Mysteries (small m, too)

It is certainly Lent. I usually look forward to it — to the recognizing, to the righting, and to the reconnecting..

It is always a most somber season for Catholics (and possibly just as much so for others?), but this one seems off to a too sobering start.

The saints (all but the martyrs) showed their greatest courage in having to debrief themselves. Perhaps eventually they were able to read that as a privilege; perhaps it is, and perhaps they weren’t really alone in it for a moment (in which case, they might call it a grace and, in which case, I shall hope to).

Right now, though, I feel alone with it. I was perhaps supposed to see it; I won’t know why for some time, unless it has everything to do with this life and the need for Lent, so that one may be worth one’s salt to another.

Hence and hence, I will tell you what I can tell no one else. I saw my little cousin’s hospital death-bed scene. The photo has been made public on a social medium (by her second husband). I contacted that medium to report it, twice, having seen it re-posted, both photos in alleged grief for her passing just hours after she turned 51.

The husband and the step-daughter who reposted it (not the brightest of bulbs) have already been approached to take it down. It’s still up. It’s still up after being reported. I plan to keep reporting it. My little cousin would not want her mom to see it (nor would I), and she would not want her kids to see it (nor would I), nor her grandchildren and/or anyone else who loved her.

If I had to take that hit so that others might not, that’s alright. I’d be thrilled in that event. I’ve been in worse circumstances. It was a direct hit, though. Her death (cardiac, stroke) was shock enough. I’m winged. I hope I am the last victim of the photo.

Two other scenes keep coming back to me as well: the one of her playing with my eldest in his room, she laughing excitedly as he drove his little bike around, and her on her wedding day to the man who would become her kids’ father. Unfortunately, he killed himself when their own kids were quite small, though all 3 remember him. That wedding day in the park, tho, the two of them all dressed up and happy, she in her floral wreath headwear and beautiful dress, was the happiest I’d ever seen my little cousin.

Those 2 photos (especially) are here somewhere. I need to find them fast, because her kids are the most devastated and if they happen upon that other photo, of their MOM, it will be even more crucial to help dull it out with 2 very happy ways they didn’t see her. I will, of course, ask St. Anthony of Padua’s help in quick locating of them. He has never failed an ask. Never.

Unto dust we shall return. It is never expected, no matter how many times we wear the ashes of Easter’s burned palm branches. There seems something more we need to remember in Lent, though, and maybe this is why I keep on writing this post.

That Original human dust was gathered from the earth in, with, and through Love; it was fashioned into a human being in, with, and through Love.

Unto Love we shall return. Redeemed in, with, and through Love. To be glorified. In, with, and through Love.

Until then, these seasons.. of Love.

❤️❤️❤️

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