A Very Blah Christmas

Thanks to the Covid-19 lock-down, 2020 saw many stir crazy people decorate early for Christmas with some cities and towns being decked out for the holidays by October. This year, something seemed to be a bit off.  I noticed a few dark houses in my neighborhood that would normally be lit with Christmas decorations. A nearby apartment complex that usually saw some tenants put trees in their windows was also curiously devoid of any holiday lights.  There were still those houses that went all out with elaborate Christmas displays, but it was the occasional pocket of darkness along neighborhood streets that had me wondering if people were too emotionally exhausted to fully embrace the Christmas spirit.  When I pointed this phenomenon out to an acquaintance from the nearby town of Marblehead, at first he said there were still fantastic light displays from the houses located along the coast but then he did admit to seeing near-dark neighborhoods in his travels too.

A few of my friends told me they had no desire to decorate for Christmas and they found themselves struggling to finish putting up a tree before the week of Dec. 25th.  Perhaps it was because 2021 seemed like nothing more than a continuation of the miserable year that 2020 was.

While I had made an effort to decorate for Christmas in 2020, I just wasn't in the mood this year.  As the first two weeks of December passed by in a blur, our house was in danger of not being decorated at all.  For 50 years, my family put red Christmas lights in the windows and some of those original bulbs which were purchased a long time ago at now defunct department stores like Zayre's and Rich's still worked.  Well, I didn't want to break a half century of tradition so I mustered up enough strength to drag those lights out of the basement once again.

In years past, my mother and I set up two Christmas trees since she had so many beautiful ornaments to put on display.  In 2019, we decorated the small table top tree that usually graced our back porch because her chronic aches and pains were becoming much worse.  We used that same small tree again in 2020 and despite a hectic work schedule, I still found time to put up most of the Christmas decorations around the house.

This year was definitely different.  With so little free time and not much motivation to put up Christmas decorations, we had to settle for the tiny ceramic light up tree that was usually placed in an upper hallway corner.  We didn't do much else for Christmas aside from a front door wreath and a handful of small ornaments around the house.  For the first time ever, we didn't have a nativity scene, advent wreath or stockings.  It was a very blah Christmas all around and my lack of enthusiasm for what should have been a joyous and holy day was troubling.

The extremely busy work schedule that prevented me from blogging more often was taking its toll. Our bosses were doing very well financially because of the pandemic but 2021 saw my hours get cut and my yearly pay go down.  While other companies were offering higher wages and incentives to attract new employees and retain old ones, our company bellyached about razor-thin profit margins.  They may have congratulated us for a job well done but they weren't too enthusiastic about giving us a much-needed cost of living increase. It's no wonder many people who felt underpaid and overworked simply walked off the job this year.

My company often talks about striking a balance between your work and home life but I found myself spending the past year not having time to put up decorations for several holidays including Easter, Halloween and Thanksgiving.  So much for a healthy work / life balance.

As the final hour of 2021 slips away forever, I say good riddance but this sentiment is tempered by misgivings about 2022.  Many of us are still anxious about the uncertainty of these unprecedented times.  Inflation is on the rise. Shortages continue.  Quality connections with other people seem lacking and the internet is a poor substitute.  There's an uptick in the number of Covid cases again with some communities reinstating mask mandates while others consider doing so.  This new normal has left many of us far too weary and holidays like Christmas just don't feel the same anymore.

Renovation Ruination

I think it's safe to say that Vatican II probably tried to accomplish too much too soon and while some of the changes it brought about were minor, others must have been extremely jarring for longtime parishioners,  Nowhere is this more true than in the arena of church renovations.
 
Although the Second Vatican Council never issued a single document or dictate that made architectural changes to churches compulsory, that didn't stop zealous pastors from getting carried away with their efforts to bring the Mass closer to the people.  All over the country, drastic renovations were initiated that seemed more like “wreckovations” to parishioners who loved their ornately decorated houses of worship.  High altars, elevated pulpits, reredos, side chapels and part or all of the altar rails were removed.  Statues and frescoes were whitewashed.  Some churches even saw stained glass windows covered over because they were thought to be a distraction.  These changes must have been almost universal because during my lifetime, I've only been to a couple of churches that still used an intact altar rail during the distribution of communion.  Things were getting so out of hand, the Vatican published Opera Artisis in 1971 which called for restraint in dealing with the artwork that adorned churches.  The National Conference of Catholic Bishops appeared to counter these recommendations with a 1978 booklet entitled Environment and Art in Catholic Worship and this only seemed to quicken the pace of these heavy-handed renovations.

