May 5: Saint Gothard

You will forgive me in advance if this post is a little unfunny. See, my wife comes from a family of matriarchs. The women on her side run the show, and, for the most part, we men know it. At the top of this pyramid of female power are my wife's grandma and her grandma's sisters. They're all pretty strong cookies. Three of them outlived their husbands; one of these three remarried. One of them got divorced at a time when divorce was tantamount to taking a dump on the Bible. My wife's grandma had several miscarriages and two children. One of those children, my wife's mother, died of ovarian cancer in her late forties; the other child, a son, lived into his fifties and ended up shooting himself. Throw in a strong strain of mental illness, and you have a pretty good picture of the stock my wife comes from. These women are survivors, "tough old birds," as one of my wife's cousins fondly says.

I'm telling you all this because one of those birds died at 12:45 this morning. It wasn't a surprise. She had a stroke last week, and, when she got an MRI, the doctors discovered a massive tumor in her chest. There wasn't a whole lot to do. She was going to die, and her living will was pretty clear about not wanting feeding tubes or respirators or any other kind of "heroic" (I use that term loosely) measures. She died on her own terms, the way she wanted to go.

I love the women of my wife's family. They're crazy, wild, funny, loving, and fierce. It's one of the things that drew me to my wife--this independent strain of female-hood. Having been pretty much raised by my five older sisters, I found myself in very comfortable territory around my wife's grandmother and great aunts.

I can't say I'm heartbroken over this death. I loved her and respected her, and she made great chocolate chip cookies and lemon bars. I will miss her at birthdays and holiday get-togethers when she held court with her Lucille Ball red hair (I believe it was natural, but I'm not sure) and crooked smile.
So that pretty much got the morning off to a great start. Going through my e-mails when I got to work, I came across a chain-message from a friend. It involved a picture of an "angel of abundance" that you had to forward to as many people as you could. If you sent it to eight or more people within four hours, you were promised to receive an economic windfall.

Now, I'm not a superstitious person, although if I had been told eleven years ago that wearing the same pair of dirty underwear for eight years would have kept George W. Bush out of office, I would have done it. But this morning, seeing the fairy-like angel on my computer monitor, I figured, "What the hell? It couldn't hurt anything." So, with a few keystrokes, I sent the angel on her merry way with a hearty "show me the money!"

Three hours later, I got a phone call from the mechanic who was working on my wife's Subaru. It needed a brake job and a wheel bearing/baring/boring replaced. I'm not mechanical in any way, so when someone starts speaking automotive to me, I turn into Sarah Palin in a Harvard Think Tank, muttering such witty bon mots as, "I think that there car there should be fixed, I do." The lowdown was a $1500 repair.

Thank you, angel of abundance, you whore.

Needless to say, the rest of my day was colored by this flood of initial good news. By the time I hit choir practice this evening, I could barely control the torrent of Tourett's-like profanity that was sitting on my tongue like a piece of sour cantaloupe. So when the choir's organist said, "I spoke to some people from downstate, and they said we are getting a wonderful new pastor," I turned to my wife and said, "We need to go. Now." I did not want to discuss the replacement for my best friend.

The abundance angel was working overtime in my life today, heaping blessing after blessing on me until I felt like I was buried in a great, big, stinking pile of blessing manure. On the way home from choir practice, I got into an argument with my wife, which ended when she said something like, "I have no control over that. Stop being an asshole."

Message received. My behavior today was not very saint-like, and my wife called me on it. I was fighting battles I couldn't win--against death, debt, and change. In the face of things I have no control over, I tend to get defensive and more than a little cranky. I can lay money on the fact that any holy person (Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Peter, Paul, or Gothard) wouldn't depend on the angel of abundance for happiness.

That's right, Saint Gothard, and you can stop laughing like Beavis and Butthead ("Huh, huh, you said 'got hard.'"). Gothard knew how to roll with life's punches. Among some of his accomplishments: building and rebuilding churches; reforming monasteries; establishing schools; and running a hospice for the poor and sick. I'm sure Gothard never passed along a chain-scroll to his close friends in hopes of getting money, and if his oxcart broke down, he probably didn't start pointless arguments with those closest to him.

And, honestly, when I think about my wife's great aunt quietly breathing her last breath early this morning, a $1500 repair doesn't seem all that important. I will be seeing my Manly Man Poetry buddy tomorrow night; he won't be moving for over a month-and-a-half. Everything is pretty relative, and I needed Gothard and my wife, who comes from a long line of no-nonsense women, to remind me of that fact.

I will go to the funeral in a couple days. I will sing what they want me to sing, play what they want me to play, and read the scripture they want me to read.

And I will miss the tough, old bird's chocolate chip cookies and lemon bars at the dinner afterward.