Widowhood, grief, death and dying

The war against ourselves

St. Teresa of Avila talked about the role of the contemplative as a standard bearer. She described the holder of the guidon of Jesus, of love, as having the one goal to hold the banner high no matter what chaos whirls around him, no matter if he is cut to pieces. If the standard bearer should fall, he must struggle to his feet again to hold high the symbol that urges on those in battle, gives them hope, lets them know their comrades are nearby when their courage flags.

I have thought a lot in the past couple of days about what was wrong with me in the midst of the chaos; meaning the violence of thought word and deed since the public murder of Charlie Kirk. I couldn’t hold the banner so much. It wobbled, as Winnie the Pooh would say of his spelling. It wobbled, shook, slipped as I took in entirely too much of what was going on. I have CPTSD and it’s important for me to guard how much craziness I absorb. Also I am an empath type person. I feel what people are feeling deeply. I don’t know about you but the last couple of days have triggered me badly. I have felt like a microcosm of the macrocosm of horror and rage, of compassion and sympathy, of fear and dread. My fight or flight has been FIGHT as usual. I too want to fill my mouth with argument along with everyone else.

St. Teresa would be the first person to say our real war is against ourselves. she advised us to return again and again to “the room of self knowledge.” Well today I am trying that.

Simeon the Prophet told Mother Mary that a sword would pierce her heart “so that the secret thoughts of many [would] be laid bare (Lk. 2:35). I have thought about that at times of tragedy and reckoning over the last several years. It does seem that the secret thoughts of many are laid bare in the midst of tragedy, of horrific events. Mary’s heart was pierced through by her love and compassion for her Son, and really, for us too. Murder surely pierces her heart. Injustice, people doing harm to one another, these must hurt her terribly. Jesus Crucified by hate. Again and again.

I have had my PTSD triggered by the event itself; a horrible murder. A father and husband with little kids suddenly dead. I lost my first husband in a car accident when my youngest was three months old and my eldest three weeks shy of her fifth birthday. I can hardly stand to think of what Kirk’s widow is going through today and what she will go through in the days, weeks, months, years ahead of her. She will have to watch her children grieve. She will have to be there for them as her world is ending. I can’t imagine people watching video all over the world of my husband dying a gruesome death. I was surprised when the sun still rose the day after my husband died. I watched in shock as the news came on and people went to work and school and drove around as if the sky hadn’t fallen. I feel for her very much.

The secret thoughts of many have been laid bare haven’t they? I’ve been triggered by some of their reactions as well as the original event. Some people have been sanitizing the murdered man as if he had been a saint when he was a rank racist who said things every day that could get people harassed, threatened and endangered and did. His public life was all about hate. Then people I thought were sane are saying his work should be “continued,” (Gavin Newsom) or that he “did politics the right way.” (Ezra Klein).

Some have been fawning over him. Their hero is dead. Incomprehensible to me. He was horrible. Look up the things he said for yourself if you don’t believe me.

I think of St. Edith Stein’s saying that truth without love or love without truth is a destructive lie. And look. It is. Historically Black campuses have had bomb threats. The DNC had a bomb threat. Why? I guess because Kirk hated black people? Or because they assumed a black person did it? Because he hated Democrats? They assume the culprit is a Democrat? Brawls have broken out. The president wants to give the man a statue in DC and award him the presidential medal of freedom. Of course he does. He hasn’t helped with his incendiary blaming of “radical left Democrats.”

The outpouring of grief and praise for the man must be a gut punch to the people he harmed with his bullying, with his hate and his stirring up more and more hate. I know it’s a gut punch for me. My heart is the most with the vulnerable and persecuted. That’s where I think it should be. However that solidarity of mine has caused me a lot of rage over the last couple of days. A friend said, to my prayer online for peace and an end to political violence, “You’re a good person.” I replied, “Not really.” I noticed one of my kids put a laughing emoji on that. Thanks a lot Roise.

Also triggering to me is the response of people who want to skip the ugly process of truth and reckoning to get to the peace they think would come if we all decided to just get along and lay aside our differences. To me that’s fake peace. After the things I have been through I have seen enough of that. How can we love our enemies if we whitewash and sanitize what they have done? That’s fake love. It’s useless, wrong even.

I see how I have been freaking out about all this; angry, horrified, scared for our country, taking in too much of what everyone is saying and what the news is when I know that makes me so upset.

