And probably the chief reason why we needed money was that Mother had cancer of the stomach.
That was another thing that was never explained to me. Everything about sickness and death was more or less kept hidden from me, because consideration of these things might make a child morbid. And since I was destined to grow up with a nice, clear, optimistic, and well-balanced outlook on life, I was never even taken to the hospital to see Mother, after she went there. And this was entirely her own idea.
How long she had been ill and suffering, still keeping house for us, not without poverty and hardship, without our knowing anything of what it was, I cannot say. But her sickness probably accounts for my memory of her as thin and pale and rather severe.
With a selfishness unusual even in a child, I was glad to move from Flushing to my grandparents' house in Douglaston. There I was allowed to do more or less as I pleased, there was plenty of food, and we had two dogs and several cats to play with. I did not miss Mother very much, and did not weep when I was not allowed to go and see her. I was content to run in the woods with the dogs, or climb trees, or pester the chickens, or play around in the clean little studio where Bonnemaman sometimes painted china, and fired it in a small kiln.
Then one day Father gave me a note to read. I was very surprised. It was for me personally, and it was in my mother's handwriting. I don't think she had ever written to me before--there had never been any occasion for it. Then I understood what was happening, although, as I remember, the language of the letter was confusing to me. Nevertheless, one thing was quite evident. My mother was informing me, by mail, that she was about to die, and would never see me again.
I took the note out under the maple tree in that back yard, and worked over it, until I had made it all out, and had gathered what it really meant. And a tremendous weight of sadness and depression settled on me. It was not the grief of a child, with pangs of sorrow and many tears. It had something of the heavy perplexity and gloom of adult grief, and was therefore all the more of a burden because it was, to that extent, unnatural. I suppose one reason for this was that I had more or less had to arrive at the truth by induction.
Prayer? No, prayer did not even occur to me. How fantastic that will seem to a Catholic--that a six-year-old child should find out that his mother is dying, and not know enough to pray for her! It was not until I became a Catholic, twenty years later, that it finally occurred to me to pray for my mother.
My grandparents did not have a car, but they hired one to go in to the hospital, when the end finally came. I went with them in the car, but was not allowed to enter the hospital. Perhaps it was just as well. What would have been the good of my being plunged into a lot of naked suffering and emotional crisis without any prayer, any Sacrament to stabilize and order it, and make some kind of meaning out of it? In that sense, Mother was right. Death, under those circumstances, was nothing but ugliness, and if it could not possibly have any ultimate meaning, why burden a child's mind with the sight of it?
I sat outside, in the car, with the hired driver. Again, I knew nothing definite about what was going on. But I think there was also by this time no little subconscious rejection of everything that might have given me any certainty that Mother was really dying: for if I had wanted to find out, I would not have had much trouble.
It seemed like a very long time.
The car was parked in a yard entirely enclosed by black brick buildings, thick with soot. On one side was a long, low shed, and rain dripped from the eaves, as we sat in silence, and listened to the drops falling on the roof of the car. The sky was heavy with mist and smoke, and the sweet sick smell of hospital and gas-house mingled with the stuffy smell of the automobile.
But when Father and Pop and Bonnemaman and my Uncle Harold came out of the hospital door, I did not need to ask any questions. They were all shattered by sorrow.
When we got home to Douglaston, Father went into a room alone, and I followed him and found him weeping, over by the window.
The loss of someone you love is never easy. Merton, however, at the age of six, has little to help him with the experience. His father doesn't prepare him for it. His grandparents don't talk to Merton about it. Merton's mother attempts to say goodbye to her son with a handwritten note, but Merton struggles with its meaning and import. And Merton has been given little instruction in prayer and religion to comfort himself. All he has are his own observations--adults, shattered by grief.
Loss--through death, divorce, desertion, disease--is something that throws every human being, with any kind of emotional intelligence, into crisis. This past week, as I vacationed and tried to recover from a nasty post-Christmas illness, I was also processing the loss of a wonderful friend. While her death wasn't surprising (she had been unwell for five or six months), it still caught me by surprise. I don't think anyone is ever really prepared for loss when it occurs. It's like being on a cruise ship, seeing the lifeboats and life jackets on deck, and recognizing the possibility of catastrophe. Until you're told to abandon ship, it just isn't real.
And what does prayer and faith in God give you? I suppose it gives you the one thing that nothing else can--hope. Faith in science gives you an understanding, however limited, of the physical workings of the universe; it can't explain everything. Faith in humanity can be tested simply by watching a Donald Trump press conference. Faith in medicine or mathematics or psychology or law enforcement, all of these are contingent upon a human element. And humans are flawed. There's no getting around that.
Only faith in God takes out the human element, and this kind of belief makes all my scientist friends a little uncomfortable. They see religion as a crutch, a way to deal with a broken physical world. Almost since the beginning of recorded time, human beings have had religion of some sort. Have recognized the inherent inscrutability of all aspects of the human experience. And it's in that inscrutability where joy and loss exist. The most profound human experiences are shrouded in mystery.
This post may be a little too profound for a Saturday morning, when kids are watching cartoons and the smell of frying bacon is in the air. Right now, I'm sitting at McDonald's with my wife and son, enjoying the first lazy hours of the weekend. Loss is sitting on one of my shoulders. Happiness, on the other. Snow is falling outside, and all around me are people absorbed in small and large talk. Sports. Illness. Politics. Death. I am surrounded by the inscrutable.
I don't need to know how snow forms in the atmosphere and swoops down on us. I don't need to understand the rules of basketball or the symptoms of prostate cancer. There is laughter at one table. Earnest argument at the other. Human struggle and happiness all around.
And my son, with his green hair, drinking Dr. Pepper.
Saint Marty is taking this moment to treasure it all.
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