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grief

Decisions. I hate those things.

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I have been rather dysfunctional lately. I go to work (I still have one of my jobs) and I come home, do the minimum such as take care of my chickens cats and dogs. Then I lay in my bed and stare at the ceiling. My heart hurts. I feel like I am dying. It’s grief of course, for Zane, who died suddenly and unexpectedly August 22 of this year.

At the same time I have lost my job. I took care of Zane for about four years. I also take care of Mac, another special needs young man.

So I have lost my main job, my job with Zane, which is a crisis in itself. It’s hard to make decisions when you’re grieving and it’s not the best time to do it. However, I don’t have time to do this any other way.

I really love working with special needs young people. I seem to have a knack especially with those who are nonverbal. It is a calling I believe, to do this work. It’s a work that is love. It means a lot to me.

I interviewed with a new family. It went very well and they would love me to come work for them. I liked them too. I said I would let them know in a day or two. Then I cried in the car and had to go over and hug Zane’s mom. We sat on the couch and talked for a while about Zane, about things. Her loss is so great I had to stop typing for a few seconds just now thinking of it. I feel guilty talking about my own grief but I can’t help it.

When my mom got restless or had a problem she needed to think about, she re-arranged the furniture and cleaned madly. Sometimes she pulled up carpet or made new curtains and painted the living room to match. I’m not good at sewing. I don’t have money for paint. So I stuck with re-arranging the furniture and cleaning madly.

I talked to my friend Shawna who somehow manages to give me clarity when I need it. I continued to clean madly. My dogs were a little concerned.

I thought about how I am worried about the pay for a prospective new job which is far less than I made at my last. I wondered how I would pay the mortgage now. I finally got a house and I am not giving it up. I was thinking about what to do about that.

However the main issue is grief. It’s hard for me to think of replacing Zane and trying to love someone new already. I reflect that I have never failed to love anyone I have taken care of. In the nursing home where I did my clinicals there is no way to really get to know the people you care for. You take care of their immediate physical needs and even if they’re crying or something you have ten other patients you have to get to who need to be changed or whatever. Even then I always cared for each one in a loving way as best I could. That’s just how I do it. I can do this.

I have a daughter in college. I will do whatever I can to make sure she gets as far with her education as she wants to. She is busy applying for master’s programs lately. No matter what she is going. My other daughter has been going through hell this summer. It’s pretty unimaginable the way she is holding it together. However she needs me. Sometimes she needs my help. I’m going to be here ready.

If there is anything in my life I have learned to do it’s grieve and fight for my family at the same time.

I can work out the pay part somehow but I prayed about my next person to take care of. I think this could be the one I asked for or was led to. . I think I will try it and do my best.

The dogs needn’t worry. I think I am through cleaning for now.

OK, Beloved Lord. Lead on.

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An Honor Walk


Today I did something I have never done before. I took part in an “honor walk” for someone I love very much who has died- just yesterday in fact.
I had never heard of an honor walk before. This is something that was done today for this person so beloved by so many. I can’t tell you who this person is to me because the family has not shared anything on line as far as I know so I won’t either.

However I thought this honor walk was pretty touching. Everyone came at such short notice and it was a lot of people!

It had to be carried out quickly due to the family’s decision to donate the organs “so he can be the answer to another family’s prayers.”

His body would be flown to Dallas for this purpose.

This death was sudden and tragic. Everyone I saw there in the ICU was still dazed from the shock of it. Hospital staff had us line the halls. Some of the people had signs with pictures of him saying “We love you.”

We seemed to stand there a long time. I didn’t know many of the others though I could guess who many of them were. I introduced myself to some I had heard the most about. I regretted that I somehow forgot my rosary. I always have one in my pocket but I didn’t remember today. I made desultory conversation with an interesting young person next to me whom I had met several times before. It was awkward or I worried it was.

I repeated “Jesus Maria” in my head as I tried not to let my emotions or my social anxiety overwhelm me.

