During my tenure in elected politics, I didn’t speak openly about my Catholic faith and its central importance in my life. The reason was not what some might assume. I believed in the separation of church and state and thought it should be a two-way street. I also knew that opening my spiritual life to public scrutiny would make it fair game for political commentary. Just as I learned to keep my children hidden (more or less) in the Berkshires, I did the same with the practice of my faith. I often wish I could have provided my husband, Chuck, and our marriage the same protection.
In this blog, I have chosen to be more open. A friend asked me this week an important question: Why? Why the blog with a level of transparency and openness on my faith and my deepest emotions that I have often been reticent to share? The simple answer - and honest one - is that I didn’t really think about that when I started. I was on autopilot. It helped me to connect - with my own feelings and eventually with others feeling like me. As time went on I could have stopped. The reasons why I haven’t will likely continue to become clear to me. Today, I know that this blog seems to help others. It helps those grieving. It helps those who want to better understand the inexplicable actions and emotions (at times) of the grieving. I’ve always been what Mr. Rogers famously called “a helper.” I process better by writing. Often, I am writing posts in my head that never make it into print!
This weekend, the first of a very short Advent season (three weeks and four hours - see, Father John, how closely I was listening at Mass!) was an important one for me on a few levels. Some of them I’ll share - others will stay private within my family circle because there are still events and emotions I choose not to share.
A big one: I threw a party! A small, last-minute party connected to the Annual Meeting for the farm nonprofit. But, still, it was a party. Now, if you just found this blog & you knew pre-grieving Jane, you are likely confused. Me throwing a party would not have been blog-worthy for most of my life. What was blog-worthy early in the Black Swan days was that I did not want to go to parties, never mind host one. The few I attended were often a disaster - physically and emotionally. The odd thing is, I did not really think about it until I had invited a few people over. Okay, maybe this isn’t so strange - I do have some “Load-Fire-Aim” tendencies.
I also turned the outdoor Christmas lights back on. I famously don’t take them down - ever. When COVID hit and there was a Facebook phenomenon to “put up” and turn on your outdoor Christmas lights in May - I was halfway home. But the lights weren’t on last year. Last year, I knew the first anniversary would be tough for all of us. Truthfully, I thought I was a stand-out widow. I tried to turn the lights on. I tried everything I knew and that Chuck had taught me, which is a lot, about the maintenance of this beast of a home. I probably asked people for help. No dice. Now, I should confess we had some other odd electric issues around this time that I never quite got around to calling Timmy Rickert about (you should know I have a very specific list of people whom I am authorized to call for specific things) until many months later. Apparently, I forgot about one old electric panel with a few fuses. Details. In my party prep, I had lights ready to replace the "dead" lights out front. But I was running out of time. On a whim, I decided to try to find the female end of the lights (see, I know some stuff) and plug them in. And - yes - they lit up. Actually, half of them did. Which made me cry. Happy tears.
Mass with my mom has been a staple for 58 years. I have taken some long breaks for college, Vermont & anger at God (not brought on by this period of grief ironically). Getting there this week after a lot of travel, masses in new places & online worship I was at peace back in the pews. It turns out Father’s sermon, as has happened to me often during my grief, felt directed right at me. In fact, he did reference me and this blog. But he could not have known about the lights, the party or the fact that I was feeling my heart thaw. And yes, the lights coming back on was about fixing fuses. Except last night, when I plugged all the lights in all of them lit up - even those that had been “dead” the night before. Everyone will have their own explanation for that.
Truthfully, this is among the hardest posts to write. I know there are many reading this who are still in what Father called “Winter." It was deeply moving to me that he acknowledged that some are not ready or able to leave winter. Just as I was incapable of figuring out how to turn those lights on last year! I did not even realize my own incompetence. I did have a few things going for me - and whatever your reason for reading this, and wherever you may be in your own journey of darkness to light, I hope you have some of them too:
Faith.
The care and concern of many.
But the greatest of all - Love.
And with Faith and Love, the light has returned. I know the light is Hope.
I also know that darkness will return. I pray that I will have the strength to hold onto Hope along with faith and the abundance of love with which I have been so blessed.
.
Throwing that party, that’s impressive! Congratulations! Please give your Mom my best wishes and your family for this Christmas. I personally find this one a lot harder because grief fog protected me much of that first year, and now I am very awake to the permanency of all of this. But like you, I keep moving forward. God bless you, Jane. Linda
Jane, for so many reasons, your posts often seem to parallel some of my own journeys. After many years, my faith has begun to come back to life. First, it was a flicker...a small candle that was often overpowered by the darkness or bombarded by headwinds. Then it got a bit bigger, a bit brighter...only to flicker once again. It's a journey to faith, to the light and to God with so many questions, uncertainties and many dark paths with little light.
My hope and my prayer, for all of us, is that the journey to light and faith and wholeness of self gets a bit lighter and brighter with more time.