Maybe I can offer up all the wild inner agony I have had about all this to God to help someone somewhere. Mary’s piercing of the heart was co-redemptive. I can entrust my little offering of a struggling heart to her.

I pray that I’ll be able to love Kirk- who by all accounts would be an enemy of mine at least as a public figure- in the way God wants me to. Right now that seems to me to be to pray for his salvation, for a beautiful forever life with God for him. Whatever he is doing, Charlie Kirk understands more than any of us do now. He has a completely different perspective. He has encountered eternal love and life. May he embrace them, embrace him who is love and life himself with all of his heart and possess them forever. God says he will give us all new hearts instead of our stony hearts. Amen amen.

I need to ask for that for myself, too. For all of us.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh”
Ezekiel 36:26

September 12, 2025 1

Remembering Mr. J.D.: A Legacy of Faith

When I used to volunteer for Hospice I would deliver flowers every week or so to an old man who had kidney cancer. He lived way out in the middle of nowhere in a small, very old wooden house with his wife, Priscilla. He was my favorite stop. We used to talk and talk. I prayed with his family, sons and daughters, cousins, brothers and sisters, in the kitchen holding hands. They prayed spontaneous vocal prayer. I was shy so I prayed Come, Holy Spirit but they were delighted and said it was wonderful.

He liked to pray for me about things that came up in my life. He would say he had “pondered” in his heart and reflected on a situation in my life and tell me what he felt he got in prayer about it. He often worried about me being a widow so young, and thought I should marry again. He prayed a “holy Christian man” would come into my life. Years later, this did happen, and I’m sure Mr. J.D. had something to do with it. I was surprised he could worry about anyone else when he was dying. But that’s how he was.

When I came in, he used to tell me how his day was in spiritual terms. He would say, “I been deep in the Lord, deep in the Lord all day today.” Another time, in his last few days, he said, “I’m sorry I just can’t talk about anything else but Jesus Christ anymore.” I said “No need to apologize. That’s what I think about all the time too. “ This was in 2002. I still remember him sometimes and smile. He’s deep in the Lord for sure

March 13, 2025 2

Healing Spirituality After Trauma: Finding God Again

if you’re dealing with a profound loss, the after effects of tragedy or post traumatic stress you may be feeling spiritually dead. Maybe you think you’ve lost your faith or that God has left you. It may be helpful for you to know there are neurological reasons for this apparent loss of your spiritual senses.

When there is a traumatic event or a terrible loss in our lives, our brains are actually affected. Trauma can disrupt the brain’s ability to process spiritual experiences by affecting its prefrontal cortex, amygdala, hippocampus, and temporal lobes. These areas are also involved in emotional regulation, memory, and our sense of self, even our feeling of connection with something greater than ourselves. Dysfunction in these regions can lead to a disconcerting loss of or distortion in a person’s spiritual life. It’s difficult for us to feel God with us, or to reach the peace we used to find in prayer and the practice of our faith.

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for self-reflection and focus. It helps us in practices like contemplative prayer and meditation by supporting awareness and attention. When this part of the brain is dealing with trauma we can’t seem to relax. We may feel void of any spirituality at all. Even the sacraments we believe in feel oddly empty as if we are merely spectators. Everything may seem meaningless to us now because the brain is preoccupied with stress and survival due to its injuries from trauma.

The amygdala and hippocampus process emotions, especially fear and joy. It gives us a sense of our life stories, of our own history. Spiritual experiences often evoke intense emotions and build on a relationship with God that we have developed over time. Trauma can even shrink the hippocampus . It may be hard to remember the love we once knew with God. Without this memory of the lived experience of God’s love and mercy, it’s hard to trust the Lord or that he is still there at all.

With post traumatic stress the amygdala becomes hyperactive, keeping our brains in a state of fear and hypervigilance. We might also feel emotionally overwhelmed and dysregulated making daily life difficult let alone communion with God.

The temporal lobes of the brain are associated with mystical experiences, and our perception of religious imagery. They also help us integrate our sensory experiences in life into spiritual meaning. Sustaining trauma can cause either overactivation or underactivation of the temporal lobes. This can lead to either intense visions or else fear-based religious thoughts. On the other hand, we may feel emotionally and spiritually blank. Where is God?

“God my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mark 15:33-34

Our anterior cingulate cortex helps us feel empathy and compassion. It’s also involved in the regulation of emotions and our sense of the Divine.The damage of trauma can impair the ACC. We may feel lost, cut off emotionally from our friends. We feel empty and alienated from people and God.

“Friend and neighbor you have taken away.