In High School my best friend, Philip, was killed in a car accident. I remembered vividly watching his mother, Helen, go stoically through all of the necessary procedures. Afterwards I tried to stay close to her through the varying stages of her grief and mine.

A lot of feelings from my past came up standing there because I felt so terrible for the family. I remembered the last time I would ever see my first husband’s face after he had died in a car crash when he was twenty-eight. I had to ask my dad and brother to remove me so the funeral home people could close his casket because I just couldn’t leave Marc’s side. Standing and waiting today I kept thinking of the trauma, shock and horror this family must feel in these last moments with the body. I felt those feelings of horror and bottomless darkness from my past that I wish I could save them from.

I had to sort things out. I didn’t want to avoid my own grief for this person now. But I also needed to be present and remind myself that this is not my trauma. This is their trauma. This is their day, his day. I wanted to pray and to be there. I wanted to grieve this person and not my other people I’ve lost. I so wanted to strengthen the family and love them. As someone who is all full of trauma and loss myself this was hard to do.

Staff handed out water bottles and tissue. I noticed I was crying a little bit. That’s a sign of healing for me because I did not have that ability for many years. It is a recent development.

Finally the hospital bed carrying our person was pushed between the two lines of people from the other end of the hall. Everyone stood in silence. After the family had passed we followed. He was propped up on pillows. His eyes had some kind of shiny stuff on his closed eyelids. There was a ventilator tube coming out of his mouth. There was the face I loved, empty of expression now. He didn’t even look that empty when he was sleeping. He was definitely gone. Still I mentally told him I loved him knowing he could spiritually hear. I asked him to look after his family.

Finally we came to an open door leading to a kind of dock. A chaplain invited us to pray together which we all did. A hospital staff member of some kind read out some words of gratitude for what the family was about to do, and a blessing. She cried while she did it. The mother of our person spoke to him for a while some loving words. I couldn’t hear them exactly. And he was sent out.

I saw a beloved grandmother in the hall and hugged her and the weeping grandfather too.

The parents hugged me. I so wanted to be a comfort to them. I think I was. It seemed that way.

We were all guided back out to the lobby where I joined my step mom and daughter who had come with me, having known him too. I had stood with the family and close friends. My step mom had pushed me over there. I hadn’t been sure I should be so forward but it worked out.

I thought the honor walk was beautiful. It was fitting. It was just like the family, who are so loving, to do this.

I will think about it for a long time.

This is not my trauma but the family’s. However, I grieve. I do grieve terribly.


Now that the family has openly shared about Zane’s death I can too. I was his care giver since he was 16. I loved him – I do love him- very much.


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O Brother where art thou

I did not cry for nine years after you self destructed like a kamikaze in our midst. There are not even any pieces left to sort through. Where did you go and why couldn’t I stop you. We were closer than close and I should have known when you locked me out what was coming. We always said when we didn’t spend time together neither of us was right in ourselves so we should always make sure to connect no matter what was going on. You kept trying to apologize, trying to come back into our front porch days. You said “When I hurt you I hurt me and I can’t stand that I hurt your feelings. I hate that.” And I always said it was ok. I said we can work through anything just like we always have. I had faith in that. Absolute faith. How crazy did you have to be for me to not be surprised. Denial is more powerful than I ever thought. When you said “I’m scared I might be mentally ill,” I should not have reassured you that you weren’t. The last time I saw you I hugged you brother and I rubbed your little head. You looked like a small boy that day who had been sick, safe at his parents’ dinner table. Your letter to Dad said I would be OK. Well I’m not. None of us are. You must have hurt so badly to do something like that. You just needed it to stop. I thought oh he will be back like always. He just needs to think. I was so close. But I think you thought we were far away and you had no idea how to get back. You couldn’t find us. And you thought we couldn’t help. I finally cried the other night and it was about something else. It felt weird. It didn’t last long. I wish I could miss you the way I miss everyone else. But there is just a void where you used to be. Like the Mariana Trench. No one knows what’s down there, only how unfathomably deep it must be. I’ve been there. But I couldn’t understand anything.





