Ninety-one! When I learned that there are some World War II veterans still alive at age 107 I warned my family not to count on my leaving anytime soon. I could still be around for another seventeen years! Or not. No one knows what the next day may bring. Every day is a gift.

Last week the cancer on my left hand was scraped off creating a whole new wound just when the biopsy site was almost healed. And the dermatologist prescribed a 5 fluorouracil cream (very expensive) for my face that produces flaming red spots. As a matter of fact when Bette Midler’s dermatologist prescribed this very cream for her she tweeted that she would have to sell her house to pay for it! We all have our problems!

My friend, Stanley, recently had his hip replaced at the age of 95, and he is up and walking again. I am impressed with the way we old folks continue to heal, though somewhat more slowly. It has taken two years for the toenail on my big toe to replace itself, the last bit of the old nail has yet to be sloughed off so the changeover will be complete. I had never experienced itching with healing until my recent hand surgery when the itching of my wrist was so intense that I got up in the middle if the night to apply cortisone ointment.

On the whole for a scrawny old lady with a cane, a bandaged hand and a spotted face, I’m doing quite well. There are days when I awake with something that could pass for vigor. Other days there is nothing I desire more than to be lying on my bed. So comfy, so horizontal. Some days there is sciatica going down my right leg. Some days my back won’t let me stand up straight. Thank God it is only some days, not all of them. And cute as my new upper teeth are, sometimes I gag on my denture. A multiplicity of petty complaints and, believe me, I recognize their pettiness.

As much as I enjoy Facebook for keeping up with friends and relatives I find that it is getting unwieldy. Too many ads. And too inviting for aimless browsing. There are so, so many cute videos and interesting posts that it requires discipline to put my iPad down and ask God how I might better spend my time. On the other hand, I’ve made friends on FB who I feel really close to though we’ve never met. They are “family” in spirit, not in blood and by some happy happenstance we have been instrumental in each other’s lives. The “family of God” is alive and well on Facebook. There is a world-wide kinship of people who love the same Father, who pray as Jesus taught, “Our Father, who art in heaven.”

Just a week ago I read “The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God” which I found so awesome that I promptly ordered three more copies. Just last week hurricane Arthur came up the east coast and kept us glued to our TVs following its progress. Just last week the United States was invaded by thousands of CHILDREN coming over the Mexican border (who ever heard of such a thing?) Just last week Joan Rivers went viral with her comment that we had a gay president and Michelle was a “tranny.” It will be interesting to see the fall-out from that! For the first time in history the Dow is over 17,000. An old friend died yesterday at the age of 102. Israel is a tiny country, the size of New Jersey, called Little Satan by Islamic extremists who want to wipe it off the face of the nap. (The United States is Big Satan.) This morning they reported that half if it’s population had spent the night in air raid shelters! God help us all!

