The Patriarch of my mom’s side of the family passed away yesterday. He was quite old, and lived an extraordinary life. A Monsignor and pastor at a church for decades, he touched thousands. His funeral will be next week.
My personal relationship with him is a tricky one. Priests in the family mean that every sacrament are delivered by him. This was the case with me (except for Reconciliation, thank God) so when it came time to get married, and I wasn’t getting married in the church, he wasn’t pleased. He sent a pissed RSVP letter back, saying he wouldn’t be there. Then I heard he was going to be there. Then he had another obligation, and couldn’t make it after all. I missed him there, even if he wouldn’t have been performing the function.
I guess the lesson here is that he was always sort of a Patriarch and a Priest. Never really an Uncle. Not like every other Uncle I have. Not even like his brother, who passed away in the past few years as well. I’ve lost a set of Grandparents, the very siblings of this Uncle, and don’t find myself stricken with grief. He had been on a decline, of course, but I just don’t know.
The funeral should be a helpful experience, but then I don’t know how therapeutic it will be, as everyone and their mother and their mother’s Priest and the Priest’s Bishop and the Bishop’s Cardinal (this is NOT an exaggeration, a Cardinal will be performing the mass) will be there, making the experience a little less intimate and personal.
I think those last 9 words sum up my feelings on the Catholic Church.
Somehow I’ve found it difficult to be grief-stricken about the death of a really old person. I’ve also noticed that Catholic funerals don’t seem to be at all intimate. They are just mass with a point in the middle where some words are said about the person who died. I want more than that.