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The Perpetual Help of Mary

Today is Our Lady of Perpetual Help. I just don’t know what I would do without Mary. Why would anyone want to live without her? Sometimes I want to tell people just to give friendship with her a shot, try it for themselves and they will see right away what she is to us. When I think of Our Lady of Perpetual help, I think of how she was and is a good Jewish Mother. When we are in trouble, she moves in, cleans up, takes over, thinks of the little things that are actually big things we need. She rubs our back, she asks us if we’ve eaten, she calls her Son with updates. She makes sure we take a nap and have a snack and a glass of water.

She says, “Tell me what else I can do. How can I help? I told Jesus not to be late he will be here in a minute. Until then, here is some soup I just made. And a sandwich. Here you need more water you cried so much. Here’s a tissue. Wipe your nose. There you go. You know how much I love you, right? We all love you and you’re going to be OK. We will make sure.”

One time I had been crying for hours. I went to adoration and there were no tissues in there. I was annoyed. They usually have some. I got home and checked the mail. I kid you NOT I opened an envelope from a religious organization and in it there was a small packet of tissues. On it there was a picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. I had to laugh.

“Here, blow your nose, and go back out and play.”

She’s the best.

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The Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary

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 Come into Mary’s rose garden which is the rosary, and pick red roses of devotion to bring with you on this journey with her through the Sorrowful Mysteries.

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The first Sorrowful Mystery: The Agony in the Garden

rose hip: Union of will with God

“My Father, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Mtt. 26:39

Mary takes your hand. She brings you to Jesus, lying prostrate as he prays. Suddenly as if  you fell in, you are in the depths of Christ’s Heart, experiencing his anguish, physically feeling his bloody sweat, his stinging tears smearing on your cheek as you sink into the abyss of his agonized heart.

 Let yourself feel your love for him. What do you want to say to him? 

Maybe, “Jesus I love you. I will not deny you anything. “

He hands you the cup he has now drunk, compassion  in his eyes. 

You understand. 

It tastes like fire but is sweet.

Chaos breaks out. He is arrested and taken away. 

In the silent  Garden of Gethsemane you and Mary lay a red rose. Beside it place the empty cup.  

The Second Sorrowful Mystery: The Scourging at the Pillar

Rose hip: endurance with love

“My soul is in deep anguish. How long, Lord, how long?” Psalm 6:3

You’ve never seen or imagined cruelty like this. As hooked whips tear into Jesus’ back you want to throw up and Jesus does as his body goes into shock.  You look at Mary as the violence goes on and on. How can she stand it? Her eyes are filled with tears, yet her face is resolute. His blood pools between the tiles of the courtyard. You want to stop this, comfort him, comfort her. Her arm slips around your shoulders without her taking her gaze from her Son. 

Finally Jesus is carried away and the laughter of the guards fades. Holding hands, you and Mary silently venture forward. Together lay a red rose beside the pillar. Kneel here. Pray with Mary. 

Third Sorrowful Mystery: The Crowning with Thorns

rose hip: reverence

“My spirit blesses the Lord, the Great King.” Tobit 13:15

They’ve been beating Jesus for what seems like Hours. Then one of the soldiers gets an idea. He weaves a crown of long thorns which is forced onto Jesus’ head. Blood runs down over his face and eyes from the wounds. This isn’t enough because they start hitting his head with reeds and shouting “Hail to the King” in mock reverence. Mary is on her knees repeating something again and again. Listening closely you can tell she is saying, Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu, melekh ha’olam…” (“Blessed are You, LORD our God, King of the universe) in praise of God. Join her in making reparation to the Lord for the mock reverence of the soldiers who know no better. 

You and Mary lay a red rose in Jesus’s cell once he is taken away for an interview with Pilate. 

