Aunt Catherine....

Good Morning

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This morning I went to OLG to check out the ministry fair and get in on the free pancake breakfast for stewardship. The coffee was good; there’s not much harm that can be done to pancakes; and the sausage paddies were cold. Maybe a dozen people from the 0700 Mass took advantage of the food fare. The visiting Vincentian missionary got his breakfast; the in residence priest chortled by with his fat-buttoned cassock and his biretta. [With a pastor from South America and a newly ordained American from the diocese this menagerie of priests makes me feel like I’m in some foreign church.]

The OLG ministry fair was nicely set up in the gym – neat as a pin. There were six women in small clusters talking to each other. There was one other person there like me strolling around to look at the posters. At least the last time St Paul did its ministry fair, each ministry was staffed by at least one person, usually more than two.

There’s no doubt that the parish will raise the couple of million being sought to expand the physical plant and improve the grounds. I walk through an event hoping to be recruited, even greeted. Almost never the former; rarely the latter. Must be something about me!

I also see the dozens of little ways to improve the event. So why don’t I volunteer? I am not participant at the parish I’m registered for now that it’s a bus ride and 40 minute walk to the church. That’s just the current reality, not an excuse. Never have I been grounded with any degree or sense of permanence or prospect of sticking around: thus, why participate; I’m passing through.

And to stick around is only to accumulate more negative outcomes by my presence.

This morning, on the walk back from OLG, I considered my decision to stay put in my current shack for two years as a major commitment to time and place. That’s barely three percent of my current life. Two years is nothing! Now. Used to be a very long time. It’s the same as looking at my body, touching my midsection, and still seeing, as Susan Crowley said to her mother, ‘the big fat Billy Nolan.’ The inertia of my life is to pass through. Maybe this round will be different?

My Aunt Catherine died Thursday night. I found out from my father, her older, by three years, brother, Friday evening. Been a winnowing year for the Nolan Sibs – Frank, the oldest. Arthur, the youngest. And Arthur’s wife only a couple months after him. Now Catherine. Of the original nine there’s now my father, Helen, Mary, and Walter, who, my father says, “has his own health issues” and may not get to Catherine’s wake. My cousin David also died this year. (Of the 32 cousins, the oldest has died (making me now the second oldest) plus six others, including my brother Jimmy in 1967 at the age of five.)

Aunt Catherine and Uncle Jimmy were the closest family to ours growing up. Their oldest two were about the same age as me and my brother and the four of us (plus the younger three there) spent lots of time playing together. Uncle Jimmy died 1964 with their youngest child in utero. Aunt Catherine raised her brood herself, with lots of help from her sister Helen (two peas in a pod their entire lives) and the rest of the clan pitching-in in their way.

Aunt Catherine is a model of motherhood and aunthood. She personifies family and clan: the epitome of Nolan. I have more than a few feeloughts of her that are embedded in my soul, that are essential parts of who I am. I feel a great loss, a deep sorrow – and have greater gratitude for who I am because of her.

I am a lector at next Sunday’s mass. In the end-of-liturgical-year theme, my reading is from 1 Thes 4 (13-14 here) - We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

Grieve AND hope. Both solidify the presence of Aunt Catherine in my being. Also, in the participation of the wake and funeral, we renew our family ties, sharing our grief and hope. No doubt Aunt Catherine is among the All Saints whom we celebrate Tuesday. More/better reason to be the nephew she would be proud of.

The story of Aunt Catherine’s last months/days/hours is beyond the lesson JPII gave us as he lived his pontificate to the minute he stepped across the threshold; and the lesson the Church gave us as we lived with him, an aging man, Papa, our saintly pope. My cousins, Aunt Catherine’s siblings, et al. as well as the woman herself lived her life/their lives/our lives in a way that is more than lesson, it is life, it is holiness, it is The Way.

I wish that I could look forward to anything resembling Aunt Catherine’s experience. For myself. With my father. (It did not happen with my mother, either, who died a dozen plus years ago.) There’s no talk about the pending realities of my father’s death and mine. (Though, at 86, he’s likely to die first. Although, one son has already died before him. ) Not even the slightest talk with him or my brother. At least there are wills in place. Of course, not talking is wholly a function of my not talking regardless of the people possibly on the other side of the conversation. I do not recommend to anyone this state of affairs. And yet, I do not have the gumption to get into another state….

Please pray for my aunt. Do pray for your family’s deceased. Doing so minimally makes their presence in your life more real, more lasting, more effective, more holy.

AMDG
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