Merton raises his grandmother from the almost dead . . .
Unfortunately, I knew that Bonnemaman was going to come in and tell me to look at the body, and soon I heard her steps in the hall. I got off my knees before she opened the door.
“Aren’t you going to look at him?” she said to me.
I said nothing. She raised the corner of the sheet, and I looked at Pop’s dead face. It was pale, and it was dead. She let the sheet fall back, and together we walked out of the room, and I sat and talked to her for an hour or so, while the sun was going down.
Everybody knew that now this would be the end of Bonnemaman too. Although our family had been one of those curious modern households in which everybody was continually arguing and fighting, and in which there had been for years an obscure and complicated network of contentions and suppressed jealousies, Bonnemaman had been tremendously attached to her husband. She soon began to languish, but it was months before she finally died.
First, she fell down and broke her arm. It mended slowly and painfully. But as it did, she turned into a bent and silent old woman, with a rather haggard face. When the summer came, she could no longer get out of bed. Then came the alarms at night when we thought she was dying, and stood for hours by her bed, listening to the harsh gasp in her throat. And then too I was praying, looking into the mute, helpless face she turned towards my face. This time I was more conscious of what I was doing, and I prayed for her to live, although in some sense it was obviously better that she should die.
I was saying, within myself: “You Who made her, let her go on living.” The reason I said this was that life was the only good I was certain of. And if life was the one big value, the one chief reality, its continuance depended on the will (otherwise why pray?) of the supreme Principle of all life, the ultimate Reality, He Who is Pure Being. He Who is Life Itself, He Who, simply, is. By praying, I was implicitly acknowledging all this. And now twice I had prayed, although I continued to think I believed in nothing.
Bonnemaman lived. I hope it had something to do with grace, with something that was given to Bonnemaman from God, in those last weeks that she continued to live, speechless and helpless on her bed, to save her soul. Finally, in August, she died, and they took her away and made an end of her body like all the rest. That was the summer of 1937.
All Hallow's Eve. This passage from Merton seems appropriate for this night before All Saints Day, seeped in death as it is. Merton has endured his fair share of deaths already--his mother and father. Now his grandfather and grandmother. Death has been the one constant in his life. This time, he is able to lift the corner of the sheet and look death in the eye.
It has been a strange Halloween, full of wind and whirlpools of fallen leaves. Trick-or-treating was a sparse affair, most people opting to leave their front porch lights off, hide in the dark, and pretend they weren't home. Others left bowls of candy in front of their homes, next to bottles of hand sanitizer. We've all seen those pictures from the 1918 Spanish Flu Epidemic, where whole families have their faces swathed in face masks, including pet cats and dogs. Forty or 50 years from now, our grandchildren and great grandchildren will be studying pictures from this Halloween in wonder. "Really, grandpa?" they'll say. "A pumpkin with a face mask on?"
I'm not sure we'll be able to explain to future generations how death really loomed over this Halloween, with kids wearing masks beneath their masks, and each house with a front porch light on seen as a possible source of contagion. Much like the daily news reports of deaths during the Vietnam War, we scroll by posts of new COVID cases and fatalities every day, watching them climb and climb. The specter of Death is everywhere.
Ten or 15 or 20 years from now, I will be telling the ghost story of this Halloween. I'm sure, in the weeks to come, we will be hearing and reading stories about infections caused by trick-or-treating. Hotspots. Superspreading candy sources, sort of like the Philadelphia Liberty Loan Parade in September 1918 that caused thousands of deaths. It's not just a possibility. It's an inevitability.
But there are some who claim that all of these stories will disappear after the November 3rd election. Another good ghost story, based on the notion that we've been fed these Grim Reaper tales for political purposes, that we are living in a Stephen King novel of election horror.
We all crave normalcy. Democrats and Republicans. Scientists and Evangelicals. We want to go trick-or-treating. Get in our cars and go to grandma's house for Thanksgiving. Attend Christmas parties and midnight church services. We want our old lives back, where a trip to a relative's house wasn't cause for alarm and social distancing protocols.
The COVID Boogey Man isn't going away any time soon. It's going to be with us well past this night and into the new year. Yes, I will be happy when the year 2020 is in my rearview mirror. These past 306 days have each contained their own little ghost stories, things that will haunt me for many years. A writer friend recently said in an e-mail to me, ". . . how the PTSD will echo among us all." There is a great deal of truth in that statement.
So, spooks and phantoms abound this night. Death has been our constant companion for over eight months now, and will continue to pull up a chair at the dinner table for many more months to come. I have already cast my ballot in Tuesday's election. Out of all things I have done this year, that act truly filled me with hope. It felt as if I was opening a door in a dark room, letting in a ribbon of bright sun.
The upcoming holidays are all associated with light and gratitude and miracles. Yes, the are still ghosts swirling around us. Death is ever-present. But I am going to lean into the light and miracles, be thankful for the blessings in my life, which are multitude.
Saint Marty is ready for a season of miracles, starting November 3rd.
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