The Fourth Sorrowful Mystery: Carrying the Cross

Rose hip: holy perseverance

[We keep] our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of our faith. For the sake of the joy that lay before him he endured the cross, heedless of its shame. Hebrews 12:2a

Your hand tightens on Mary’s as Jesus comes your way dazed and stumbling under the heavy weight of the cross, prodded on by soldiers. You don’t even want to look at Mary. It hurts too much. It hurts too much to see any of this anymore.  To shut it out you close your eyes. Then you remember, “for the sake of the joy that was set before him.” Mary squeezes your hand and you understand that the joy set before the Lord that urges him on is yourself. You are his joy.  Open your eyes now. Don’t be afraid to join Mary in sharing his suffering. 

Once he has passed by, you and Our Lady lay a red rose on this path of sorrows.  

Fifth Sorrowful Mystery: The Crucifixion and Death of Jesus

Rose hip: sacrificial love

[His Mother whispered,] “do not be afraid of this executioner, but be worthy of your brothers and accept death, so that in the time of mercy I may receive you again with your brothers.” -2 Maccabees 7:29

“I’m not going to cry until he’s gone,” she says in a low voice. You understand that she has to be present to him, even participate with him, united with him in heart and purpose. She wants to look at the face of her Son as long as he has left to live. She will grieve later. 

He is struggling to speak to her. “Mom. Mom, this is your son.” Then he says to you,  Beloved Disciple, son, daughter, “this is your mother.” 

Hold Mary close now as Jesus cries out in utter abandonment. Every strangled cry of his you can feel sending shock waves through her. And now his body is without life and the sky darkens. She collapses against you. Your prayer is only to hold her, to share her tears. 

Go together now to the foot of the cross and lay a red rose in the place of sacrifice. Unpetal the others and sprinkle them over Mary. Some of the petals stick to her tear stained face,  some to her hair. Most flutter down to this holy ground which has become the altar of the world. She scoops them up and throws them toward the body of her Son. You do the same. 

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Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us.

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The holidays without them

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A few days ago I was interviewed on local Catholic radio about loss and grief, my stories and relationships with my family and friends who have died, and how my faith figured into the journey.

One of the questions I was asked was whether I had any advice about handling the holidays. As you may know I lost my first husband in a car accident 25 years ago. Then, between 2012 and 2015 we lost four family members, all tragically. My second husband we lost to brain cancer. Six months later my mom, only 63, died of a combination of things; COPD, Lymphoma, untreated Lyme’s disease and dementia. My brother committed suicide in 2015 and my step dad died in a house fire four months later. These were the people we usually spent the holidays with.

Honestly we haven’t done well with holidays at all since all that, especially without my mom, the holiday queen (or shall we say dictator). We hardly ever had to do anything except bring a thing or two and stay out of her way, being unquestioningly obedient and obsequious to her requirements of us. These included No (more) practical jokes (that had been a major coup attempt to take over her iron fisted rule over the holidays) no disorder or chaos of any kind, and everyone cooperate peacefully and sing Christmas Carols whether we liked it or not.

We missed all of that after her death. We would never be able to cook like that (and for DAYS), set a beautiful Fiesta ware table like that, make flower arrangements ourselves from our own garden or provide the atmosphere she did. We would never do two Christmas trees; one artistic and one victorian style in different parts of the house, or line the sidewalk with luminares, or cover everything with color themed lights, or wrap the presents in themed artistically matching colors. Or be her. We could never be her. Nobody could. And nobody Could read The Grinch Who Stole Christmas like her. It only made us sad.

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So that first Thanksgiving without her we did something completely different. We had a chaotic Thanksgiving pot luck at my step brother’s house. It was loud with football on the TV the whole time and music playing and people in the band room banging the drums and everybody talking in every room. Lots of people people people.

My step brother has become more of a recluse since then. We don’t see much of him though there is no ill will and only deep affection between us. We keep in touch.