My one companion is darkness.” Ps. 88:18

The insula processes sensations and emotions, contributing to a sense of the nearness of God or a feeling of transcendence during prayer or meditation.Trauma can impair the functioning of the insula leading to either low body awareness or too much of it. We can feel a strange detachment from our bodies, unaware of even our physical needs. Conversely we may be overwhelmed by physical sensations, making it hard to relax or focus when we want to pray.

The good news is that contemplative prayer and meditation have been shown to be healing and even restorative to these areas of the brain impaired by trauma. Interior prayer practices and meditation can calm the amygdala, improve prefrontal cortex regulation, and enhance the connectivity of the ACC and insula, restoring emotional balance and renewing our sense of connection.

It means a lot to me that Jesus experienced trauma and that he allowed himself to descend into the depths of the abyss of abandonment when he cried out from the cross his desolation.

St. John of the Cross taught about the “Dark Night of the Soul,” a phase of the spiritual life of many Christian contemplatives and mystics, which seems to have similar effects as trauma does on our prayer life. St. John of the Cross wrote that “in the dark night of the soul, bright flows the river of God.” He teaches us that God is nearer than ever before at times we feel he is farthest away. He says to go on “naked faith” and not to give up.

I have found it true that “God is close to the broken hearted, those whose spirit is crushed he will save.” (Psalm 34:18)

So if you are grieving a tragedy, experiencing trauma or post traumatic stress, and your’re having trouble with spirituality as a result don’t blame yourself. You haven’t done anything wrong. Nor have you lost God.

We know Mary and Joseph were holy and faithful people but they still lost Jesus for three days. Maybe you feel bereft but he is still there in the temple of your heart and you will find him again just as they did.

It’s ok to pray in ways you can handle. Don’t hold yourself to what you used to do. For me emotional overwhelm kept me from deeper methods of prayer after a tragedy in my life. I talked to Jesus about it. I told him, “I still love you. I just need you not to come so close for now. Can you sit farther away but still nearby?” So he sat with me but not too close. I chose what felt to me a less personal or emotional method of prayer. I memorized psalms, set prayers or passages from the mystics I love like St. Teresa of Avila and Julian of Norwich. When I could handle it I sat quietly and slowly went over them in my mind as a form of prayer/meditation. Other times all I could do was hold my rosary. These things slowly began to bring me peace again.

My friend Jim had said “the devil will try to kick you when you’re down and darkness tries to overwhelm you at times like this so keep doing the things that are of light: the rosary, going to mass, whatever you can do.” He said that would keep my lamp alight no matter what I was going through. He was right.

And after all:

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:5

October 29, 2024 0

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.

August 23, 2024 0

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.

June 27, 2024 0

St. Joseph Novena Day 8

Precious in the eyes of the Lord
is the death of his faithful ones. (Psalm 116:15)

St. Joseph, your death was beautiful and tender. Your passing filled the room with love; your love, the love of your family, the love of God.

Joseph the dreamer, the worker, the father, the husband, the prophet, the protector, the meaning of your life settled with intense clarity on those who kept watch at your side and on everyone who ever knew you, flooding the hearts of them all. Help us when our time comes to leave this world, to have fulfilled our purpose, to have loved God and every human being he sent our way, to have lived with Jesus and Mary daily that we may also die in their arms and ultimately reach heaven in the company of the angels and saints, to be forever in the Heart of the Father, inhabiting his House filled with wonder. St. Joseph, Patron of a holy death, pray for us as we honor you. Pray for us always.

March 19, 2023 0

Mary at the foot of the Cross; a reading from my book Come to Mary’s House; spending time with Our Blessed Mother

September 15, 2022 2

Coffee and cigarettes (my brother part 1)

My brother and I were standing on the loading dock at the Eagle Newspaper where we both worked, looking out at the woods across the street, the sky, the parking lot. People were working around us unloading trucks, driving the forklift, walking in and out of “the roll room” where the giant rolls of newsprint were stacked waiting to be loaded onto the press as needed. Sometimes he lifted his chin curtly at someone going by. He was the Production Director so there was hardly any such thing as a break for him. There were texts, phone calls and people stopping by to ask questions.

“Yes… that ad, yes. I called already, yes. You. Pain is the ass. Yes.”

The Eagle had a family atmosphere and Mark was like everyone’s Uncle and to most people he was also their friend.

