Be Clam!

God has called us to Scranton. I’ve been told that Scranton is just Boston without clams, but then Kelly and I went to dinner at a pub on Saturday and ate clams, so now I am disoriented; shellfish farms and trucking continue to blur the distinctions that once allowed us to tell ourselves we knew exactly where we were.

Wherever we are, we are here to amplify our little voice that the darkness has not and will not overcome the light -- we are building an east coast shop for Marian Caskets because about half of the people who contact us now are on this side of the Mississippi and our usual methods of shipping have presented new challenges over the past eighteen months.

Scranton is great. Maybe all our kids will be president. We are more or less in the city which is quite the counterpoint to our 20 years on Vashon Island. The crickets are louder, as are the sirens and church bells, but the birds are quieter -- except for the three immortal ring-necked doves we have in our bedroom. Last night I was awakened by a tremendous thunderstorm shaking the house. Half of our kids slept through it, half did not. The violent majesty of the thunder and the rain that tested our roof made me grateful for the defenses we have, moreso for the heightened alertness elicited by my slight uncertainty as to whether said defenses would prove sufficient.

One should not put one’s faith in a building, especially one that one has just moved into, but one might have enough experience, over enough time, to recognize that things usually turn out better than one fears. Then, have a little gratitude and proceed accordingly.

One Year After Building My Mom's Coffin

A year ago Saturday was the funeral Mass for my Mother, with her body laying in the coffin my family and I had built for her on the other side of the country. Her death was sudden and unexpected. Although 88, she’d driven on a Saturday afternoon to visit some friends who were under covid lockdown in their retirement community. Arriving home she’d fallen at the base of some steep steps while walking up to her apartment from her car. She had a minor fracture and was going to need a little rehab. After a few days in the hospital, she developed sepsis and was dead the next morning. “88 good years and one bad week,” was how my brother summed it up.

It was true that she had 88 good years, despite being married to a man who couldn’t keep it together and having to single parent two boys while working as a secretary. How could that be? My mother was an incredibly positive person who only digested what she sowed even if it did not always appear to be a happy harvest from the outside.

She wrote my brother and me a goodbye note a few years before she died and stashed it with her important papers. Within it, she instructed me that she’d like the words “Be Not Afraid” carved in her casket.

I used to think she was gullible or naive and, God help me, I exploited it when I was young. But no, she was something else entirely, she was good. She was not afraid because her perception of how the world worked was formed by how she worked, and the evil that is a part of our pilgrimage could cross her path – monstrously sometimes – but it could not corrupt who she was; it had no hospitable medium within her in which to grow.

My mother did not need to whistle when she passed a graveyard and I am eager to see her again.

Remember November

 Remember November Day 1

Death has been very close lately. Last week I returned from clearing out my Mother’s apartment and visiting with my Uncle; maybe for the last time. Friday I attended the funeral of a man who shined brightly at our humble little island parish and showered affection on my family from the moment we arrived. A good friend’s brother went from diagnosis to departed in a few months and I am finishing his coffin today. Death has been very close to many of us lately.

How is it affecting you? Is everyone as anxious as we read? I hope not.

Yesterday was All Saints Day and today is All Souls Day, kicking off November, the Month of Death. This is a gift, a month of remembrance. Remembrance of those who have gone before us and where we are ourselves headed on this pilgrimage.

Good journeys, calm journeys, rich journeys are ones we are well prepared for. Preparation can turn curveballs into homeruns. 11 years of coffin making has focused me on three critical categories under which we can organize all the important things in life. I put them in a specific hierarchy:       

Prayer      

Order

Love

People who I’ve witnessed live this hierarchy seem to steady the Earth’s wobble with their presence and ultimately die well. They are not caught unawares.

Let’s not waste the gift of Remember November.