When I told a friend that I find life at 91 quite exciting. His comment was, “If you don’t, you’re not paying attention!”

~~~

Return, Israel, to the Lord your God.
Your sins have been your downfall!
2 Take words with you
and return to the Lord.
Say to him:
“Forgive all our sins
and receive us graciously,
that we may offer the fruit of our lips.[m]
3 Assyria cannot save us;
we will not mount warhorses.
We will never again say ‘Our gods’
to what our own hands have made,
for in you the fatherless find compassion.”
4 “I will heal their waywardness
and love them freely,
for my anger has turned away from them.
5 I will be like the dew to Israel;
he will blossom like a lily.
Like a cedar of Lebanon
he will send down his roots;
6 his young shoots will grow.
His splendor will be like an olive tree,
his fragrance like a cedar of Lebanon.
7 People will dwell again in his shade;
they will flourish like the grain,
they will blossom like the vine—
Israel’s fame will be like the wine of Lebanon.
8 Ephraim, what more have I[n] to do with idols?
I will answer him and care for him.
I am like a flourishing juniper;
your fruitfulness comes from me.”
9 Who is wise? Let them realize these things.
Who is discerning? Let them understand.
The ways of the Lord are right;
the righteous walk in them,
but the rebellious stumble in them.

There comes a time when others in one’s age bracket seem to be dying right and left.  Oh, they may be five years younger, or five years older, but famous people, friends and acquaintances not far from my age are leaving this vale of tears.  It’s a case of now you see them, now you don’t.  It gives one pause.

These passings bring to mind intimations of immortality along the way.  Like the time at a charismatic conference in Providence when we are asked to reach out to the person next to us and sing, “Here I am, Lord…I have heard you calling… I will go, Lord, if you lead me,” as a prayer.  The woman at my right rested in the spirit in my arms.  Later she asked me if the Lord had revealed anything to me.  “No,” I said.  “I guess the Lord is working in his mysterious ways.”  We kissed, lip to lip, looking into each other’s eyes.  I did not know her from Eve and never saw her again.  A sob welled up within me from some subterranean place which I stifled, not being used to such intensity of feeling.  What was the source of this deepseated existential angst?  Some longing for what was not?  Some grieving for lost love?  Or a yearning for a time and a place where people really love one another?  The whole experience was a cause for wonder,  I had capacities I had not suspected.

Consider my “born-again” experience.  Always a “good” Catholic, I started to say the rosary every night because the mother of God had asked for rosaries.  One night before bedtime I was having trouble concentrating–the television was too loud and I was tired.  Suddenly my mind focused on the words of the Lord’s prayer I was saying, and especially  on the words, “Thy will be done.”  For the first time I really meant what I was saying, Thy will be done, come what may.  I was flooded by a feeling which I immediately identified as sweetness although I had never had such a feeling before.  “Taste and see that the Lord is sweet.”  It was a gift to be always remembered and never recaptured.  But it showed me another capacity I did not know I had.

Capacities for sorrow!  Capacities for in-filling!  What else?  We are remarkable creatures with possibilities only hinted at in this world.  “Eye has not seen nor ear heard…nor the heart of man conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”  (I Cor. 2:9)  “Now we are children of God but what we will be has not yet been made known….but we shall be like him.”  (1 John 3:2)

A baby in the womb has no idea why he has a mouth and eyes and hands and feet.  He cannot begin to imagine that one day he may speak and sing, enjoy art and nature, work and dance, and a myriad of things that are only possible when he moves on to the next stage in his life.  Likewise, we in this valley of tears cannot imagine what it will be like when our capacity for love is filled.

St. Thomas Aquinas, we all know, was a genius with such a gift for logic and reasoning about his Catholic faith that he filled volumes with his insights and was named a Doctor of the Church.  Toward the end of his life it is said he had a mystical experience after which he considered what he had written as “all straw.”  Not that it was wrong, mind you, but that it didn’t begin to reflect the realities which God had made him understand in a mystical way.

What has God prepared for those who love him?  I look forward to finding out.  Don’t you?

It was my 70th birthday and I was still doing medical transcription at Associated Neurologists. It was also not quite a month since my daughter, Peggy, had been killed. It was the custom at the office in those days for the whole staff to gather for everyone’s birthday and “surprise” them with a birthday cake, singing “Happy Birthday to You.”

On that day as I was typing away Gloria and Ginny appeared at the door of my office, cake in hand, and said quietly, “Happy Birthday, Dottie” – just the two of them. I immediately put my head down on my typewriter and started to cry. Glo said, “Are you OK, Dottie?” I answered, “How can I be OK?” Glo said, “I don’t know how you get up in the morning,” and Ginny’s face began to crumple as if she were about to cry. It is all still crystal clear in my mind. This sort of thing seems to etch itself forever in the memory. They were so kind and gentle that it still brings a tear to my eye.

I had my little cry and we all went down to the meeting room and enjoyed cake. Some twenty years later I remember with gratitude that thoughtfulness.

Once upon a time I had a good friend, about my age, who had one hip replacement and then another. Then a hip replacement was replaced, and tweaked, and the other one went bad, and it seemed she was forever in the hospital, relearning to walk, with one bad hip or another. One day as I was visiting I commented: I don’t know how you stand it, all this surgery, all this time hurting, all this time in the hospital. All she said was: “I think there are levels of acceptance.”

