For the Repose of the Souls

Remembrance of Awakened Birds

“The pungent oranges and bright, green wings

Seem things in some procession of the dead,

Winding across wide water, without sound.” — Wallace Stevens

My life is very different than once it was. 

Growing up, there were three holidays throughout the year when I would leave my local terrain and come into contact with a greater whole. 

This was because of six specific people. On my mother's side, two great-grandparents and four grandparents. On my father's, a grand-mother and an aunt and uncle. 

These people are gone now. While they lived, there were three important holidays when everyone local to the extended family would congregate: Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas (and sometimes New Year's Eve). 

In between were birthdays and many other events. 

During this time, all of the "nuclear" families would come together to feast. 

Whatever strains I had with my parents or siblings was contextualized in a greater, extended whole. 

For these hours, I was no longer merely my mother's son, but was also one of the cousins and one of the grandchildren. 

Just as I, individually, need to get "out of my head," so, too, my immediate family needed to get out of its. 

Each smaller family's particularity was set in harmony with the greater "tribe." We belonged, simply by default, as members of a vast group of people who had five to seven generations worth of history right here in the state. 

There were, in these spaces, members of various professions. All were what you would call "working class," but each had a different set of responsibilities and skills which contributed uniquely to the distributed cognition. 

At three significant times in the Earth's cycle, these candles would contribute to a central flame. 

This has all been gone, now, for over a decade. The reason? Death. 

All is gone, but not lost. For we have today, All Souls Day. 

This is the day when we can remember the dead, and even pray for them. 

I can, of course, do this at any time. Still, it's nice to have a specific day to do it. 

I can, of course, participate with local aunts and uncles to try to create some other variant of the gatherings, although they will not be the same. 

People live elsewhere, now. And "afflictions bow [them] down to earth." 

I can, of course, embody the aspects of these characters souls which yet live. The wisdom and humor, the solid sense of duty and responsibility, and — perhaps most of all — the love. 

“A part of labor and a part of pain,

And next in glory to enduring love,

Not this dividing and indifferent blue.” — Wallace Stevens

In Catholicism, we pray "for the repose of the souls" of those departed. Part of how I do this is by celebrating the aspects of these Souls which still live in my own person and in the persons of others. 

I fail at this daily, but each morning I awake again with the aspiration to try. 

Imagining all of these Souls in a happy state, I turn from the isolation of my age toward the greater Age of ages. 

And I am Loved. 


With Adoration and Affection, 

Aaron