July 31: Something Beautiful, George Burns, A Frank Fairy Tale, Sharon Olds, "The Struggle"

On his back, Robert must have had time to see something beautiful, and not just the ugliness of a city street at the end of life.  Even with the tremendous pain in his badly gutted belly he would have looked up beyond the fire escapes and the windows with their glittery trees and television glows, to the sky above the rooftops.  A sky shimmery with the possibilities of death; light exaggerated, the heavens peeled back--a swirling haze of nebulae and comets--in some distant place, intimations of the new beginning into which he would soon journey.  He would have seen a few pale stars, maybe a planet or two, Jupiter or Venus. Remembering his Catholic schoolboy's mythology he might have imagined Apollo and his chariot, somewhere "out there."  And he would have seen the moon and its sad expression and imagined in its pocked luminous surface the faces of his mother and father and sister . . . The moon?  Was it out that night?  Ives tried to remember.

Ives is trying to picture his son's last moments of life, on the sidewalk, bleeding, struggling for breath, staring up at the starry night.  He imagines that Robert saw something beautiful and comforting--meteors and stars and planets, clouds of cosmic gases, a Greek god.  Above all, Ives wants to believe that Robert wasn't alone, that, in the bright face of the moon, he saw his family smiling down on him.

As a Christian, I believe that death is an entry into something better.  That's what I've been taught my whole life.  When I was younger, I really liked the image of God as George Burns, smoking cigars and telling jokes.  Vaudeville.  I imagined God performing in the Catskills.  "Did you hear the one about the snake and the naked woman?" He would say.

Something better.  That's what Heaven is supposed to be.  The other day, one of my best friends said this about my sister:  "She's only 54.  She's not ready to die yet."  I guess my friend is right.  My sister had the same Catholic upbringing I had.  The Virgin Mary and the manger and Jesus and all.  Every night when I was a kid, my family would get down on its knees and pray the rosary.  Clouds and angels and harp music.  We all believed in God's goodness and mercy.

My sister isn't ready to be measured for her wings just yet.  Even in her diminished state, she's been pretty adamant about that.  The doctors have asked her if she wants to be kept alive by any means possible, and my sister has answered very clearly, "Yes."  So George Burns is going to have to wait for a little bit, if my sister has her way.

I saw a picture of my sister this evening.  She was sitting on the side of her hospital bed, a nurse kneeling in front of her, in case she should fall.  I haven't seen my sister out of bed for over six or seven months.  She's thin, having lost close to 120 pounds over the last half year.  She looked pretty exhausted to me.  When my sister goes to the bathroom, there's blood in her stool.  That's to be expected with the chemo.  She's probably going to need a transfusion.

She's weak but determined to stick around.

Once upon a time, a little angel named Frank was put in charge of sweeping Heaven every night.  Frank had to clean up after all the archangels and cherubim and seraphim.  After choir practices, he spent hours putting away sheet music and musical instruments.  Frank never got a day off.

The day Jesus was born, Frank dusted all the stars.  He polished the angel harps and trumpets.  He counted all the halos.  Fluffed all the wings.  Frank made sure that first Christmas was perfect.

After all the shepherd and star and magi crap was done, Frank sat down to rest a little.

But God, who looked a little like George Burns, said, "Nice work, Frank.  I like this Christmas stuff.  We should do this every year."

Frank looked at God and said, "I don't think it'll catch on.  But let me tell You about a little thing I cooked up called an iPhone."

Moral of the story:  Heaven is just an app away.

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

The Struggle

by:  Sharon Olds

When the minister would come into the hospital room
my father would try to sit up, he would cry out
Up!  Up! for us to raise his bed-head, then
silently he would wrestle himself
up, sweating, he would end up
leaning on the pillows, panting, a man, erect.
The minister would kiss him, they would pray, then chat,
he would hold his eyes open unblinking,
rigid adherent to the protocol of the living,
he would sit for the whole visit, and then,
the minute the man was out the door, cry
out Down!  Down! and we would lower him
down, and he would pass out.
Later the doctor wold pay a call and as
soon as my father saw that white coat
he would start to labor up, desperate
to honor the coat, at a glimpse of it he would
start to stir like a dog who could not
not obey.  He would lurch, pause,
then thrust up slowly, and unevenly, like a
camel, a half-born animal--the way,
they say, his soul will pull itself up
out of his dead body and wobblingly
walk.  And then, one day, he tried,
his brain ordered his body to heave up,
the sweat rose in his pores but he was not
moving, he cast up his eyes as the minister
leaned to kiss him, he lay and stared, it was
nothing like the nights he had lain on the couch passed
out, nothing.  Now he was alive,
awake, the raw boy of his heart stood
up each time a grown man
entered his death room.

God bless you all!

January 17: Mary from Greenwich Village, Friend in Trouble, New Cartoon

Suddenly [Ives] was no longer speaking with [his friend] Tom but with the pregnant model, who identified herself as "Mary from Greenwich Village," now in a maternity dress and sitting with her elbow propped on the table, sipping some deli soup that one of the boys had gotten her, smoking cigarettes, and, despite her pregnancy, nursing her second or third glass of punch.

There used to be a time when Mary from Greenwich Village was the rule, not the exception.  Everybody smoked, pregnant or old or underage, and drinking while with child was not an uncommon practice.  Ives and his artist friends aren't shocked by Mary's smoking or drinking.  They celebrate the Christmas holiday with her, lighting her cigarettes and pouring her more spiked punch.  Mary is not being a bad mother.  She's innocently ignorant of the harm she may be inflicting on her unborn baby.

