Today’s find: Departures

Buried deep in a dresser drawer was a photo … and a painful memory.

The photo showed a handsome lad, my big brother Gerard, from his high school days. His “Senior Year” photo, I believe … but the memory was from a few years earlier – when we first dropped him off (as a 13-year-old) at a boarding school, St. Henry’s Prep Seminary. 

Even today, tears well up in my eyes as I recall seeing us drive away from him, heading back home – an hour and a half away from Belleville. 

“Home” was about to become something I’d never known – a place without my big brother in place.

The ancient photo surfaced this week because another family departure was in the works – our Mom’s move from her comfy apartment of the past 10 years … to an assisted living facility across town. This time, I realized, it’s Mom who’s feeling the visceral pain. She’s leaving not just a place, but a lifestyle. A life of relative peace and independence. 

Mom actually set this process in motion, noticing that even the attentive care she’d been receiving from family members and in-home aides was not quite enough any more. “I can’t keep living on my own, can I?” she said to me a few weeks back. 

The temptation is strong to rebuke such a notion: “God forbid, Mom! No such thing as Assisted Living shall ever happen to you!” But the truth is, painful departures are sometimes necessary. They are built into the human condition. Moreover, they are built into God’s plan of salvation, it seems.

That’s what Jesus seems to be teaching Peter and the rest of the disciples in this week’s gospel passage. His message is plain, and painfully blunt: “Whoever wishes to come after Me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.”  

Dang, is this hard! But there is consolation, too: “…Whoever loses his [or her] life for My sake will find it,” Jesus teaches those whom He loves.

And so it happens. The new place isn’t like the old place. There are new routines to master, and an entirely new meal menu to digest. None of which is easy, especially for a 98-year-old. But there are also blessings: New neighbors, who are already becoming friends. And old friends who continue to visit … even before the boxes are unpacked.

This is, as St. Paul assures us, an integral part of God’s design for the world. We are never supposed to stay stuck in our ways. We should not cling to our routines. The path toward holiness requires something else of us: 

“Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.”

“Amen,” I say to St. Paul. “Amen!” And, Dear Reader, I ask you to keep our dear Georgia Rose (and all those who love her) in your prayers!

Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.

IHS