner of a Catholic Church for going on 37 years, it has always been more an act of will than a a natural inclination and I have always been aware how easy it was to leave for some thirteen years, and how easy it could be, how readily I could find some excuse, to leave again.

When I was retired back nearly 10 years ago, I began to attend Mass daily. I also began to serve. Having a depressive and anxiety core, triggers abound. Having a frame, mission, tasks, if you will, keep me from giving in to those triggers. Among those, after I stopped working a regular job, was attending Daily Mass, and receiving Daily Communion. Whether I feel it or not at any given moment, I believe with the Church that the Eucharist is the "source and summit" of my life. It is something that feeds and sustains. He is something that feeds and sustains.

One thing I tend to feel, well, two things, pretty regularly and I have been feeling since it was deemed that Churches were not essential during this phase in human history denominated the "Coronavirus Crisis", are fear and anger. Fear I guess is often expressed as anger.  I guess also I fear that while some lives are being saved, many others are being destroyed, and not just figuratively, by a particularly gross deprivation. 

Even before this crisis, maybe 40 percent of professed Catholics attended Mass, so once this particular one is over, and before the next inevitable one, the longer the time away, and a new routine established where will we be? Many say, within and without the Church, it will be fine. Anyway, people can pray anywhere, right? Until anywhere also becomes impermissible. But then I guess I am just being gloomy. And distrustful of human nature. Well, that brings me to a praise for those priests, and some Bishops, who besides providing Mass remotely (both digitally and physically) have found creative ways for the pious and those of us who without a frame to mold us and keep us intact to receive sustenance. The internet is filled with those opportunities for prayer and screen community.

It may be at a distance, but it is a physical proximity. It is just outside a garden. 

I cannot get close; all the civil and criminal law proprieties are observed assiduously. The gate to the garden is locked. The building is locked. But at least I am in the Presence for a short while. The birds join, hummingbirds, starlings, and cavorting crows. It is warm in the sun, and cool in the shade as the breeze skims the plants.  

It will have to do for this day. I go home. I watch some mindless television. I read. I say the rosary, though my heart, which is a bit hard to start with, is not in it. 

But the gates of hell will not prevail. 

As for me, I will keep chugging along, with God's Grace.