A friend's mother mentioned the hurt feelings that were caused when most of her church's marble altar rail was removed because working class immigrants had scraped up whatever money they could to fund its installation.  My mother's childhood parish of the Immaculate Conception of Salem, MA  saw colorful statues painted white and many ornamental details lost.  Both she and my uncle have a bit of sadness in their voices whenever they talk about these changes.  “It's so different now.  It looks nothing like it did when I was a kid,” she laments.
 
While changes to St. Mary Star of the Sea in Beverly were minor by comparison, a couple of prominent statues did not escape the whitewash treatment.  During the 1990s, our pastor was Fr. Charles Hughes and he brought these sculptures back to their original colorful luster.  When a parishioner offered to pay for gold leaf to be added to St. Anthony's rosary, Fr. Hughes insisted it wasn't necessary because a good Franciscan would have carried a wooden rosary.  Today some parishes have instituted “re-renovations” in order to undo many post-Vatican II changes.  It's enough to make you wonder what it was all for in the first place?

Playing musical chairs with a church's decor does very little to get people to go to Mass but in times of uncertainty, undertaking such a renovation provides the illusion that something very tangible and achievable is happening.  The 1960s saw tremendous societal upheaval but instead of confronting the evil of these times, Vatican II's poorly-timed renovations were a distraction that caused many parishes to focus on inward things that really didn't matter all that much.

Unfortunately, the trend of unnecessary renovations didn't begin with Vatican II.  Seeing historical photos of the lower church at St. Mary's in Beverly reveals a very beautiful altar that seemed more than adequate.  It was replaced with a new altar of a much simpler design because Fr. Francis Shields found it necessary to have the lower church completely gutted shortly after his instillation as pastor in 1958.

During the post-World War II years, modern design took hold in America and anything old and ornate was often seen as being obsolete and disposable.  When the Great Salem Fire destroyed St. Joseph's Church, its 1949 replacement was constructed with International Style architecture.  While some grew to cherish this plain-looking building, others thought it was ugly.  When the Archdiocese of Boston wanted to demolish this house of worship many years later, its modern design was occasionally cited as a reason for not saving the building.    

Long after Vatican II, many pastors still can't resist “sprucing up” what they feel are tired-looking churches and I've seen some pretty frivolous and downright baffling renovations over the years.  If you look at exterior of St. Paul's Church in Hamilton, everything seems normal.  Upon entering the building, you notice something isn't quite right.  In 2003, someone got the bright idea to place the altar up against the left wall.  Pews in a semitransept off to the right now have a nice view of the Mass.  Unfortunately, worshipers in the main church don't despite an attempt to angle those pews so that they are more in line with the sanctuary.  I sometimes call St. Paul's the sideways parish.
 
The Carmelite Chapel at the Northshore Mall once featured partitions that slid along tracks in the ceiling but they had long been disused.  A tasteful but very minimal renovation saw the instillation of new ceiling panels without tracks and a pink curtain behind the altar to replace an unattractive green one.  Other than that, the chapel still retained much of its original look.  In 2010, a more extensive renovation took place which saw an entire section of pews removed so the altar could be extended farther out.  The pink curtain was removed and replaced with a wood facade that held two artificially lit stained glass windows from the closed Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Chelsea.  To top it all off, large rectangles of soundproofing hung from the ceiling from chains.  Removing seats is one way to make a house of worship seem more crowded but during the reduced capacity of the Covid-19 lock down, I bet our priests wished they had those extra pews.
 
I thought St. Mary of the Annunciation of Danvers was a nice-looking church yet when Fr. Michael Doyle was installed as pastor, talk of making the parish more “liturgically appropriate” began.  Controversy erupted when plans were made to demolish a neighboring funeral home for extra parking.  When all was said and done, the historic house was gone and the church's interior was completely done over but the renovations seemed gaudy to me.  Instead of adopting a less-is-more approach, the parish went overboard trying to make everything so fancy.  Not long afterwards, Fr. Doyle complained in the church bulletin of dwindling collections and the need for parishioners to give more.
 
The interior of St. Mary Star of the Sea in Beverly was already beautiful but in the early 2000s, our pastor decided to have it fully repainted.  The parish had just paid off a considerable amount of debt thanks to a one-time land deal with a real estate developer.  Talk of boiler repairs, snow removal costs, the possible installation of a sprinkler system and about a hundred other expenses made me wonder if it was really a good time to spend money on such a superficial thing?  After a change in leadership a few years later, our collections no longer met the parish's weekly needs.

