The end
Well, yes. To all events, there comes an ending, and everyone had been invited back to the restaurant for a luncheon buffet I had arranged. For me, there is nothing more depressing than getting all these people together and then expecting them all to walk away from the gravesite, all alone. So there had to be some way for people to visit and to take care of each other. So there was lunch.
The restaurant did a beautiful job, as I knew they would. They laid out trays of lunch meat and cheeses and salads and pickles and deviled eggs and chips and summer fruits and cookies and cakes, tea and coffee. Just wonderful. And we had a banquet room all to ourselves, where the kidlets could feel free to run around and loose some of the strangeness and pent energy with which the whole day had left them.
These are a couple of my favorite pictures from that:
Having five children under eight certainly livened things up a bit, and gave us a shot of healthy young life in the midst of being reminded of our mortality.
And then my Aunt Clara nabbed me.
For the record, my Aunt Clara is a gigantic pain in the ass. She was the one who phoned me, in the middle of this whole thing and at 7 in the morning, to let me know that if we buried mother where she buried her sister, we could bury both her AND my Dad for only $50 for the second burial! Aunt Clara, who is always full of helpful and totally unwanted information. Aunt Clara, with whom I had, till this point, tried to be so very gentle.
Aunt Clara felt that it was time to speak her piece. And she did. With a vengeance.
She tearfully told me how much I hurt my mother with my rejection of Christianity, and how everyone in my whole family was praying for me, because I shouldn't be living the life I am living, without Jesus as Lord of my life. She told me how tearfully my mother had prayed for my soul, and for the day when I would turn my life around, and become the Christian she wanted me to be. She told me how hurt she was when I told her that I was glad that mother was reunited with so many of the people she loved, because she knew--she KNEW, mind--that, just like her, the only person she would really like to see would be her Savior, and how she knew that it would grieve my mother's heart to think that I would not be there with her.
She wept bitter, pleading tears as she confronted me with the sorry state of my soul, and the shambles of my life, and with the memory of how much I had hurt my mother.
She let me know, after everything that had happened in the last four months, what a complete and utter failure and disappointment I was.
And it was all I could do--ALL I could do--to keep from throwing every bitterness, every anger, every agonizing hurt that Christianity had ever done me in her face. And every single solitary thing that I thought about what she had always done, and what she was doing now. I wanted to let her know just what kind of agony her Lord and Savior allowed my mother to suffer in the last four months, with naught but a witch at her side, because the Christians had abandoned both my mother and my father, with so few of them doing nothing so simple as picking up the phone to check on them.
I wanted to let her know that, at that moment, my thoughts of Christ and his people were less than charitable, because it seemed as if they had little or nothing to do with anything that had most recently transpired.
But that I was used to that, because all of them had abandoned me years ago.
But I didn't. And I didn't because I was reminded, in that moment, that my Goddess demands kindness. Demands that I be Her hands and Her words in the world. That She holds me up in the face of confrontation and persecution, and that She helps me see the good intent behind the words and actions, no matter how botched they are.
And so, even though everything went off PERFECTLY, I walked out of there feeling that my whole family viewed me as a failure.
Thanks, Aunt Clara. You're a peach. Jesus' Little Soldier, with your pleading and tearful hate and violence.
So in the end, I know that what I did was nothing. In the end, I know that all I am is all I have always been to them--not good enough. And in the end, what went on between my mother and me was built on a lie--a lie that I had convinced myself had finally become the truth. That she had finally reached an ability to approve of me, to trust me, and to be satisfied with me.
I believe that people find, after death, exactly what they hope for. I believe that, after death, the final rewards come, and that each human being finds the peace and the happiness that they have wished for. I believe that if people want to go home to Jesus, then they do.
But I have to say that I hate the Jesus that compels such easy and unthinking and mindless cruelty, and it will not be his face I seek at the end of my life.
Not now, not ever.
So Mommy, sleep in peace, and in the comfort you so much deserved and so much wanted. And know that I am satisfied with YOU--not in your Christianity, but in your wonderful, flawed and perfect humanity. I will miss you as my Mother, for all the earthly happiness you gave me, and for all you taught me. I give you the release that you could not give me.
