Happy birthday, Emily Rose July 19, 2009
Posted by philangelus in family.5 comments
Dear Emily,
Happy ninth birthday, sweetie. Nine years ago, I went into the hospital to have you. Nine years ago, you lived for two precious hours in our arms,and you got to meet your immediate family, and then I had to tell you it was all right to let go.
I never imagined you as an infant in Heaven. All the other mothers on the support group used to imagine their babies at the chronological age they should have been, but within a day or two I imagined you as an adult, probably on assignment for God doing things that would send me into terrified fits if I actually knew what they were. I know you’ve stopped by a few times. I’m glad for those times.
But if I could imagine you as a little girl, I’d like for you to have cake and ice cream at a party for your friends, and helium balloons, and I’d give you a Breyer horse set with a stable (because let’s be honest — you’re my daughter, so I assume you’re riding one of those awesome horses from Revelation) and some books, some doo-dads for your hair, and maybe a stuffed animal. It might be time to get you a new bicycle, too.
Instead I got you a new rose bush, which your dad planted, and he found your little statue like we used to have in the garden at Angeltown. And we had a little birthday cake for you, too. I made your father cut it in fifths so you could see exactly how geeky we are (and what a wiseacre is your mother, in particular.)
This is the song I played all the time after I knew we were going to lose you. Every year on your birthday I play it again.
I remember while I was in the hospital, I played it again through head phones and urged you: see another day. And you did it: you were born at 11:08 and you died at 1:03 AM. Because you were my daughter, and you were stubborn like your mom.
I miss you. I know this is how it should be, that you’ve done enormous amounts of good because of your life, but I miss you anyhow.
Love,
Mom
a sacred space too distant July 18, 2009
Posted by philangelus in family, kiddos.11 comments
Tomorrow would have been Emily Rose’s ninth birthday, except that Monday will be the 9th anniversary of her death. She lived for one hour and fifty-three minutes. In that whole nightmare of diagnosis, preparation and birth, I didn’t get the one thing I kept praying for, but got one little thing that was important to me: her birthday and her death day were different days.
It’s not always bad. Nowadays it’s not something I think about with tears, although sometimes I think it really stinks to have one baby who died. It was a nightmare to go through, but having gone through it, nine years later, I can tell you it’s survivable. I’m glad to have had her for as long as we did: 23 weeks before her diagnosis, 20 weeks afterward, two hours after birth. The day after she died, I was praying and heard myself say “Thank you.” Thank you for her, for Emily, for the community that pulled together around us. Thank you for a hundred photos, stronger friendships, a deeper marriage, a different perspective, a gravestone.
That last is the problem. The gravestone is sixty-five miles from us, and as at Christmas, we’re simply not going to get there for her birthday. We may be there next weekend, but not this one.
For the past seven years, I would go to the cemetery on her birthday and on the day she died. I’d leave a balloon and flowers and sing Happy Birthday, and once I brought my guitar and played a haunting Irish melody while alone in the cemetery. At night, at home, we’d have a birthday cake and sing Happy Birthday To You. The next day would be for being sad.
I’m out of my element here. How am I supposed to honor her birthday when I can’t go for a visit?
It’s not as if she’s there. I know she’s not there. But when it comes to cemeteries, there are “goers” and “non-goers” and I’m a “goer.” I always found it peaceful there, just to sit and be silent or to feel like I was close to her.
What am I going to do for her on Sunday? On Monday? I’m not sure. I was hoping you guys had ideas for me. I’m not sure how to carve out a sacred space when her sacred space isn’t nearby any longer.
Angels and music July 17, 2009
Posted by philangelus in angels, music.14 comments
Well, if you can call it “music.” It’s my music.
First bitlet: Yesterday’s entry reviewed the Daughtry album, Leave This Town
At about two o’clock in the morning on the 15th, I awoke from a dream in which someone was kidnapping Chris Daughtry, only he either escaped or convinced the kidnapper to leave him somewhere on the highway. He then walked to a diner where he was going to get help.
I awoke amazed by the brilliance of this man, evading his captor and going to get help, so calm, and began creating a story around the whole thing, wondering about the legitimacy of writing fanfic about someone who’s real, then changing details of who he was… And then I realized it was a pretty dumb story overall and let it go.
Later I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if that wasn’t entirely a dream? Because I’d listened to two hours of Daughtry the day before, maybe two of the household guardian angels were sitting around, nursing headaches, saying, “You know, I wish someone would take that album and toss it out on the highway.”
(Which, for the record, is what my stepfather did with my “Thriller” album when my stepbrother took it with him on vacation and played it constantly for five days. I never heard it again. No big loss.)
That notion was far funnier than anything in the actual dream (and, for the record, made more sense) and I got a good laugh out of it.