And this highlights a very good point.  Priests who place a great deal of importance on exterior changes need to realize they get very little bang for their buck when it comes to improving the spiritual health of their parishes.  In this blog's second entry, I described the disastrous renovation of St. John the Evangelist in Beverly.  Despite “improvements” that were at times painful to look at, my mother, brother and I continued to attend Mass there.  It wasn't the horrible decor that drove us away from the parish.  Rather, it was the realization that our souls were no longer being fed.  Sadly, this is why we left St. Mary's too.  Perhaps pastors need to do a better job building loving and caring communities within the walls of their churches rather than wasting so much time debating what color paint those walls should have.

A House Divided

I ended the last blog entry by mentioning how a refusal to take communion in the hand during the pandemic could be an indication of a much bigger problem facing the Catholic Church.  We are a divided faith.
 
So you have two Catholics who both attend Mass every week.  Both are in agreement on the Church's major hot button issues like abortion, pre-marital sex and gay marriage.  Both have noticed the Church's decline over the years with low Mass attendance and the graying out of parishes.  So you'd think these two people would naturally find a sense of kinship, right?  Wrong.

Instead, very big disagreements erupt about the smallest of things and nowhere is this more prevalent than on the variety of Catholic blogs, websites and online forums.  For all the theories on where the Church went wrong, a good number of traditionalists place the blame squarely on Vatican II.  In their minds, the Church was once a very strong institution with no major problems whatsoever until 1965...

...the year the Church embraced liberalism, houses of worship were gutted, and the Mass lost its reverence causing attendance to sharply decline and making religion less important in people's lives.  Some forum users espousing this claim tend to be older so they are obviously drawing on childhood memories to back up their opinions.  But as the saying goes, correlation isn't necessarily causation and while some studies say Vatican II absolutely damaged the Church, other studies indicate a decline well before the early 1960s.  Rising skepticism, materialism, the sexual revolution, television, and other factors have certainly taken their toll on Christianity in America.  It's very convenient for traditionalists to blame just one thing instead of taking a comprehensive look at history and even if Vatican II never happened, it's likely the shocking discovery of the priest sex abuse scandal would have lead many to question the Church and their faith.
 
Younger Catholic keyboard warriors who never lived through the changes created by Vatican II use an array of articles, charts and graphs to form and defend their viewpoints but such information is rarely objective.  I think what these young people are really looking for is a comforting spiritual home full of absolutes amid the secular relativism that's wreaked havoc among their peers.

Opinions on Vatican II's impact are all over the map with some saying its intentions might have been good but its implementation was a disaster.  Whatever the case may be, we now have a community of online “trad” Catholics who regularly pick fights with anyone who might disagree with them.  If you think you're 100% Catholic, they think they're 150% Catholic.  Pope Francis is suspect, feminism made women too uppity and oh, and it's not the Church's job to help Catholic singles.  One forum user I encountered was an older gentleman who lamented the day his parish introduced “hippie music” into the Mass.  By that he meant singers who played guitars and tambourines.  So where was it ever stated in the Bible that Jesus preferred the pipe organ?

In fact, one of my fondest memories from St. John the Evangelist in Beverly was when a father and his very attractive teen-aged daughter became cantors.  He played an electric acoustic guitar and they both sang very passionately.  I was an impressionable altar boy at that time and in addition to their beautiful music, I loved the daughter's two-handed handshakes during the sign of peace.

This forum user then went on to complain about all the choices Catholics had when it came to their faith.  I challenged him by asking, “How sustainable would our religion be if it relied solely on rote learning and fear?”  A nun with a ruler who routinely whacked her students probably drove more people away from the Church than a singer with a tambourine.

Then there's the Latin Mass.  Some feel this is the only legitimate Catholic Mass and during online discussions the phrase novus ordo (new order) is tossed around like a derogatory term.  One young trad posting to a forum expressed exasperation with his fellow novus ordo Catholics by saying, "If I had a dime every time someone said the Latin Mass was boring..."  I remarked, "If I had a dime every time someone said the sky was blue..."  My mother, who was born about 30 years before Vatican II is no fan of the Latin Mass because she felt it created a wall between the clergy and their flock.  During the early 2000s, the pastor of my church was a young but traditional priest named Fr. David Barnes and he sometimes injected a little bit of Latin into the Mass.  I didn't like it at all and was thankful to have grown up with Masses in the vernacular.  Was I less Catholic for feeling that way?