These days, mothers are warned not to smoke, not to drink, not to eat canned tuna, among other things.  In fact, a woman would practically have to be the Virgin Mary in order not to expose her future bundle of joy to some kind of danger.  Bearing and raising a child in today's world is a harrowing and miraculous thing.

No, these first few paragraphs are not a prelude to an announcement that my wife is pregnant.  I want to talk about a good friend of mine who's really hurting at the moment.  "Sara" has a twenty-something-year-old child with bipolar disorder.  Her child is obstinately refusing to comply with any kind of treatment for his mental illness, and Sara is at the end of her rope with him.  This afternoon, she had to kick him out of her home.  "I hate him," she told me this afternoon.  "I can't stand to be in the same room with him."  In another breath, she said, "I feel like I'm being punished for making wrong choices in my life.  For marrying the wrong person.  For having a child with him."

Mental illness in a close family member is a terrible cross to bear.  I know.  At various times, you feel angry, guilty, exhausted, frustrated, and powerless, and that's just in the first five minutes you're awake in the morning.  Sara is dealing with this whole whirlpool of emotions.  Plus, she has financial and health problems.  I sat next to her this afternoon, and I let her talk.  I didn't offer helpful suggestions.  I listened.  That's all.  At the end of our visit, she seemed to be in a better place.

I'm asking you all to say a little prayer for Sara.  She's wracked with guilt and hopelessness tonight.  She needs a little peace of mind, a little light, in her life.  And pray for her son.  He's lost and needs to be found, if you get my drift.

Saint Marty is going home to watch the movie Boyhood this evening.  Sara's bringing the popcorn.

Confessions of Saint Marty

May 12: Mrs. Cratchit, Pudding, Mothers, New Cartoon

Oh, a wonderful pudding!  Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage.  Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour...

Mrs. Cratchit is never given a first name.  In A Christmas Carol, we have Ebenezer, Bob, Fred, Fan, Belle, Jacob, Tiny Tim.  Even Bob's children are given first names:  Belinda and Peter and Martha and company.  Mrs. Cratchit remains simply Mrs. Cratchit through the entire book.

Of course, there have been literary explanations for this fact.  My favorite, and the one to which I give the most credence, is that Charles Dickens created in Bob and Tiny Tim his version of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child.  Dickens is writing a Christmas story.  Tiny Tim does carry a little crutch, which is very close to a cross.  Bob's last name is very close to the word "creche," which is another term for "manger."  In all the illustrations for A Christmas Carol, Bob and Tim are shown together, in poses very similar to illustrations of Mary and the Christ child.  Mrs. Cratchit takes a back seat in this narrative, very similarly to the way Joseph takes a back seat in the Jesus narrative.

Mrs. Cratchit, in the passage above, reminds me of just about every mother/grandmother/aunt/mother figure I know.  Mrs. Cratchit's pudding is good, but she has to list its failings:  the quantity of flour.  My wife's grandmother used to point out the defects of every one of her Thanksgiving meals--the turkey was too dry; she forgot the dinner rolls; or the mashed potatoes were lumpy.  Mothers don't ever accept the accolades that are given to them.  I think it's a mother's belief that she can never do well enough for her family.

The other thing about Mrs. Cratchit is that she is, basically, anonymous.  She is everyone's mother.  If your mother's name is/was "Frances," then she could be Frances Cratchit.  If your mother's name is/was "Olive," then she could be Olive Cratchit.  I'm not sure if that was Dickens' intention for not naming Mrs. Cratchit, but let's run with it.

On this Mother's Day weekend, Saint Marty salutes all the anonymous Mrs. Cratchits in the world.  And he salutes the Mrs. Cratchits of his life, Betty and Beth.

Confessions of Saint Marty

August 15: Feast of the Assumption, Last Day of Vacation, Man of Leisure

Yes, I have reached the last day of my vacation.  Now all I have to look forward to is one week at the beginning of January, 2012.  It's quite depressing if I take time to contemplate it.  Therefore, I'm trying hard not to be too reflective today.  It may cause a mid-life, mid-career crisis that I don't care to deal with at the moment.

Today is also the Feast of the Assumption.  For my non-Catholic disciples, it's the day the Catholic Church celebrates the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven, body of soul.  That sounds pretty impressive.  I know most Christian churches view the Catholic Church's veneration of Mary as some form of goddess worship, akin to the Israelites dancing and praying to a golden ox in the desert.  The way I've always viewed Mary (whether she stayed an eternal virgin, had children with Joseph after the birth of Christ, whatever) is as a figure very close to the heart of God.  He wouldn't have chosen her as the mother of Jesus if there wasn't something special about her.  Mary carried the Son of God in her body for nine months.  That sort of makes her unique among human beings.

So, if you have a hard time with Mary as a virgin or queen of heaven, think of her as a friend, someone you want on your side when the chips are down.  I always have a hard time turning my mother down if she asks me to do something.  I'm thinking Jesus (nice, Jewish boy that He was) would have a hard time turning Mary down, as well.

One of the prettiest images of the Assumption

Well, my time as a man of leisure is coming to a close.  Tomorrow morning, I strap the old feed bag back on and head out to the back forty to do some plowing.  All good things must come to an end, I guess.  Maybe I'll whisper a few words to Mary tonight, see if she can snag me a full-time job at the university, with benefits and a good salary.  If she can get Jesus to turn some jars of water into wine, she should be able to talk Him into doing me this little favor. 

Excuse Saint Marty as he steps outside to sing Schubert's Ave Maria.