That was all she said, but those few words told me how she was getting through the long days and the even longer nights. She was engaged in a dialog with her God and saying, as best she could, “Be it done unto me according to thy will.”

The day came when we were told she would soon die and we gathered in her hospital room. She was quiet, peaceful, conversing lucidly, and in a few days joined her maker. All heroism is not on the battlefront. Day after day lives of quiet heroism are lived out around us, unhonored and unsung.

Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit.

Well done, good and faithful servant.

Bill Maher had plenty of material to work with on “Real Time” last week considering the fact that both Rep. Michele Bachmann and Justice Antonin Scalia publicly addressed their concerns about the end  days and the devil (respectively) in the same week. Maher does not hesitate to ridicule such idiotic nonsense as shown in the following video. He clearly thinks he is much more intelligent than they are.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 (UPI) — Did Justice Antonin Scalia have to announce his belief in a literal Satan less than a month before the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear argument on government-led prayer? Yes, he probably did.

Someone asked him.

In a semi-playful interview in New York magazine conducted by Jennifer Senior, Scalia expounds on his judicial philosophy — including his lonely 1988 dissent in a case upholding the Independent Counsel Act — but public interest in his comments focused on his belief in the devil, heaven and hell, and on his remarks about popular culture.

Scalia, 77 and a devout Roman Catholic, has been on the Supreme Court for 27 years. He’s known for his bluntness, and his lack of concern about how people react to it.

He also has a political tin ear. In 2009 Scalia and Vice President Dick Cheney spent part of a week duck hunting at a private camp in southern Louisiana — just three weeks after the court agreed to take up the vice president’s case involving lawsuits over secrecy and his handling of the administration’s energy task force.

In the New York magazine interview, Scalia said he believes in heaven.

As for H-E-double hockey sticks: “It doesn’t mean you’re not going to hell, just because you don’t believe in it,” Scalia said. “That’s Catholic doctrine! Everyone is going one place or the other. But you don’t have to be a Catholic to get into heaven? Or believe in it? Of course not!”

At one point, Scalia leans in and whispers, “I even believe in the devil.”

Asked to elaborate, Scalia said, “Yeah, he’s a real person … that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that,” rejecting a suggestion that many Catholics do not.

But he adds, “You know, it is curious. In the Gospels, the devil is doing all sorts of things. He’s making pigs run off cliffs, he’s possessing people and whatnot. And that doesn’t happen very much anymore. … It’s because he’s smart. …

“What he’s doing now is getting people not to believe in him or in God. He’s much more successful that way.”

The justice tells Senior he’s in the “mainstream.”

“You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so … removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the devil! Most of mankind has believed in the devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the devil.”

Scalia’s right. One of the more recent surveys, a 2007 Gallup poll, shows belief in the devil rising, with a huge majority saying Satan is real.

Only 55 percent of the U.S. public believed in the reality of the devil in 1990. By 2007 that figure had risen to 70 percent, not many fewer than the 86 percent who said they believe in God.

Gallup News Service said the results are based on telephone interviews “with a randomly selected national sample of 1,003 adults, age 18 and older, conducted May 10-13, 2007.” The margin of error was 3 percentage points.

Nevertheless, a 2008 speech by former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., caused a stir when it surfaced during the 2012 presidential election. Santorum, like Scalia the son of an Italian immigrant father, told a Catholic college audience in Florida that Satan was targeting American institutions, especially its colleges and the realm of politics.

The Catholic Church “has always held that the devil is real, not a mythical personification of evil,” Catholic.com said.

“The church’s teaching on the subject is clear from its liturgy. At baptism, those to be baptized are called upon to reject Satan, his works, and his empty promises. The church provides an official rite of exorcism, which presupposes, of course, the existence of Satan.”

Maher was quite right in saying that Scalia and Bachmann are the same kind of idiot. But they are not part of  a lunatic fringe. They are mainstream and there are millions just like them – people who think the world did not make itself, that there is a God, that God came to earth as Jesus Christ and taught us how to live. (Indeed Bill O’Reilly just wrote a book, Killing Jesus, which he says is not a religion book but a history book.) Is there any doubt that our country was less coarse, less violent, and more moral in previous generations when Christianity held sway? Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family recently stated that we are “absolutely awash in evil.” We do our nation no favor when we soft-pedal our Christianity and fail to appreciate its need and effect on our culture.

The Tea Party stands for fiscal responsibility, a constitutionally limited government, and a free market, which is all well and good. If you look deeper into Tea Party patriots you find that many of them are also pro-life, believe in God, and appreciate their country’s Christian roots in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Yet they are wary of taking a stand on the so-called “social” issues like homosexual marriage and abortion  fearing it will be off-putting. If you love the good, the true and the beautiful, if you think there is a God who has given us guidelines for living, I say to the Tea Party and true Christians of every stripe stand now with Scalia and Bachmann and their ilk. There are millions of Catholics like Scalia and millions of Christians like Bachmann, good and honorable people, first class American citizens.  We need to stand strong and unapologetic about our Christianity.

