December 1, 2024
The First Sunday in Advent

For centuries, the practice of offering a requiem Mass about one month after a person’s death, and thereafter on the anniversary of that day, has been a cultural event in Europe. It is part of many “minding days,” a “bringing to mind” deceased people, seasonal shifts, folklore, or memories held in the collective unconscious of a certain group. Today, it is almost universally practiced by Roman Catholics in Ireland.

I first knew the term from my mother, a second generation Irish-American born in 1911. Her grandparents had left County Tipperary in the great wave of immigration portrayed in Far and Away. (Imagine Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise as stand-ins for my great-grandparents.) They settled in the anthracite coal region of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, where preserving their Old World ethnic identities found much support.

I saw her through three significant bereavements: her mother in 1958, her brother in 1963, and her husband (my father) in 1985. Each time she fell into a deep and complicated grief, spending hours staring out a window, smoking, and sighing oh yes, yes, yes. Each time, as the Month’s Mind neared, she would say Maybe I’ll be okay now, or, as it passed, I don’t know why I’m not okay now. In the case of my father’s death, it lasted the rest of her life, almost nine years.

I am much more aware of human psychology and mental health and emotional self-care than my mother ever was. I know that healing and moving forward from such a loss isn’t like cooking a turkey (X number of minutes times Y number of pounds) or tending a broken bone (in X number of weeks you can put weight on it, then Y weeks the cast comes off, then physical rehab for as long as you need it).

And yet . . .

My cousin Jim, the son of my mother’s sister, died just over a month ago of the effects of stage 4 lung cancer, undiagnosed and untreated until it was far too late, for reasons too complicated to go into here. He was like a brother to me — three months younger, high school classmates, dozens of friends in common, and an enduring friendship punctuated by diverging life choices and interests, but always circling back to each other. For nearly 40 years we lived in the same city again, seeing each other frequently (but not frequently enough, of course), talking on the phone, sharing important information. Looking back, I could say I saw it coming maybe six months ago, but failed to act.

There was, by his directive, no funeral and no interment. His former wife (with whom he remained close) and their son stepped up when he entered the hospital to be treated for pneumonia about ten days before his death. He was admitted to hospice care less than 72 hours before his final, labored breath, before I was able to get there.

Jim’s death has unmoored me. It has challenged my faith as well as my notion of myself as someopne who is “always there” for those whom I love. I’m posting this in Holidailies, the first blog post I’ve written in many months. The whole idea of Holidailies is community celebration and fun, and this seems quite somber for that. But it affords me the opportunity to try to get back to where I once belonged, as a writer, a friend, a “minder” of this one wild and precious world we share.

I hope you’ll come along with me, again, or for the first time.