I was trying to talk to him about his smoking, hopeless though I knew it was. “I read that non smokers live an average of ten years longer than smokers,” I was telling him as he listened patiently, drawing on his cigarette as I spoke. “So what?” he asked charactaristcally. I said, “Since I am a vegetarian and we live eight years longer than meat eaters, that means I will have to live eighteen years without you! I don’t want to live all those years without you!!!!”

He looked at me then, holding his latest lungful.

“Better start smokin’!” he said in chokey voice.

That is one of my funny Mark stories. There are so many.

He was funny, quick, tough, talented, cocky and competent, sometimes arrogant and “full of piss, wind and vinegar,” as my granny used to say.

He was short so he had to learn to be like that. It worked for him, and I am so proud of all that he accomplished. I was his sister. I knew he could do anything and he pretty much could.

He wrote in an e-mail to me once, “You are among my chief comforts.” Did I say eloquent? Because he was eloquent, too. Intelligent. Thoughtful. Reflective.

He was a person of depth. He was a master of banter but he disliked meaningless conversations.

He always knew the right thing to say to me.

When I was pregnant with my first daughter and freaked out about the overwhelming prospect of motherhood, he had said, “Shawn think of it this way, there will be a new sweet little baby in the world! And that baby will grow up to be a gentle human being. We need gentle human beings. I know that’s what I value most about myself.”

Some people would be surprised that he valued his gentleness most. They wouldn’t know he had that quality. He could definitely play the games of the world- something I have never been able to do. He really did see the corporate world, the business world, the get things done world as a game. It was fun to him though I saw that he regretted it deeply when someone was personally hurt by him winning. He was a good guy even though he enjoyed being a little deviant at times. I mean coloring outside the lines in ways he thought benefited the people who worked for him over whom he felt very protective. (When people around him were mad at him they thought he was patronizing. He could be patronizing.)

Some of the things he did were big heroic risks that saved people’s jobs at the risk of his career had he lost his bet with luck. Other times I thought he was just showing off a little bit or seeing what he could get away with. “Ha haaaaa! Gotcha!”

I think he felt justified if the people he fooled were mean or threatening to his “people.”

Also almost anything was justified if it was funny. That is an unspoken rule in my family. You better be smart and if you mess up it had better be funny. Or at least being funny or making the whole thing hilarious will get you points. Always.

My brother had the gift of presence. The people closest to him knew that sitting with Mark in silence or telling him something important was different than being with or talking to anyone else. He was all there with you, with all of himself. Somehow he understood everything, or seemed to, the way the person in front of him was feeling it. As our friends since childhood, Mike and Kenny said about him, “Listening to music with Mark was different than listening to music with anyone else.” Part of this may have been that the four of us were in a band together for 16 years. But I think it has more to do with the quality of Mark’s presence and friendship than that.

He was loyal, and he invoked that loyalty in others. People who loved him would do anything for him and did.

There were little everyday things he did that showed his mind was on the people around him. He always kept a cache of nickels (his favorite coin since childhood) in his desk drawer at work in case anybody needed change for the vending machines.

His co-workers did little things for him too.

Cindy, his right hand person, parked in his parking spot just to make sure it stayed open for him one time. He laughed. He appreciated that kind of thing.

The people around him had faith in his abilities. When I worried about him, his friends at work would say, “He didn’t get where he is by being stupid. He’ll be fine.”

He liked to bring people together to enjoy each other. He loved watching people he loved talk and have fun together.

That is one of the reason he had a pool put in at the old house we grew up in. He loved having people over to the pool and waiting on them hand and foot.

When my first husband lay in his coffin after the Vigil (wake) my brother put his hand on his chest and promised him he would take care of me and the kids.

He kept that promise almost until the end of his life. He was part of my kids’ daily lives. He was over almost every day. When I was at my wit’s end he would come pick up the girls and take them to The Kettle (a diner kind like Denny’s in our town where we used to hang out.)

They would clamor all over him until he said, “Shut it, Rat!”

He loved them like they were his own children. He fretted about them, picked them up from school, lectured them, talked about them to his friends, came with me to teacher meetings if he could. I can’t imagine a better Uncle.

He could also be ridiculous like when he would try to reason with a wildly weeping teen-aged girl in a restaurant parking lot with me saying, “Mark! You are just making it worse!”

He liked to take me to lunch. He liked to talk to me about his problems over coffee and cigarettes and listen to mine.

If we hadn’t seen one another or had time to hang out for a while he would sometimes say, “Hey, we both do better when we make time to be together enough.” It was true.