~~~

The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, “Lo, here it is!” or “There!” for behold the kingdom is God is in the midst of you.  — Luke 17:20-21

To Those I Love, by Isla Paschal Richardson

I had a meltdown this morning!  It was brought on by a TV commercial for something called a Perfect Polly Pet.   I was surprised by the energy with which I shouted, “No!  No!  No! No! No!  and shut off the TV.  Perfect Polly is a pretend parakeet that sits on a perch and looks quite real sitting in a cage.  When you enter the room, Perfect Polly chirps and turns its head and waggles its tail feathers.  It requires no care, no food, no clean-up, and stays quiet all night.  It is suggested  as the perfect companion for someone you love, at only $14.99.  My immediate thought was, “Please don’t give me a plastice bird for my birthday!”  Anything that is supposed to keep me company needs at least a spark of life.

O.K., so I over-reacted.  But I would be entranced by a battery-operated bird for about a minute.  I am reminded of the prisoner in solitary confinement talking to the critter crawling on the floor (an ant? a cockroach?  a spider?) saying, “Please don’t go away.”  He was hungry for the presence of another living thing.

Every senior person in every nursing home in this affluent country has his/her own TV to keep him “company.”  And, yes, TV does while away the time.  You get to know the personalities on the programs you watch and it is almost like having friends visit.  In fact, some folks are so dedicated to their favorite programs so that if a friend should actually visit in real life they can’t turn off the TV long enough the pass the time of day with their visitor.  What bothered me about Perfect Polly was the artificiality of it all.  Please, I’d like something REAL in my room–and by real I mean alive.

If you visit or call your  loved one often enough so that you feel no guilt, what might comfort them in their lonely hours?  Many dote on their dog or cat.  If that’s not practical,  how about a gerbil or a goldfish?   Goldfish live a long time.  My idea of a really fun gift would be a guppy — a pregnant guppy!  In a bowl, of course.  With fish food.  And if that went well, next time, after the babies are born, a flashy male guppy to flirt with the female!  And maybe a couple of snails to clean the fishbowl.   It could happen that a whole new enjoyable hobby would develop.  Or it could happen that  after going to all the trouble of buying a guppy and fish stuff for a loved one they would really rather have had a Perfect Polly Pet!

Shut-ins usually enjoy plants.  A plant requires little care, and it might even do something, like grow or bloom.  I still have the begonia that was in my mother’s room when she died ten years ago and I look forward to it blooming every springtime.    My spider plant  makes new spiders regularly.  I also have some air plants that Wendy sent from Florida two years ago.  One was blooming when I received it and made six babies (which I delivered and replanted) before it died.  Living things do have habit of dying now and then but they give you something to watch and care for in in the meantime.

I noted when my daughter, Peggy, died I found plants and flowers strangely comforting.  After a long cold snowy winter there comes an impatience to get outside, dig in the dirt, and put in at least some tomato plants and basil.    There seems to be a healing power  in nature as Bryant notes in Thanatopsis. He was only 17 when he wrote this:

To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware.

We admire the work of the craftsman in a mosaic, a fine piece of furniture, a quilt or sculpture.  I think perhaps the things of nature are comforting because we know that they did not just happen on their own.  They speak of a designer of infinite creativity, beauty, and power, beyond our understanding but there.

I am reminded of the little girl who did not want to be left alone at bedtime.   Her mother explained that she wouldn’t be alone.  God would be right there with her all the time.   “But I want someone with skin on!” she exclaimed.

It’s all very well to tell the lonely person that God is right there, with them.  Even persons who sometimes feel the presence of God only do so now and then.  In the Old Testament days people might really believe the stories about how God made the world and that he spoke through the prophets, and gave the Ten Commandments, but still God was invisible and for the most part silent.  I think perhaps God recognized our need for a “God with skin on” when he sent Jesus Christ.  He was like us, in all things save sin, walked the walk, suffered and died.  We could relate.

“Into the hand that made the rose, shall I with trembling fall?”

Even the Perfect Polly Pet had a designer.   But it doesn’t even begin to compare with a single rose.

For a lighthearted, factual, somewhat humorous, somewhat ghoulish approach to the subject of DEATH we are blessed to have available a series of YouTube presentations, Ask a Mortician, by Caitlin Doughty, licensed mortician and University of Chicago alumnus.  It was the April issue of The University of Chicago Magazine that introduced me to  Caitlin and all the things you wanted to know about death but were afraid to ask.  Since my family is asking what I desire in the way of “final arrangements,” I thought I’d better get up to speed.

Below is episode one of Ask a Mortician in which Caitlin explains rigor mortis which lasts from 2-3 days after death.   With her dark clothes, black hair and bangs, and sometimes sepulchral voice she is rather creepy and reminds me of Morticia in the Addams family. Later she  tells us that decomposition of the body only takes about two months. She finds the whole process rather beautiful, reminiscent of the biblical “ashes to ashes and dust to dust,” or the “back to the earth from which he sprung” of Sir Walter Scott.  I  found no hint in any of the videos which I viewed that Caitlin believed in a hereafter.