Fr. Barnes was also a proponent of communion on the tongue, making the case that it should be the preferred way of receiving the Holy Eucharist.  Other trads believe this too sometimes saying it's a form of submission that feels like you are being fed by the Lord.  I contrast these opinions with that of Fr. Herbert Jones who was once pastor of the Carmelite Chapel at the Northshore Mall.  During a sermon, the elderly priest told us he was resistant to communion on the hand at first but grew to love it because he felt closer to his parishioners.  So we have two devout priests with two very different viewpoints.  Which one is correct?  Perhaps what's most important is that people are going to Mass in the first place...not out of fear or blind obedience but because they want to.

Just Take It!

When churches in the Boston Archdiocese reopened in the midst of the pandemic last year, several safety protocols were in place.  Seating capacity was limited to just a fraction of what it used to be and in our parish, every other pew was roped off with blue masking tape.  To ensure social distancing, the remaining pews were marked with Xs every six feet using that same blue tape.  Hand shaking was out along with ushers passing the collection basket.  Instead parishioners were encouraged to place their weekly donations into a small bin at the church's entrance.  Hand sanitizer stations were placed at every doorway and parishioners had to make reservations in order to attend Mass.  At times, our temperatures were taken with a hand-held thermometer before we entered the building but other times we just walked right in after our names were checked off a list.  
 
One of the most dramatic changes during Mass was how communion was distributed.  Instead of forming a line and approaching the altar, parishioners now remained seated while the priest and a few Eucharistic ministers delivered the host to everyone by walking across those empty pews.  And here is where something of a controversy begins.
 
Some people feel that it's a lot safer in these times if parishioners wishing to receive communion simply hold out their hands so the priest can drop the host into waiting palms without having to touch anyone.  A few archdioceses have even gone so far as to ban communion on the tongue and this ruling has been upheld by the Vatican.  
 
In our church, I think the priests just assumed everyone would follow this guideline because when one parishioner wanted to have the host placed on his tongue during that first "post-Covid lockdown" Mass of 2020, my pastor looked very confused and wondered what to do next.  He then told the parishioner that he would oblige but only after everyone else had received communion on the hand first.  After giving this person communion, our pastor returned to the altar to liberally spray his hands down with sanitizer.  

Over the next few weeks, anyone who wanted communion on the tongue had to wait until everyone else received it by hand.  Then at some point, our pastor changed this practice.  Now communion would be given to everyone right then and there and if someone wanted it placed on their tongue, the priest or Eucharistic minister would do so immediately.  Then they would return to the altar, spray their hands with hand sanitizer, and continue to distribute the host as usual.  Two problems quickly arose from this new procedure, however.
 
Some Masses were attended by several people who wanted to receive communion on the tongue so instead of delivering the hosts to everyone in a timely manner, the priest or Eucharistic minister had to stop, walk all the way back to the altar and spray their hands down before returning to the pews.  Suddenly the well-oiled machine of socially distant worshiping ground to a halt.  While I was glad to see people attend Mass, this start / stop way of of handing out communion got pretty annoying fast.  There are times when I find myself yelling in my mind at these worshipers, “Just take it!”
 
The other problem occurred when more than one person in the same group wanted communion on the tongue.  The priest or Eucharistic minister would grab a host, place it on the tongue of one parishioner then reach back into the chalice for another host without sanitizing his hand!  Such a sight had me hoping and praying that these people didn't have Covid-19 because more often than not when the priest or Eucharistic minster placed a host on one person's tongue, he would reach in for another host but pick up two by mistake.  The second host was then allowed to fall back into the chalice to be given to some unsuspecting worshiper six feet away.
 
In a May 7, 2020 article from Church Militant on the subject, Father Jeffrey Robideau defends communion on the tongue during the pandemic remarking, "Where I did give Communion in the hand, I touched each and every hand.  With the tongue, I very rarely have any contact as described above. So you tell me which one is safer."  To that I say maybe this priest has fat fingers because I've never felt anyone accidentally bump into my hand when delivering the Eucharist.  It does seem pretty difficult to pluck out a single host from the chalice without touching other wafers, though.

The debate on the preferred way to receive communion is a pretty old one with some Catholics getting pretty riled up about it.  Some say communion on the hand isn't as reverent and sometimes these arguments quickly devolve into claims that Vatican II is the cause for most of the Church's problems.  I've had a few priests on either side of this debate lecture us from the pulpit but in reality most clergy tend not to care one way or another...just as long as you're going to Mass in the first place.

