"She prayed the rosary when times were bad. She prayed the rosary when times were good."
--Fr. Jim
Now her long slog of ninety-five years has ended, and the constant passing of rosary beads through her hands has passed. Who will take her place? The world exists on the back of pray-ers. Did I not pray the rosary more fervently when I knew that she, in a stupor of sleep the past two weeks, could not? It always got me that we could interrupt her rosary with a visit and she’d smile and greet us with joy. Ironically (given the activity), to be interrupted during prayer tends to irritate me. The poignant part was remembering how hard it was to have six children far from her own family clan. She lived almost always as the outsider, an in-law, an Irish among the Germans back when there was a difference. She gave up her family but for once or twice a year, like the nun who goes to cloister. Six children and no vacations took its toll, and her descendents perhaps couldn’t help but learn the wrong message. Reading the suffering lives of the saints, one might be tempted that the lesson is “don’t get close to God for look what happens!”. Yet the apostles saw Jesus die a horrible death and still lined up for horrible deaths of their own. The bible does say “what’s impossible for men is possible with God”.
Grandma had her prejudices, which I've always longed to share. A German relative said Grandma would’ve preferred my father to have been of Irish heritage, and there’s something funny about that since the Germans generally have more reason for pride than the Irish, given that the Irish tend to be lazier and drunker. But ethnicity is a thing that is going the way of all flesh. Soon we’ll all be so blended that it’ll be beside the point. Grandma might not be the last 100% Irish in America, but she was in a small group. The irony is that she had a hand in further diversifying the melting pot when she married a man who was half-German.
I sometimes thought of how she never read the bible that much (of course, you get a huge dollop at the daily Masses she attended) and how that seems a deficiency (St. Jerome said "ignorance of Scriptures is ignorance of Christ"), and yet her simplicity and faith and her fifteen decades a day suggests she knew God better than most bible scholars.
I thought her a stoic when she really had a very tender heart. What a testimony that her professional caregivers loved her and one of them cried at her death. Nor was her constant light, smiling presence a stoical one. Nor was the fact that K. loved Grandma despite the rebuke-ful letter Grandma once wrote concerning her having children outside of marriage. To rebuke and still be loved is quite an accomplishment. Surely only someone born in 1911 would have the guts to write her granddaughter and express strong disapproval. Perhaps only someone who lived an exemplary life and would not feel hypocritical in doing so?
Uncle T., who always seemed so unsentimental, told his daughter to save the reading (second reading) she did. He wanted a copy. Who saves the readings from funerals? He's a softy after all. The presiding priest said that Grandma’s living monument is not made of stone or anything that can weather but was right here in church – her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And I did get a sense of having been bequeathed a gift through her. That that fragile thing called faith was strengthened in me by her existence. A grandmother is a very special person with a great influence on kids, and fate gave me only one since my other one died before I was born.
My wife said something the night before the funeral, the words a confirmation of what I already knew. That of a small cross I would need to carry, tiny as it was. It was the right thing. Grandma would want it. It was time to leave my comfort zone. I found solace in God. My prayer was often scatter-brained and distracted, not surprisingly, but I knew that God knew I was trying and that’s all he asks. I looked up afterwards at His face on the Crucifix just above the altar and I thanked Him, thanked Him even for this chance to get closer to Him. Don’t you get closer to him only when you walk the tight rope trusting him to see you through (or catching you if you don't)? If one always avoids tight ropes, how does one get closer?
The celebrant preached about how his favorite chalice began to show signs of wear and how he took it to a man who promised to fix it, and how that man tore it apart – only to eventually remake it with a double-plating that would make it last far longer than it did originally. A metaphor for how our bodies are broken down only to be re-made into glorious ones. He also emphasized how this earthly life is like the preface to a book. Not the whole story or even the first chapter. The preface!
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