As for the “ashes” or the “cremains” given to the famiIy after cremation, Caitlin explains that the fleshy part of the corpse is vaporized when cremated and only the bones remain.  It is these bones, obligingly ground into ashes, that the family receives.

Here Caitlin talks about discussing death with children.

All these things considered, what would I prefer for MY final arrangements? First of all, if the wake and mass could take place quickly, I think I would rather not be embalmed. I will be “fresh enough” for a couple of days. However, permission is granted for embalming with good reason. Secondly, I have two sons who could make a lovely wooden casket if they were so inclined, but, otherwise, the cheapest casket will do. (I see nothing wrong with the idea of a “family casket” which could be used over and over!) Thirdly, I would prefer a grave to cremation. The church permits cremation nowadays and I do not worry that God will not be able to gather my scattered parts together in the hereafter. I expect my “hereafter” body will be quite different. Mary thought the risen Christ was the gardener and the apostles only recognized Him in the “breaking of the bread.” With surprise they exclaimed, “It is the Lord!” On top of which, God has shown he could handle even a fiery furnace if he wanted to.

By all means, I’d like a mass for a send off, and I’ll write about such arrangements elsewhere. There you have it. Whatever my children eventually decide is all right with me. I am hopeful that I’ll have better things to do than fret over what happens to this old body.

~~~

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the one who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. — Matthew 10:28

I have just come across the thoughts that crossed Carol’s mind when she learned her grandpa (who was my father and her father’s father) died.

I got to Media Communication last Friday morning a few minutes late. “The teacher’s got a message for you,” said Mary.

I already knew what it was and I swore softly to myself. “Call home immediately,” the note read. My grandfather had died.

I knew I should be glad he had died. He had been in a lot of pain and he had led a good life. For two weeks now I had expected that “Call home immediately,” but now that it was here, I was shaken. I was glad for him, but what about me? I had lost a grandfather, the man who had taught me how to play checkers.

I left class and called my mother. “The wake is today…the funeral tomorrow…He died peacefully. Skip your second class…catch the 12:05…dress nice.” I went back for the end of class and thought about the baby my friend had had the week before.

At the wake a plaque held the words “FRANK G. HODSON.” An open casket held the body that had been Grandpa’s. He lay on his back with his hands gently on his stomach just as he always did when he napped. His skinny-lapel black suit was meticulously pressed as usual, and his grey mustache was neatly trimmed. I would have thought he was asleep except where his lips would have been slightly parted to let out a nasal snore, they were closed tight. And the old grey afghan that would have been pulled up to his waist was now an American flag. Two weeks ago he had beaten me in checkers in six moves. Today he was napping in a different world.

That night I dreamed of him. We were playing on the street and he challenged me to a race. Hand in hand we tore along the side of the road like athletes. Next he was dancing. I think it was an Irish jig. Francis Gardner Hodson, a proper Englishman, spiritualist, WWI veteran, and Danbury checker champ, did a jig for me.

The funeral service was for my grandmother. The Christian quotes and biblical phrases warmed her. They held one hand, my father held the other.

The trail of automobile high beams was three blocks long. My brothers and I were in the third car of the funeral procession. Nervously, we joked and kidded as we followed the limousine to the cemetery.

Clustered around the coffin in a new section of the cemetery we all looked very, very small. I stood behind my brothers, next to my sister and her boyfriend. I hung my head and hid behind the hair that fell over my eyes. My father and his brother, Bob, stood on either side of my grandmother. Next were my aunts, and the grandchildren and the greatgrandchildren.

I had never seen my father lose his composure before. Always calm and stately like his father, it tore at me to see him fight his tears. The English in him was fighting to dominate. His forehead was creased with tension, his back erect and stiff in the breeze, his eyes welling and blinking but not releasing. I cried his tears. The tears I had never seen him shed. I cried for my father.

The flag was folded and given to my grandmother. Tired and worn, she handed the flag to Johnny. Respectfully, he held the flag, not knowing why he had been given such an honor. And there was my father. He was trying so hard to be strong as he blinked back his tears. And there was my grandfather in both of them. He had not left me.
The End
by Carol Hodson

Uncle Chuck was my husband’s half-brother. We kept in touch by e-mail and he would call every once in a while to see how I was and tell me he loved me. I knew him as a good and kind man and I will miss having him in my world. Thank you, Chuck, for being the person you were. God love you.