A reader reacts to this morning's VFYW:
Talk about timing. My gran died in a hospice in Baltimore this morning, surrounded by her family. We're all a little scattered now, doing our own spiritual reconciliation, for lack of a better phrase. I should go to mass, but I'm finding the need for solitude and distraction more pressing at the moment than hearing the familiar words of the sacrament washing over me and being able to think of nothing but how very devout my Irish Catholic grandmother was until the end. Some of her last words were telling God that she was sorry for her shortcomings but that she had done her best in this life and was ready to go whenever he got around to taking her.
Anyway, I'm rambling, and I'm not sure why I'm sharing this with you, a person I've never met, except that it's sometimes easier to talk to strangers when your heart feels broken and the people you love and who love you are equally wounded. Grief can be smothering in its solidarity.
And so I escaped and went outside and breathed in the cold air and tried not to feel, and when that didn't work I turned to the din of the Internet to drown out my thoughts and there was this thing at the top on the Dish: the picture of a cemetery in Baltimore.
You can't escape the pain in the end, and I know that. Just feels like one of those things though, you know? One of those things where you try to read just one more page in a book you've really enjoyed before putting it down to go sweep the floor or something, and Gran is standing in front of you with her hands on her hips saying to just put the book down and get on with it – there's work to be done. Maybe I need to go to mass after all.
I apologize for getting my messy thoughts all over you. It just was such a shocking thing for me to see that View From Your Window that I laughed before I cried and then needed to share the strangeness of the way the world works with someone else.
The Dish 