His spiritual beliefs could be described as fairly minimal, although he believed in Something. He just thought that Something was unknowable. His argument was that God is so big you can’t know him like you know a person. “We’re all just fleas. What do we know?” I knew he respected my spirituality so I said, “What about me?” He said, “You’re just a really smart flea.” I loved it.

grayscale photo of person resting his arm — Photo by Hieu Nguyen Trong on Pexels.com

It’s funny how he claimed basic agnosticism or only the vaguest spiritual beliefs but he understood my most intimate of secrets in my experiences with God as someone very serious about the life of prayer would. He got it. “I just translate it into my own language,” he used to say. I was fine with that. I always felt understood by him and he felt understood by me.

One time he found a little baby bird and he looked up how to care for it. He took care of it for several days and was heart broken when it died. “Yesterday he wasn’t feeling very good,” he said with the sadness you would normally see in someone talking about about a sick relative. When the little bird died he could hardly talk about it.

He worried he had fed it the wrong thing. He kept trying to figure out what made the little bird sick like that.

Sitting with him on the porch was like total inner peace to me. Even when he wanted to take me on a wild ride on his motorcycle or his latest car I was never scared. I laughed or I closed my eyes happily but I was never scared. He was a skilled driver and I simply trusted him completely.

He felt taken aback that none of that scared me. Not going over a hundred miles and hour on his bike, not a jump in a go-cart. He thought my fearlessness was a little creepy. I think I was fearless because of trust.

We had a few fights and disagreements. We had terrible crises we weathered together. But that trust in our essential unity gave me total confidence that we would get back on track every time.

We had observed that since we were kids we felt like he and I were the family. We had these parents and they did this and that but we were what we called “the core.” We reminded one another of that in the many losses and tragedies in our lives. No matter what we always had each other.

love cute kids baby — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

We told each other everything. We even shared gum. (Mostly to gross out other people at work but if I said, “Hey you have gum where is MY gum? He would half his piece and give it to me even if he was already chewing it.)

I think of blue eyes and cigarette smoke, a cup of coffee and the setting sun, a new song he wanted me to hear. Laughter.

I can’t really tell you all about my brother. Like you, he was an entire universe. Like all deep relationships, ours was also a living thing, a world we comfortably inhabited together and sometimes let other people hang out in, too.

How can you share a universe with someone who never traveled there? I don’t know. But I know there are people you love very much; maybe as much as I loved my brother, maybe as much as he loved me (which my dad said was more than anyone on the planet loved anyone but I think he was exaggerating.)

This month is suicide awareness month. I have decided to follow Leticia Adams’ lead and write about my experience with suicide. This is what I wrote today, I will write more.

It’s been four years. It was four years in August. The pain changes but it hasn’t stopped. There are tears in my eyes as I write this.

It hurts like hell.

P.S. He wouldn’t have liked this song. Just so you know. However, right now it is on target with how I feel. So he can just deal with that.

September 3, 2019 3

The soul power of chastity through all life’s changes

A good book I am reading* begins by saying that the legend of the long, winding history of the Indian Koohinoor diamond began when Krishna gave it to one of his disciples in response to his meditations. I tried to imagine Jesus giving me a diamond. “Have you ever given me a diamond, Jesus?”

“If so, what was this diamond,” I thought.

I know Jesus has given me everything, grace upon grace. But I was surprised when the first thing that crossed my mind was that he has given me the diamond of chastity, and it is of eternal value, and that it is my consolation now.

Not too long ago, I ran across a secular video about celibacy. It was odd to watch because I am used to hearing about celibacy in religious terms, and this video’s attitude seemed to be, “Hey, look, people actually do this, and on purpose!” There were about five people presented with their various reasons for being celibate permanently or temporarily. The last person featured was a religious sister, who gave an explanation about Jesus being her spouse, and so her love in service was his love, broad, deep and available.

I thought about my journeys as a wife and mother, then a widowed single mom, and the evolution of chastity’s meaning for me. We are all called to chastity according to our state in life. My state in life has changed in ways that have been confusing. What is my vocation now? I don’t think of myself as a single person, really. Being a widow is different. I am someone who lived and fulfilled marriage vows. However, I am alone. At the same time, I am much aware of a deep spiritual connection with my spouses, so in that way I am not alone. I am forever changed by marriage, in all the best ways, and I feel its beautiful seal on my soul.

After the death of my first husband, Marc, in a car accident at the age of twenty-eight, I didn’t understand what my life was- I lost that much of myself. I slept fitfully with the light on for years.