Second bitlet: My brother gave me a generous iTunes giftcard, and then said, “Although I know your music. I should just have set the money on fire.” The result is that I’ve taken a perverse pleasure in buying music I know he’d hate.
For example: I picked up Roxette’s “The Look” (the single.) Where did I first hear it? By borrowing “Look Sharp” from my brother’s music collection. Yes, my brother is making fun of music that he originally owned. Granted, he was 14 years old at the time, and he’s grown up, but I haven’t.
Here are some of the insightful lyrics of “The Look.”
Walking like a man
Hitting like a hammer
She’s a juvenile scam
Never was a quitter
Tasty like a raindrop
She’s got the look
There I am, driving about ten miles to the grocery store, singing along to the lyrics, when I felt that distinct “??” pop into my thoughts.
I replied, “No, I don’t know what those lyrics mean either.”
A moment later, Roxette sings this particular gem:
And she goes, na-na-na-na-nah
na-na-na-na-na-nah
na-na-na-na-na-na-na-nah
I thought, “That I do understand.”
Ask our household angels and they’ll tell you, Perfect pitch is a curse. All the more reason to be grateful that they left the heavenly choirs for eighty years or thereabouts to endure our music here on Earth. Or what passes for it.
Review: Daughtry’s “Leave This Town” July 16, 2009
Posted by philangelus in music.add a comment
The last two albums I’ve purchased have been by Chris Daughtry. I’m not sure if that makes me a fan. I pre-ordered “Leave This Town
My first impression: definitely Daughtry.
Let me give you some background first. I hadn’t connected that “Home,” “Over You,” “Feels Like Tonight” and “It’s Not Over” were all the same artist (let alone on the same album) until I heard “What About Now” and looked it up. It was one of those “Oh!” moments. The first Daughtry album (Daughtry
Has “Leave This Town” managed to top it? I’m not sure. At the moment, I’m giving it a provisional “Let’s see.” Primarily because after listening three times, I’ve found most of the songs grew on me with each listening.
There’s the distinctive Daughtry sound with the growling guitars and the deep rock voices, the anger and the failed-love type song. You expected that, but I’m going to say those (including “You Don’t Belong” and “What I Meant To Say”) are some of the weakest songs on the album in terms of lyric complexity and the ability to hold interest.
What I’ve found is that in this album, he branches out and takes chances with songs like “Tennessee Line” and “Call Your Name” which have a different, pensive, yearning feel. “Open Up Your Eyes” has complex, sad lyrics that aren’t easily pigeonholed.
“Traffic Light” is a powerful song that I want to listen to through headphones and really get a sense of the lyrics. I already like it a lot; I want to know more about what he’s talking about.
Overall, I find this album has a better mix of song types than the first, but the irony is that this may make it less of a commercial success. I can’t easily pick out which songs will become “hits.” “Traffic Light” may well get airtime. “No Surprise,” which is already on the radio, is one of the weaker songs on the album and doesn’t cater to Daughtry’s vocal strengths, but is easily pigeonholed, and I can see why it was released first. But his best songs on this album (“Call Your Name,” “Tennessee Line” and “Open Up Your Eyes”) aren’t going to be the ear-catchers that make up most radio listening.
If you enjoyed Daughtry’s first album, or the songs that made it to the air the first time, I would recommend Leave This Town
The Bible, literal vs symbolic July 15, 2009
Posted by philangelus in religion.6 comments
Julie at Happy Catholic has an awesome reflection on the Book of Joshua (the real one, not the one by Joseph Girzone) and it’s worth reading. It also made me think more about literalism as it pertains to the Bible. In her passage she quotes:
…at the basis of that whole argument lay a misunderstanding by theologians of the day as regards the nature of the sacred texts. St. Augustine and St. Thomas had already explained the salvific meaning of Holy Writ, a teaching which Leo XIII ws later to sum up in these words: “The sacred writers, or better said, ‘the Spirit of God who spoke through them, did not seek to teach men those things (the knowledge of the nature of visible realities) that were of no consequence for their eternal salvation’ (St. Augustine, De Gen, ad litt., 2, 9, 20)[...].
In other words, we don’t have to read Genesis 1 like a cookbook for How A Deity Makes A World In Six Easy Steps. (Which is good, because Genesis 2 tells a second creation story that’s entirely different.)
In the past few weeks, I’ve encountered some who take the Bible as a literal text with no errors in it; these folks have said, point-blank, that one cannot be a Christian and simultaneously believe that some of the passages in the Bible are mythological or symbolic in nature. Specifically, that a Christian must believe in a seven-day cycle of Creation and must believe in all the inflated ages in Genesis.
