November 14: With God Alone, Left this World, "Jim Rummy"

Merton and Holy Week . . . 

As the week went on, the house began to fill, and the evening before Holy Thursday there must have been some twenty-five or thirty retreatants in the monastery, men young and old, from all quarters of the country. Half a dozen students had hitch-hiked down from Notre Dame, with glasses and earnest talk about the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. There was a psychiatrist from Chicago who said he came down every Easter, and there were three or four pious men who turned out to be friends and benefactors of the monastery—quiet, rather solemn personages; they assumed a sort of command over the other guests. They had a right to. They practically lived here in this guest house. In fact, they had a kind of quasi-vocation all their own. They belonged to that special class of men raised up by God to support orphanages and convents and monasteries and build hospitals and feed the poor. On the whole it is a way to sanctity that is sometimes too much despised. It sometimes implies a more than ordinary humility in men who come to think that the monks and nuns they assist are creatures of another world. God will show us at the latter day that many of them were better men than the monks they supported!

But the man I most talked to was a Carmelite priest who had wandered about the face of the earth even more than I had. If I wanted to hear something about monasteries, he could tell me about hundreds of them that he had seen. 

We walked in the guest house garden, in the sun, watching the bees fighting in the rich yellow tulips, and he told me about the Carthusians in England, at Parkminster. 

There were no longer any pure hermits or anchorites in the world: but the Carthusians were the ones who had gone the farthest, climbed the highest on the mountain of isolation that lifted them above the world and concealed them in God. 

We could see the Cistercians here going out to work in a long line with shovels tucked under their arms with a most quaint formality. But the Carthusian worked alone, in his cell, in his own garden or workshop, isolated. These monks slept in a common dormitory, the Carthusian slept in a hidden cell. These men ate together while someone read aloud to them in their refectory. The Carthusian ate alone, sitting in the window-alcove of his cell, with no one to speak to him but God. All day long and all night long the Cistercian was with his brothers. All day long and all night long, except for the offices in choir and other intervals, the Carthusian was with God alone. O beata solitudo!... 

The words were written on the walls of this Trappist guest house, too. O beata solitudo, o sola beatitudo! 

Greetings, loyal disciples.  I am still alive, in a time when I have been struggling with feelings of deep isolation and darkness.  Like the Carthusians, alone in their cells.  It has been over a month since the last time I've written any kind of epistle on this blog.  Much has happened.  I'm going to try to put a few words down here tonight, to touch the face of what I have been staring at this last 30 days.

A little over two weeks ago, on October 28th, at 8:47 p.m., my mother left this world after 90 years of labor.  I was in the room with her for her last breaths.  

But I don't want to talk about that.  What I want to talk about happened that afternoon, when I was alone with her, holding her hand.  Pressing my thumb into its skin and bone.  As I did this, I whispered to her that I loved her.  That she had been a good mother, and her work was done.  All her children were going to be fine.  We would take care of Rose, her extra-chromosomed daughter.  Dad was waiting for her.  And her mother, Bessie.  And those two kids she had to let go of--my sister, Sally, and brother, Kevin.  They were all there at the dock, watching for her boat to drift to shore.

I told her all these things before my siblings arrived and the great communal vigil began.  And I was grateful for those alone moments with her, when I could tell her how much I loved her.  By myself.  Like writing a prayer on a slip of paper, folding it into a tiny square, and slipping it into her palm so she could carry it to wherever she was headed.

A week later, we celebrated her life in church.  With a rosary.  Schubert's Ave Maria.  Pié Jesu by Andrew Lloyd Webber.  Meatballs and mostaccioli.  Everyone deals with loss in their own ways.  Grief is a private affair, and we are all, in some ways, monks in this solitary endeavor.  Saying our goodbyes.  Nursing our regrets and broken hearts.  

This cold November night, I'm staring at the Christmas tree my family just decorated, full of colored lights, crowned with a Victorian-looking Father Christmas.  I see the ghost of my mother sitting in a chair beside it, staring at all the ornaments.  Each ornament has its own story.  The branches contain the history of my marriage and family,  Nearly 30 years.

In 2018, my mom came to my house for Christmas dinner.  The house was full to bursting with people.  Every inch of chair and sofa and floor space was full.  It was almost chaos with plates of food and cookies.  Mugs of spiked hot chocolate.  And my mother loved every minute of it.  I remember her laughter and smiles that night.

That is what I'm holding onto right now.  That memory.

At my mother's funeral, my son read a poem he'd written for her.

Saint Marty is going to let his son have the last word.  

O beata solitudo!  O happy solitude!

Jim Rummy

by:  Gideon Achatz

Jim rummy with her was one of the best
parts of both of our days. She was polite,
understood that I was a child.
She didn't always know who I was,
but I loved watching her
wrinkled hand take a card.
She had mahogany eyes,
glasses that rested on her
shell ears. Her hair was
white poplar, her face smooth
as butterfly wings.

I would pick up the deck, shuffle cards.

I crave that noise to this day.

I placed the cards on the table,

let her pick first.  I picked my card

after her.  We didn't ever care about runs

or pairs.  Sometimes she forgot

how to play, and I helped her.  That warmed me,

could warm me even if I was in the arctic.

It didn't matter who won.

It was just for fun.  For love.

I imagine her up in heaven now,

shuffling the deck.  Dealing the cards.

Playing jim rummy with grandpa.

Of course, grandma always wins.