So pretty much we didn’t really do Thanksgiving. I mean not really. Sometimes we did very little and it depressed everyone even more. Other times we did nothing. It would just be my daughters and me and the babies.

At Christmas we did what we needed to do for the three kids but everyone kept it as simple and quiet as possible. It was hard not to get depressed. We usually did get depressed. I truly longed for Christmas to just be a religious feast day instead of all the other stuff on top of that.

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Eventually we began to bring back some traditions we missed, like going around the table doing “wishes and gratefuls” on Thanksgiving. You say three things you are grateful for about the year. Then you wish the person sitting next to

you a year of whatever you see them needing or wanting. We brought that back. The kids come up with some pretty sweet and funny things to say too.

We brought back our old household tradition of leaving Santa cigarettes and beer on Christmas Eve. We know from experience that is what St. Nicholas is into. He left cigarette buts and beer cans all over the yard that time he set up a trampoline for the girls all those years ago. So we give him what he really wants.

But THIS year for the first time I am truly excited about the holidays. Because THIS year we have a HOUSE to have these events in! Our own HOUSE again. We have room for sitting at the table, to invite friends too, room in the kitchen for my daughters and I to cook together, a yard for the kids to play in. We don’t understand football at all but I want to put it on anyway. It will remind us of our men and we will just be comforted by it, not, I am hoping, sad. I think we may even be happy.

All of my mom’s Fiesta ware except a tea cup and a salt shaker were destroyed in the fire but I have been building a new collection. And we have SO much to be grateful for!

I plan to introduce some new traditions as well. We plan to light candles on the table for each of our beloved dead. Also when the girls were little we had poetry night and A.A. Milne night. On A.A. Milne night we would take turns reading from The World of Pooh and laugh and laugh. That stuff is hilarious. We continued that into their teens and laughed just as much.

And poetry night we could read one of our own poems or someone else’s we admired. We used to have a lot of fun with that.

We used to break into a family dance sometimes after dinner.

I’m thinking we could read aloud from The World of Pooh after Thanksgiving Dinner and then have a family dance.

On Christmas Eve last year I got the kids to memorize a poem each. It turned out really funny. (Especially the Shell Silverstein ones). I should start working with them earlier this time. But we can have poetry night again this Christmas. We will all do a poem!

There is even a yard for the kids to play in afterwards. I think it will be good.

Mom’s house was always filled with cigarette smoke on holidays because so many of us smoked. None of the smokers are with us anymore. But maybe we will light one up just to recreate the ambience.

I almost forgot we have a fire pit. So we can have a fire and my youngest can play guitar and we can sing our family song, Wish You We’re Here by Pink Floyd. 🙂

And any time my daughters and I are together we end up telling stories about the people we miss and what they used to do or say back then. We still miss them. But mostly we laugh.

And anyway, we know they are still here. They are probably laughing too. Even Mom. 😉

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The Ascension

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To us who celebrate it every year the Ascension of Jesus  seems to naturally follow the initial celebration of his Resurrection. 

However I imagine it was an earth shattering surprise to his followers that he would be leaving them yet again. 

When I reflect on this event as part of the rosary the virtue I link to the Ascension is detachment as I see him beautifully disappear before the eyes of his followers as “a  cloud removed him from their sight.” 

The family of believers had to let go of their expectations that Jesus as they knew him would permanently remain to walk and talk with them. Again they had to face that Jesus was not about to get rid of the Roman occupiers either. There would be no restoration of the Davidic Kingdom  in the literal way they had thought of it. And the One they loved was going to withdraw from them yet again. They must have felt as if they were back from the defining experience of their lives with nothing to show for it, as if they were just a rag tag group of people standing on a mountainside for no particular reason. They were shocked and bereft. They didn’t understand what Jesus meant about him having to leave that the Holy Spirit could come to them. How could they? 