I love you. I forgive you. And I will see you again.
The restaurant did a beautiful job, as I knew they would. They laid out trays of lunch meat and cheeses and salads and pickles and deviled eggs and chips and summer fruits and cookies and cakes, tea and coffee. Just wonderful. And we had a banquet room all to ourselves, where the kidlets could feel free to run around and loose some of the strangeness and pent energy with which the whole day had left them.
These are a couple of my favorite pictures from that:
Having five children under eight certainly livened things up a bit, and gave us a shot of healthy young life in the midst of being reminded of our mortality.
And then my Aunt Clara nabbed me.
For the record, my Aunt Clara is a gigantic pain in the ass. She was the one who phoned me, in the middle of this whole thing and at 7 in the morning, to let me know that if we buried mother where she buried her sister, we could bury both her AND my Dad for only $50 for the second burial! Aunt Clara, who is always full of helpful and totally unwanted information. Aunt Clara, with whom I had, till this point, tried to be so very gentle.
Aunt Clara felt that it was time to speak her piece. And she did. With a vengeance.
She tearfully told me how much I hurt my mother with my rejection of Christianity, and how everyone in my whole family was praying for me, because I shouldn't be living the life I am living, without Jesus as Lord of my life. She told me how tearfully my mother had prayed for my soul, and for the day when I would turn my life around, and become the Christian she wanted me to be. She told me how hurt she was when I told her that I was glad that mother was reunited with so many of the people she loved, because she knew--she KNEW, mind--that, just like her, the only person she would really like to see would be her Savior, and how she knew that it would grieve my mother's heart to think that I would not be there with her.
She wept bitter, pleading tears as she confronted me with the sorry state of my soul, and the shambles of my life, and with the memory of how much I had hurt my mother.
She let me know, after everything that had happened in the last four months, what a complete and utter failure and disappointment I was.
And it was all I could do--ALL I could do--to keep from throwing every bitterness, every anger, every agonizing hurt that Christianity had ever done me in her face. And every single solitary thing that I thought about what she had always done, and what she was doing now. I wanted to let her know just what kind of agony her Lord and Savior allowed my mother to suffer in the last four months, with naught but a witch at her side, because the Christians had abandoned both my mother and my father, with so few of them doing nothing so simple as picking up the phone to check on them.
I wanted to let her know that, at that moment, my thoughts of Christ and his people were less than charitable, because it seemed as if they had little or nothing to do with anything that had most recently transpired.
But that I was used to that, because all of them had abandoned me years ago.
But I didn't. And I didn't because I was reminded, in that moment, that my Goddess demands kindness. Demands that I be Her hands and Her words in the world. That She holds me up in the face of confrontation and persecution, and that She helps me see the good intent behind the words and actions, no matter how botched they are.
And so, even though everything went off PERFECTLY, I walked out of there feeling that my whole family viewed me as a failure.
Thanks, Aunt Clara. You're a peach. Jesus' Little Soldier, with your pleading and tearful hate and violence.
So in the end, I know that what I did was nothing. In the end, I know that all I am is all I have always been to them--not good enough. And in the end, what went on between my mother and me was built on a lie--a lie that I had convinced myself had finally become the truth. That she had finally reached an ability to approve of me, to trust me, and to be satisfied with me.
I believe that people find, after death, exactly what they hope for. I believe that, after death, the final rewards come, and that each human being finds the peace and the happiness that they have wished for. I believe that if people want to go home to Jesus, then they do.
But I have to say that I hate the Jesus that compels such easy and unthinking and mindless cruelty, and it will not be his face I seek at the end of my life.
Not now, not ever.
So Mommy, sleep in peace, and in the comfort you so much deserved and so much wanted. And know that I am satisfied with YOU--not in your Christianity, but in your wonderful, flawed and perfect humanity. I will miss you as my Mother, for all the earthly happiness you gave me, and for all you taught me. I give you the release that you could not give me.
I love you. I forgive you. And I will see you again.