In the midst of death we are in life?

Well, the anticipated death of S has occurred, this afternoon at about half past two while I was having a tedious phone conversation on the phone with an official about Council Tax.

It was not a surprise, but I just feel quite stunned.  I find it hard to believe it's finally happened and I won't see him again, or email him again.  End of.

Stratford Caldecott 26th November 1953 - 17th July 2014
RIP
(Photoshopped with some atmospheric colouring/halo etc. this would make a good holy picture - he almost looks as if he's wearing a Roman collar!)

It is true that we hadn't emailed each other a great deal recently - but I always felt he was somehow "on my side" after the great debacle in 2010 which need not be discussed here!  Perhaps he made everyone feel like that. He emailed me in May to tell me of his prognosis - and ask for our prayers.  There is a horrible feeling that these prayers were not really answered or rather the answer was "Tough!"  I know that suffering is looked upon with approval in traditional Catholic teaching - but... how much?  Must everyone be crucified?  One does seem to hear a great deal about old reprobates who have totally easy and jolly deaths... and of course "heroic suffering" is one of the factors involved in canonisation.

So I have lost another friend - this is different from Marion, lacking the shock element - but he was one of those people one slightly measured one's behaviour against - ungracious remarks froze in my throat in his presence.

The trouble with someone dying is always those left behind: there is a legacy bandwagon - not financial, but a sort of argument about "ownership".  Mark was astonished at his father's funeral how everyone had their own version of Edward.  Rachel has accidentally fallen foul of this unspoken rule by posting his death on Facebook before the "official" family announcement had been made.  Her other brother has posted about it with a reference to Horus... not quite Catholic theology!  There is a very real danger (not sure if that's the word) that he will be beatified in due course... there were jokes about relic hunting!  We'll see - rather him than Mgr Escriva de Balaguer.  On the whole I think the canonisation process is all a bit unecessary.  I always like the idea that everyone is a saint, but we don't all get canonised is something more to my liking.  On the other hand, Strat is the sort of person you can imagine wanting to intercede for you - if you think it's necessary to have a "friend at court" so to speak.  He is certainly a person I have no criticism of - except for his failure to ever "Like" any of my posts on Facebook!  The modern sin!  Must be worth a few days in Purgatory - before entering eternal bliss!

There are so many things about bereavement - it becomes about "me" the bereaved - and therefore less dignified - we don't do dignified and noble most of the time. This marries the "ownership" issue and can get rather ugly/tedious.


Meanwhile - life goes on, in a rather stunned mullet way. Jupiter has entered Leo - today - and things are meant to be looking up.  These two deaths have - as deaths often do - somehow cleared the boards.  Things feel more settled now that outcomes are known.  I haven't worked much in the last few days because of Marion and Strat - but on the other hand they have both provided me with an awful lot of material to think about for "Last Things" - the book I am going to write next (GATD is only about 20-30,000 words off the end). I hope to be a bit more energised now.

Novenas

Recently I have been invited to participate in a couple of novenas related to illness.  At first I was a bit wary of them, because the first one was also part of a campaign to obtain cannonisation for a couple of people - i.e. say the novena, he gets healed, they have a miracle to their credit and go on to the next stage....   I am rather cynical about canonisation, who gets canonised and who does not.  I suspect there are plenty of people living lives of "heroic virtue" who don't have quite the same popular following as JP2 or that ghastly Opus Dei man, there is a political element in them.  Odds are if enough nuns carry around enough scraps of JP2's garments one of them will recover from an illness sooner or later.  And of course, someone must have had the foresight to divide his garments into useful miraculous portions too.  This may not happen to the quietly heroic parish priest who fights off the temptations of drink, sex and anything else and serves his people wholeheartedly and dies a solitary death with dementia in an old priests' home...  

However, the first novena was remarkably successful, it achieved its very specific and limited aim.  The current one is hedging its bets, asking for healing, but also comfort and being a good example (suggesting healing may not happen).  I guess that's the sort of theology I understand - wanting to pray for what's in God's will... but accepting that it might be different from what you and your dearly beloveds want.  Different from the militant "claiming" that goes on in some quarters of my family!

At some point last week, just before I got the novena request, and before I talked to Tara (my Catholic ally),  I had the idea that the best way of tackling the ever difficult Mark question was.... to do a novena.  Not say a prayer everyday, but to spend a little time praying and reading the bible (opened at random) for 9 days.  When this novena started things were at the low state that readers of this blog will have noticed.  His father had just died and I didn't think this was the time to start talking about divorce, yet - yet - So I began to pray and read, and at first I felt it was OVER - but as the 9 days went on, I began to see more and more of his good qualities, his humour, his sensitivity - and of course, his encyclopaedic knowledge of me!  There was even a bit of tentative .... so while I am still in a right old two and eight about things generally, the marital relationship has warmed considerably, and I no longer wish to leave him.  We had a discussion about divorce and I listened to myself and thought "I don't believe I'm actually saying this to him."  Still, I think it was curiously helpful - if it is the unspoken fear - to be clear about it - not as a threat, just as a possibility.

Tara introduced me to the Memorare - a prayer to the BVM which I hadn't been brought up with.  I could see the idea of it being a very powerful prayer - in that you TELL Mary that she's on a promise to help you.  I found it extremely difficult to say the prayer at first, it's the mother thing I'm afraid.  If I call the BVM "my mother" what would my real mother think?  Perhaps that's why my mother never was that much of a Mariolator?  Or me?  Or was it just because the idea of one's mother had sufficient toxicity that it didn't seem a nice word to use to Our Lady? Ooh - I might be onto something here...
After I had coaxed and sobbed my way through the prayer I felt better, calmer, and I made it explicit that I was asking for something quite large: to get out of debt - since I feel most of our problems are to do with our debt situation - just paying the mortgage arrears would be a start.  A couple of days later I thought, as the marriage issues began to clarify (the specific request for that novena) "why not turn the Memorare into a novena too?"  So I am doing that - I have missed a couple of days, but a few dribs and drabs of money have come in in the last 48 hours, so I have every hope that there will be enough to pay off the arrears on the mortgage and perhaps a bit more.

Now it occurs to me, what is to stop me doing novenas on a regular basis - to get clarification on different issues, rather than to get a specific "goody"?  Certainly the Bible reading one is good: suddenly the Bible becomes as interesting as the I Ching - you understand that it is not just the words themselves, in their historical/social/spiritual context that count, it is how you apply them to your situation, how you understand them, that shows you something about your state of mind, whether you find yourself twisting them to your own advantage, or wanting to ignore them because they are close to a painful truth.  For years I've felt a bit guilty about doing the I Ching - but now I can see that in some way it's provided a sort of training in self-examination that can be useful.  If I see it as a way of examining my conscience, then it must be good.  But I think seeing it as sort of "magic" that unlocks desired objects is dangerous, and should be avoided.