When the angel said that Jesus would be back they must have shaken their heads. Jesus had said for them to go and baptize, to take his message to the world. This must have seemed like too much for them, an overwhelming task, especially on their own. 

They had to greatly expand their understanding of God even past the miraculous three years they had left everything for and deeply identified with now. 

They had to let go so they could be filled and receive Jesus in a whole new way, by his presence in their hearts, and to come to know the Holy Spirit who was new to them. 

How can we receive the Spirit without detachment, self emptying, without freedom of heart? 

“Love- the way God wants to be loved, and leave off your own way of acting,” said St. John of the Cross. 

Or, as Jesus said to St. Angela of Foligno, “Make of yourself a capacity and I will make myself a torrent.” 

Jesus said that if his friends loved him they would be happy he was going to the Father. (Jon.14:28) Is there something more to that than being happy for him? Yes, because he says, “for the Father is greater than I.” Maybe it also means that we have to let our current perhaps more comfortable understanding go to make room for the immensity he has for us. We can be happy he is going to the Father because then, in letting him go as we thought we had him, he then is truly closer than our breath, more accessible than ever. Detachment is hard. We feel that we are losing our Treasure.   

 St. Faustina said of Mary’s experience of the Ascension that she deeply grieved as any mother would  that her Son was leaving but that, “her heart could not want what God did not want.” 

In seeking a pure heart for God and a Marian detachment; a detachment with great love, a detachment even from the way we thought Jesus would be present to us, we open ourselves to what is even greater, beyond what we could ever have thought of ourselves.  But first we let go. 

“Bend  my heart according to your will, O God.” (Ps. 119:36) 

Then, 

“I shall run in your paths for You will enlarge my heart.” (Psalm 119:32)

In this is peace that comes from open-ness to God and freedom of heart.

These verses are a perfect prayer to cultivate holy detachment as the disciples struggled to do this, standing there on the Mount of Olives, not knowing what to do with themselves. 

Fortunately we don’t have to rely on our own strength in this and neither did they.

Jesus had said to wait in Jerusalem and to pray. They did. They trusted in simplicity. And prayer continually purified theirattachments and intentions as disciples, transforming their dismay into receptivity.   

They still longed for Jesus; his voice, his hug, the sound of his footsteps, “like a deer that longs for running streams in a dry weary land without water,” (Ps. 42:2)  However they soon found that once emptied, their muddled and broken hearts were then open to the new gift of God’s presence; the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, filling them past overflowing, their thirst for God more than quenched.  “Your torrents and all your waves swept over me.”  (Ps. 42: 8)

Come, Holy Spirit, come. 

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Book Review: Our Lady of Hot Messes by Leticia Ochoa Adams

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I’ve been following Leticia Ochoa Adams, one of my favorite Catholic writers, for years on social media and I’ve loved reading her blog posts. She has always said what I wished someone would say even though I didn’t know I wished that until she made me laugh out loud or feel totally seen by a Catholic writer in a way I had not felt before. I admire her fearless and thorough self assessments, her frank story telling. There is a freedom that inspires in the way she manages to be rigorously honest about herself without sounding self absorbed or over dramatic. Reading her writing feels like sitting at The Kettle late at night with a comfortable friend who still surprises  with her stories and insights. 

So when I saw she had a book coming out I couldn’t wait to read it. It’s called Our Lady of Hot Messes from Ave Maria Press. It is the author’s spiritual memoir; the story of her life, a record of her conversion, an experience of her spirituality, the lessons she has learned, her observations about the world, her commentary on the times we are living through. 

Leticia Ochoa Adams is not shy. Thank goodness because the world needs her voice, the voice of a Tejano daughter of a single mother who has endured more than her share of trauma and tragedy. Most recently she has survived the suicide of her son, Anthony. She is able to talk about this and the abuse she experienced as a child without being either lurid or glib. She makes it easy to learn from what she has been through and in sharing these things she lights the way for others. 