There are still many unknowns regarding Covid-19 so I think it's important that everyone errs on the side of caution.  The fact that some Catholics stubbornly refuse to do so tells me the Church has bigger problems to deal with than the pandemic.

An Unseen Failure

One byproduct of the priesthood shortage that I've noticed is an increase in the number of priests who speak with a foreign accent.  As some churches struggle to find enough men of the cloth to say Mass, priests from other counties have visited my parishes to lend a helping hand.  At times, their exotic accents are so thick, it's difficult to understand what they are saying.  I admit to checking out mentally during more than a few broken English sermons.

I've seen visiting foreign priests from many different countries over the years but the vast majority of them seem to come from India.  At times their mispronunciations almost make me laugh.  One Indian priest encouraged us to “say the grocery.”  (say the rosary)  On the altar, he held up the “brad and wine” (bread and wine) as we celebrated the “epi-funny.”  (Epiphany)  He also talked about the time he walked to a nearby symmetry.  (cemetery)  Another visiting Indian priest didn't quite understand all of our phrases and expressions and during the Christmas season he mentioned how the “three intelligent men” followed the star to Bethlehem.  (three wise men)           

Their sermons have also touched upon topics many of my American priests tend to shy away from like the abject poverty of third world countries, the struggles of spreading the Gospel in remote villages where even a simple bicycle can make all the difference and conflicts with other religions...namely Islam.  During one Easter Mass with little kids in the pews who probably had colorful thoughts of the Easter bunny in their minds, a visiting Indian priest told us about Christian hostages who were beheaded by ISIS in 2015 because they would not deny Jesus.  I found the sermon to be very inappropriate and quite depressing.  Not everyone is inspired by graphic tales of martyrdom.
 
In another sermon, one of these priests told us about a Catholic woman he knew from India who was going to marry a Muslim man.  They had fallen in love but he refused to convert to Christianity.  Instead, he insisted she embrace Islam and give up her religion.  After a period of soul searching, the woman agreed to his terms and just before she was to abandon her Catholic faith, she sought out our priest to discuss the matter.  After hearing her story he got down on his knees and begged her forgiveness.  He then apologized for failing her.
 
Our priest explained that this woman had been educated in a Catholic school, went to church all her life, was intelligent, and a successful doctor yet she was willing to give up her religion for love.  Had her fellow Catholics done a better job raising her in a community of faith, then maybe she would not have been willing to abandon her beliefs so easily.  As a single person, I saw a very different side to this failure.

My priest and the Catholic institutions that educated this woman did fail...but they failed to give her options for finding a good Catholic husband and THAT is what drove her into the arms of a Muslim man.  Perhaps if they had done more to bring Catholic singles together for the purposes of dating and marriage then maybe my priest wouldn't be asking this woman for her forgiveness. 

Most people want to experience romantic love.  Most people want to have a healthy outlet for their sexual desires.  These are not trivial things and if we can't obtain what we are looking for in life, sometimes misery sets in.  Sometimes we are willing to compromise our beliefs and settle for less.  Sometimes we even overlook obvious red flags.  Why?  Because falling in love is extremely important and it's about time our religious leaders recognize this.
 
I can't tell you how many priests just don't get it.  They say things like, “The only relationship you need is with Jesus.” or “Happiness is a choice and marriage won't automatically make you happy.”  But these statements really fail to understand the depth of a single person's needs.  It's not selfish to seek out love or to desire all the things (good and bad) that love brings but far too often, Catholic singles like me are made to feel this way.
 
A while ago, one of these visiting Indian priests told us in a sermon that he was 15 years old when he felt the call to the priesthood.  My mother wondered how someone with that kind of perspective could truly understand the average male.  At 15, my hormones were raging and I certainly wasn't thinking about the priesthood.  There's nothing wrong with that.  It just means I wasn't meant for the Sacrament of Holy Orders.

After Mass, I wanted to share my thoughts about this woman's decision to give up her faith but the priest was so busy greeting and blessing the departing crowd, I decided not to wait around.  Unfortunately, he did not return to our parish the next week or the week after that so as the relevance of his sermon faded, I lost my chance to revisit this subject...not that it would have made a difference.

The Invisible Among Us

Something very curious has been happening during Mass, lately.  For two weeks in a row, whenever the priest gives a sermon, he indirectly references my mother.

