When You Get The Thing You Have Always Wanted

Last night, I attended--for a time--Maundy Thursday services.  It was the first time I had been to Maundy Thursday, or Holy Week services at all, since 2021.  The services were held at my new parish, the one I have been attending fairly consistently since the middle of 2023.  It progressed in a fairly standard manner for the first part.  Instead of foot washing, there was hand washing, in which each person in turn was washed and then washed someone.  I've never seen the Mandatum done that way before, but it was fine.  After that, they were going to do Communion in the form of a sit down meal.  The problem was that I had plans to go to dinner with Danielle after, so I slipped out after the Peace before everyone sat down.  Which was a bit of a shame, because I always found the stripping of the altars very powerful, and I missed that.

During the course of my (admittedly brief) time at the service, I mostly thought about the fact that I hadn't been since 2021. Prior to 2021, if you had told me that I had been to Maundy Thursday for fifteen years in a row, I would have believed you--I honestly don't remember.  Even in 2020, as the lock-down started, I was one of the "designated survivors" who acolyted for the life-stream service.  The 2021 version of Holy Week was the last gasp of what was at that time the clearly failing project that was the religious community that I was a part of.  By the summer of 2021, that was over, at least on my end.  It was not mourned, at least not by me, when it ended, but nevertheless my association with 2021 Holy Week is colored strongly by that experience.

The other major thing that happened in the summer of 2021 was that I met Danielle.  By Holy Week 2022, we were together.  2022 Holy Week was in the midst of the campaign, but more to the point it was weeks after my mother was diagnosed with metastatic cancer.  Danielle and I drove to Philadelphia to be with Mom for Easter, and we spent the entire time with her.  Danielle had met my Mom only once before, but I was amazed by how comfortable she was in the midst of a very trying situation.  And then Danielle did something that I still think is one of the kindest things I've ever seen anyone do--she took my Mom out to get a pedicure.  I could tell immediately that it made Mom feel a tiny bit normal, which was what she needed.  Danielle and I both got an explosive norovirus-type stomach bug on Saturday night, so we spent Easter Sunday of 2022 vomiting and sleeping.

On January 22, 2023, my mother passed away.  I spoke to her for the last time a week before that, which was the last day she was conscious and talking.  When I arrived in her room, she was concerned and a bit disappointed.  While she was glad to see me, she also wanted to see Danielle, and she wanted to ask her whether she would sing Ave Maria at her funeral.  I told Mom that I was sure she would sing whatever it was she wanted, and that made her happy.  Then I showed her the ring that I had bought, the one I was going to give to Danielle as soon as I could (which, we both understood, meant as soon as all of this was over).  I know it broke her heart that she wasn't going to be able to see her oldest son get married, but she seemed happy to see the ring.  After she passed, at the funeral Danielle sang Ave Maria beautifully, angelically.   About two weeks later, I proposed to Danielle, and she said yes.

I opted out of Holy Week 2023.  Danielle and I went to Easter Sunday services at the new downtown parish (the one I went to last night), and that was fine, but that was all I did.  What bothered me then, and still bothers me to be honest, is that I had this expectation that my faith would be a source of comfort in times like the loss of Mom.  And when the time came, I don't feel like it delivered.  All things being equal, I think I have made it through this pretty well (to the extent that's a meaningful concept), but it hasn't been because of faith.  If anything, the "God talk" I have gotten around my Mom's death has been an impediment, a discordant note.  And that's a massive disappointment.  A major part of me wonders whether all of this effort and time dedicated to faith has been worth it.  And while I have come up with some counter-arguments to that voice in the interim, that voice was in control during Holy Week 2023.  I was not feeling it, as they say, so I opted-out.

Now, I write this on the morning of Good Friday 2024, eight days before I am going to get married.  What I have concluded is that the person I was during Holy Week 2021 is simply gone.  In the interim, I have become a different person, living a different life.  This has happened to me a couple of previous times in my life, so this is not some radical new development.  And except for a small handful of things, this new version is better in every conceivable way.  I cannot wait to get married a week from tomorrow.  Never in my life have I ever been sure of anything the way I am sure that I want to spend the rest of my life with Danielle.  This is all good.

And yet, I realized last night that there is a small part of me that grieves the loss of that person I was at Holy Week 2021.  He, perhaps incorrectly and to his detriment, didn't really think this life made much of a difference to anyone else.  I now have someone I need to be there for, and while that is a wonderful feeling a small part of me misses the feeling that aren't very much in the way of stakes with regard to my life.  That old person had more certainties and solidities in his life than I do, and I miss that.

But the bigger thing I miss is the old Mike's relationship to faith.  It was never exactly a smooth road, but it was always there, it always felt like it mattered.  Much of the time now it doesn't feel like much is there at all.  Strangely, what has opened up is a massive divide between God and religion.  God still feels real and present, providing a grounding in meaning and ethics and purpose.  But religion, the ritual and the God talk, often feels empty and hollow.  I don't write in this space much because I don't feel like I have much that I want to say.  

I would, if I could, go back to the way it used to feel.  But I don't think that is possible.  And if the price of everything else that I have gained in the last three years is to give up the old comfort and the old sense of certainty and place, I would make that trade without hesitation.  So, I don't want to be heard as wanting to turn back the hands of time.  But at times, and those times are almost always when I am actually in a church building, I wish I cared like I used to care. 

One of the things that always struck me about Holy Week, and Good Friday in particular, is that you can grieve something even though you know that everything turns out well in the end.  The purpose, I think, of Good Friday is to sit in the moment and experience what you are feeling, safe in the protection of what comes Sunday.  I think, for me, Good Friday 2024 is going to be a day to close the loop on the old version of me.  He is gone, and the new one that is coming is going to be wonderful.  But it is still OK to miss the old one for a bit.

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