She writes about the ways she, and we, numb ourselves, attaching ourselves to activities and material things that keep us from being with God as fully as we could be like “doom scrolling,” on social media and even more innocent things we become inordinately attached to. She examines the mixed motivations she and we often have with a disarming simplicity and clarity.  

She reminds us we should just be ourselves. The most important thing to her is being real. I think she has accomplished that with a strength and self possession that might make you raise your eyebrows a little as you read.

One of her chapters is called “Cussing is Normal” in which she challenges us to consider if it’s really enough to use words like “dumb bunny” instead of cuss words when we have the same amount of malice in our hearts when we say them to someone. 

I enjoyed her passages about finding God among people.  She saw how Christ-like bar flies can be when they care for one another having witnessed the lives and friendships of the men who hung out in the dive bar where she was once a bartender. She learned the Ten Commandments and honorable conduct as part of a community from the “G Code” at the majority black high school she attended long before she learned these things in church. God had been teaching her all along through the events and people in her life. Jesus had been there.

Jesus is real and immediate to her. He’s watching TV with her on the couch. He’s funny, he makes her laugh sometimes and he loves her. She tells him everything. I appreciate the way she shares how that relationship has grown throughout her life, through grief and love and her search for  truth. 

 She wants us to know she doesn’t have it all together, that we are at home in the Church whether we feel we have the perfect Catholic life or not. 

It’s funny that she asked such hostile questions at the first RCIA  (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) class she went to, she got kicked out. She only went to get her boyfriend to marry her, she says. She had been taught at a different church growing up that Catholics were idol worshipers and that the rosary was witchcraft. She was ready to be hostile again on her second try at the class but she was so blown away by the explanation of John chapter 6 she forgot to be mad when they got to the Virgin Mary and the rosary because she was still thinking about the Eucharist.  

“The thing I love most about being Catholic is that I have found a place that hasn’t gotten tired of my questions. I can ask them without fear of being kicked out. Having a relationship with God and his mother does not mean that I know everything. It does not mean that I do not question why things are the way they are. But it does mean that I get to show up as me, even if that means I fall asleep when I try to pray my rosary at bed time.” 

Her chapter on the rosary is my favorite one. “Praying the Rosary Like a Loser.”   

“I also consider that Hail Marys are what make up the Rosary and each one is a rose laid at her feet. So when I don’t have time to pray the Rosary I just try to lay spiritual roses at her feet like not cussing out a coworker or not flipping off someone in traffic or paying for someone’s lunch. Those are all just as valid as roses to her. And that, my friends, is how to pray the Rosary like a loser when you do not have your life together. You just try not to be a jerk to others, and you think about those moments as roses laid at the feet of Our Lady. And you know that you are loved.” 

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All Soul’s Day 2022

Today is All Soul’s Day, the day we remember and pray for our beloved dead on their journey. It is a day to light candles for them, wash their head stones in the cemetery, to bring flowers. There will be masses and rosaries prayed for them in Catholic cemeteries all over the world today and every country has its own additional customs as well. Around here in some churches people bring pictures of their dead to leave there during the month of November. There will be a Book of the Dead placed near the door at church today so we can write their names in it and we will all pray for them during November at every mass.

Everyone is alive in God and we are still in communion with those who have gone before. I remember my husbands, my grandparents, my mother and my step father, my brother, and my friends who have died every day and I know they are with me. Love is stronger than death. And God is the God of both the living and the dead. All things are alive to him and therefor to me as one who loves him, and to you.

“… the world or life or death, or the present or the future: all belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God. 1 Corinthians 3:22b-23

And Christ is all in all.

God bless you today and all of your loved ones who have died. May the tears you have cried for them be blessed. God holds every one of them close to his heart.

“You have stored my tears in your bottle and counted each of them. ” Psalm 56:8b

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

*The reason it says God keeps your tears in a bottle is because of the custom at that time to wear a small bottle around your neck when you were in mourning in which you stored your tears.

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