For many years now, my mother has endured one medical setback after another.  Just when we think a physical ailment has been cured, another one pops up out of nowhere. Despite these difficulties, she's always made an effort to attend weekly Mass even when the Boston Archdiocese reopened churches with new social distancing measures.  Many sermons from around this time in 2020 tended to focus on the value of suffering with one priest in particular saying that it was a gift from God.  After Mass, my mother jokingly said to him, “Father, tell God that I don't need any more gifts.”  He got a laugh out of it then blessed her saying that her suffering had meaning.  My mother expressed the hope that her aches and pains here on earth might help souls get out of purgatory.

Most worshipers in my parish are very elderly even though the area has a high concentration of young people.  During a recent sermon, our priest lamented this fact and asked why.  He then looked around the room and noted how some parishioners have managed to attend Mass every week despite the fact that a few of them suffer from great physical difficulties.  He then glanced at my mother with a smile and nodded with approval.  We both knew who he was talking about.

After Mass, my mother again talked to our priest and he indeed admitted that during his sermon, he was specifically referring to her adding that her example was an inspiration to everyone.  As they chatted, I thought about all the sacrifices I had to make to get her to Mass.  My mother does not drive so she wouldn't be able to go to church if it wasn't for me.  When she walks with her cane, she also grabs onto my arm for stability.  (God forbid the elevator is out of order at our parish because then it means a long slow climb up and down several stairs.)  Our priest enjoyed his little chat with my mother while completely ignoring me and as he continued to heap praise on her I felt like saying, “What am I?  Chopped liver?”
 
Often, it's the caregivers who are invisible.  We put in a huge effort to help our loved-ones maintain some quality of life but most people tend to see only the sweet old lady courageously sitting in the pew.  The trouble with the narrative my priest shared during his sermon was that it left out all that I have lost but this isn't the first time a man of the cloth has ignored the whole truth for the sake of a good story.
 
When I attended St. Mary Star of the Sea parish in Beverly, one of our pastor's favorite words during a sermon was “edify.”  If there was a large crowd at Mass, it edified him.  If he saw an elderly couple who had been married for 50 years sitting in the pews, it edified him.  If he saw lots of children and families at Mass, it edified him.  But in those same pews were the lonely, the depressed, and the people whose faith was threadbare.  Adding us to his narrative would cast too much of a dark cloud on his rosy vision of our parish so we became invisible.  This only increased our sense of alienation.
 
The next week, my priest again talked about the suffering some people endured with another knowing glance toward my mother.  Afterwards, he thanked her for her sacrifice but this time, I spoke up saying that I too had to sacrifice to get her to Mass.  He was so focused on my mother, he didn't seem to understand what I was saying.  I added, “Sacrificing is fine but people also have to live their own lives.”  My words seemed to fall on deaf ears.  Guess that narrative was too much of a dark cloud.

Caregiving for me means that I live at home with my mother which makes my value on the dating scene quite low.  I have a menial job just to be close to home and when I'm not working, my life is a blur of countless doctor's appointments for her.  As I sit in waiting room after waiting room, there never seems to be any women my age around, just the miserable sight of elderly and / or obese patients I call the walking wounded.
 
There are the big things that take an emotional toll like seeing my mother fall and not being able to lift her back up, trips to the emergency room in the dead of night, realizing that her time on this earth is winding down with each passing year, seeing her cry because she is so frustrated by all of her physical ailments.  Then there are the small things I have to endure like not being able to go away on long road trips, having to turn my headphones down really low just so I can hear her calling me, emptying her commode, accidentally seeing her partially clothed when she changes into a hospital gown, worrying if I will find her in distress when I come home from work.  This way of life certainly doesn't give me that many moments of joy to call my own.
 
My mother's difficulty walking made it necessary for me to accompany her to a recent eye doctor appointment.  Instead of hanging out in the waiting room or in these socially distant times, waiting in my car, I sat in a small chair across from the examination chair.  For the first time, I saw her much-talked-about but never seen doctor who turned out to be an attractive Asian woman in her 40s.  Not once during this appointment did she look at me or even acknowledge my presence.  It wasn't until she was on her way out the door that my mother said, “This is my son.”  She briefly glanced over and said hi as she left.  Invisible indeed.
 
While on my way out to the car, I asked about the doctor and my mother said, “She's married with kids.”  I added, “Of course.  Any beautiful, successful woman would be.  Guys like me don't stand a chance.”  For the rest of the day, my mother had trouble seeing things and when she dropped her glasses on the carpet, the frustration to even perform small tasks got to her.  With tears in her eyes she asked, “How much more of this can a person take?”  It's a question I find myself asking God a lot.