I don’t believe either of those is the literal truth. The Bible is the revealed truth of God, given to human beings through other human beings, speaking both literally and symbolically to the human heart, and therefore parts are best interpreted in the symbolic fashion in which they were initially written. We’ve already discussed on this blog that there are contradictions within the Biblical text itself, which could not be the case if the Bible were literally inerrant, but these contradictions do not need to be justified to one another because the truth of the Bible is a greater overarching truth that doesn’t fully depend on the limits of human language and human understanding.
God gave Jesus into human hands, and God also gave the Bible into human hands to be written and transmitted. In order for us to hold Divine Truth, it needed to be fit into a form that human hands and human minds could hold. Rather than leaving us with a document that would confuse and frustrate us, God gave it to us on our level, in an emotional, literal and symbolic language that resonates in the human heart so that we keep ringing like a bell after hearing and holding it.
Consider a parent explaining something to a child at the child’s level.
Kid: Did you miss me when you were in Texas?
Dad: Yes, I did.
Kid: How did you get to Texas?
Dad: I flew there.
Is he telling the truth? No, because he didn’t sprout wings and FLY to Texas. Instead he sat in a piece of machinery that flew him to Texas. If the child remains at a child’s level of understanding, he might argue that his father actually sprouted wings. Do we really want to be the kid on the playground screaming that of course Daddy has feathers? And really, the important detail is, his father went to Texas and missed him. Right?
There’s eternity for us to get to know God and plumb the depths of his mysteries. There’s nothing more loving than that.
I’m confused about one thing. Invariably the individuals who believe that the Bible must be taken literally are the people who belong to churches which interpret John 6:53-69 symbolically. That when Jesus said “If you don’t eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, then you have no life within you” and was willing to let all his followers go if they didn’t accept what he was saying, they assert that he didn’t really mean it.
If we’re interpreting the Bible literally, then that MUST be taken literally too. Jesus’s “This is my body” MUST be interpreted (as all the early churches did) as the Real Presence in Holy Communion, that we must eat it in order to have life within us — meaning that anyone who has a literal interpretation of the Bible and believes it’s inerrant should be conscience-bound to join a church that has the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.
Except that isn’t the case, is it?
So in the Evangelical literalist churches, you end up with this bizarre dichotomy that if someone believes Abraham wasn’t 175 years old, then that person is not a real Christian — but that we don’t have to eat Jesus’s body and drink His blood in order to have His life within us.
Your thoughts?
10 misconceptions about Catholicism July 14, 2009
Posted by philangelus in religion.add a comment
I didn’t write it, just linking to it.
Top 10 Misconceptions About the Catholic Church
It goes nicely with “If you’ve been attacked for being Catholic.”
uncoupling July 14, 2009
Posted by philangelus in family, religion.3 comments
On Saturday, I went back to the heart-reading priest for Confession again to confess that I’d been an idiot about the forum I left last week, that I’d given it too much importance. I probably didn’t have to, but I wanted to.
The last song on the radio as I went inside had the lyrics, “Sometimes love is found in the things we’ve given up more than in the things we have kept.”
The priest talked to me for a little while, saying that what I was expressing is something priests face too, because it feels spiritually good to help other people, but we mustn’t let that little spiritually good feeling overshadow the things God really wants us to be doing. It was just misplaced priorities. I think I’m on the right track now (or at least, I hope.)
What struck me most was what happened in line before I got to talk to the priest. (Yes, I said “in line.” This place has two hours of confessions, many times there are two priests, and there’s always a line.) When I arrived, there were three women, then a couple, then one single man, then me with a sleeping baby.
When the male half of the couple slid down the bench, he guided his wife, who let out a frightened cry. He spoke to her softly. Then he turned to the single man who was waiting before me, and he asked, “When I go in, can you make sure she doesn’t wander away?”
I cannot tell you how my heart broke, how I realized this man was shouldering the care of his wife who must have had dementia, who hadn’t found someone to care for her long enough so he could go to confession. The way this man was holding onto God with one hand and his disabled wife with the other.
I drove home. We had a guest, a man who recently lost his wife to cancer. It was plain that he missed her, taken from him and their children too soon.
The next day, my Patient Husband was on the phone with a relative who was concerned about another relative who had recently split up with her significant other. They had been living together, and now the relative was having to find a new place near her job, a car, a support network.
Three couples, three uncouplings. Two men, faithful to their marriages until the last moments. One marriage never given the chance to grow. The pain of all the endings.
Marriage should be, primarily, a way for those called to it to help one another into Heaven. That’s why it’s a vocation. And before my eyes, I saw a man helping his wife stand while the priest prayed over her, helping her into Heaven, helping himself toward Heaven by his care for a woman no longer the woman he married. And at my dinner table, a man who stayed by his wife while the cancer took more and more of her. The way God’s love sanctified these men’s sufferings, the glimpse of humanity at its most vulnerable as it loses the thing it thought it could never live without.