It felt imperative to me to understand my vocation, to understand what I was supposed to build on and be. I was still a mother. I still loved my husband. Just because he was dead, I did not stop feeling like his wife. I didn’t even consider dating. I had some very intense little girls to raise, and challenges that were hard to accept were mine.

Over the years my ideas about celibacy evolved as I moved from the chastity of a wife to the chastity of a widow. I was surprised to realize that I felt an expansiveness of love, of my womanhood, of my motherhood, as I developed in this new life I did not ask for, but slowly embraced. When I turned the light off at night, I felt enveloped in love and peace.

“Through the silent watches of the night, bless the Lord.” (Ps. 134:2b)

I wondered, during the quiet mutations happening in my soul, if this was how priests and religious felt- like they were half in love with everyone, like their hearts were available to people, and to God in a special way.

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My marriages were beautiful and life giving. I was a very happy, totally in love, fulfilled wife, both times, in every way. My present choice of celibacy is not a repudiation of married love in the least.

One woman on the video I mentioned said that she had always felt “asexual.” I wondered if she used that word only because she didn’t have the language to describe herself as a sexual being who is celibate in expression. In this present culture it would be hard to find any such language in every day public discourse.

I have come to recognize sexuality as a spiritual energy, so to speak. It is like a power current and a connection, body and soul, to and through God. This was so when I was with each of my husbands, and it is so now. It is just directed differently. The proper direction of the spiritual energy of sexuality is what chastity is.

Eventually I felt very happy and whole in my new life. I missed (and still do miss) my husband every single day. But more and more I felt that he was with me and part of me. I loved him as much as I ever did. And it was OK.

My reasons for remaining celibate were changing. It wasn’t because I was broken in that area anymore, or that I still felt I needed to be faithful to Marc (though some of that has always remained.)

It was because I felt married to Jesus.

As my girls began to be interested in boys and have their teenaged heart breaks, I would tell them just to let Jesus be their boyfriend for a while. “He’s the best,” I would tell them.

I was so perfectly at peace with this idea, that God is the husband of the widow and the father of the orphan, that it was a very difficult adjustment for me when I felt I was being asked to consider loving Bob, ten years after Marc’s death. It took a lot of prayer, a few “burning bushes,” and a couple of little miracles to help me see that loving Bob was now my way. I came to understand that Christ and I were going to love Bob together. Slowly this began to make sense, and I was able to let that love happen.

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I was very, very happy as Bob’s wife. I was more happy and unified with him than I can say. He said we were each other’s priests one time and I laughed because that is not so far from the Catholic idea of marriage. Truly, we formed Christ in one another and experienced Him living in our relationship. In an ineffable way, though changed, it seems to me that we still experience that.

Now the diamond of chastity is given to me again in different setting, with a new cut. I didn’t think this would happen again. But I cherish this beautiful gift. It is powerful and affirming.

Truly, it is a wonderful consolation. I am still growing to understand it and let it be a fullness in my life. Widowhood is to live with a bottomless loss. But it is also a very special kind of love, and celibate chastity can be one of its expressions. It is less an expression of emptiness, in time, than a different kind of wholeness. This love, this diamond, is the gift left to me.

I heard that a wife said to her dying husband, “I love you so much, what will I do without you?” He said, “Take the love you have for me and spread it around.” That is beautiful and I identify with it deeply, especially since that is something Bob would have said for sure. I think I have started to do this again now, and I recognize it as a sign of life. As Bob and I loved each other, and that love went out to others, this is what is happening in the relationship I am developing with God, in my life as a widow.

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As a daughter of the Church, I have the richness of Carmelite spirituality to draw on, and other Catholic spiritual traditions, too, that speak of the soul as a bride of God. Ronda Chervin, who has written about the spirituality of widowhood, calls this, “Jesus [as] the second Bridegroom.” * (In my case this would be “third Bridegroom,” of course.)

This understanding of my present form of chastity is profoundly healing for me. I feel filled, enclosed, and loved, carried and protected every day, in spite of my still very present loss. Celibate chastity is a positive, liberating presence in me, peaceful and meaningful.

To me, the virtue of chastity is a beautiful diamond, a true One Love that puts all other loves in their proper perspectives, making them even more vivid. Chastity is a vessel and an expression of love according to my state in life. But it is the same effulgence of brilliancy; a faithful, steadfast and complete love.

The more I learn about it, the more I am dazzled.