Sometimes love is found in the things we’ve given up more than in the things we have kept.
My second explore July 13, 2009
Posted by philangelus in Biking.5 comments
Sunday morning, my Patient Husband kicked me out to go biking (the only benefit of going to the late Mass: time to do things beforehand.)
If you remember, last time I went through the dirt trails at the park and had a magnificent time. Saturday night, it had poured rain, and I opted against biking over dirt on the grounds that it would be mud.
The road I live on is divided into three parts. I live on the Paved Part. Across the state route, the road continues as a dirt road, complete with potholes big enough to put a stock pot. If you take my road in the other direction, it ends at the Creepy Zone, and then (apparently) there is another segment of the road which used to connect to my section. I know nothing about that road, although someday I may try to see if a path still connects the two.
I went up the dirt road to another street that runs parallel to the state route, but doesn’t see much traffic. It’s the back road I take home from the library, so I figured I’d bike to the library and back again.
About a mile and a half away, at the Angelborough Cemetery where I’d turn to go to the library, I realized the road actually terminated in the cemetery itself. I changed plans and biked into the cemetery. The posted regulations didn’t say anything about not biking there, not exploring, not wandering — so I went in.
I’m not sure of the etiquette here, so weigh in please: was that wrong? I don’t think so; at the cemetery where Emily is buried, I frequently saw joggers and walkers, and it never bothered me. I stayed on the roads for vehicles and prayed for the dead while I went through. No one else was there. I feel I passed through respectfully.
But this cemetery — this gorgeous cemetery. I should go back with a camera, but I’d never capture the sense. For one thing, you’ve got gravestones going back to the American Revolution, some older. Many stones were worn to flat forgetfulness. The paths took circular routes within one another, and in some of the encircled areas, the grassy grave area dipped down in steppes, maybe as far down as twenty-five feet. When I was at the center of the cemetery, the trees parted (there were maples everywhere) and I realized I was at the top of a tremendous hill, roads spiraling everywhere and the graves laid out in a cascade downhill.
After that, I explored the “newer” part of the cemetery, with polished granite markers and more clear definitions of sections (I believe they call that “orthogonal planning”) and then returned home by the back road.
I never would have done that in a car, but somehow on a bike, it felt more intimate to be there, less of a disturbance.
The whole ride took about half an hour, and I’m hoping to do another “explore” next week.
The corruption of geeklings July 12, 2009
Posted by philangelus in angels, family, kiddos, sarcasm.9 comments
This won’t make any sense at all unless you know something about our family: we reference everything. If we’ve watched it once, heard it, read it — we quote from it. Because we’re geeks, frequently the things we’re quoting are Star Trek, Star Wars, The Incredibles, MST3K, and random postings from online boards.
My Patient Husband and I are the worst, but the kids are picking it up too. Whenever a new guardian angel is introduced to the household, this is what happens:
Angel: Father? Did I do something wrong?
God: No, my son.
Angel: Am I being punished?
God: No, my son.
Angel: Because they’re lunatics.
God: Yes, my son.
Followed by:
New angel: So, um, do you have a reference guide for all the things they’re quoting?
Veteran angel: {hands over a fifteen-thousand page book.}
New angel: Can I have an abridged version?
Veteran angel: That is the abridged version.
We’re raising four children who consider this lunacy normal. Poor kids.
More background: Kiddo#4, enthralled with the sheep he sees at Kiddo#2’s riding lessons, has decided that every animal (including our cats) says “BAA!”
And finally, we all get a giggle out of “They’re taking the Hobbits to Isengard!” (if you haven’t seen it, the first 30 seconds should tell you as much as you need to know for this post.)
Okay, so with 200 words of background, maybe you’ll understand what happened spontaneously during lunch, although none of us can remember how it started:
Kiddo#2: {something normal}
Kiddo#1: What did you say?
Kiddo3: They’re taking the hobbits to Isengard.
Me: To Isengard?
Patient Husband: To Isengard! They’re taking the hobbits to Isengard.
Kiddo#1: What did you say?
And then, because the five year old is extremely silly:
Kiddo#3: They’re taking thirty cats to Isengard.
Me: What?
Baby: BAA!
Patient Husband: {laughs}
Me: A balrog of Morgoth goes baa?
Patient Husband: No, because Kiddo#3 said they’re taking the cats to Isengaard.
Me: To Isengard?
Patient Husband: To Isengard.
Kiddo#3: They’re taking thirty cats to Isengard!
Baby: BAA!
At which point my husband and I looked at one another and said, “Are we in a Star Trek time loop or something?”
My Patient Husband then pointed to Kiddo#1 and said, “he’s going to roll a six.”
I replied, “This is highly irregular.”
And yes, we’d jumped references there (bonus points if you can name the episode). Pass the Excedrin.
