Mourning

Yesterday, I attended a Catholic funeral for the first time in my life; in fact, it was my first Catholic mass of any kind. It was a funeral for Adele, the mother of my former boss at the printing shop, Gerard. She was ninety-one years old, and she died last week in her sleep. I wrote about my relationship with funerals, incidentally, back in November, when I last attended one.

I was very moved by the ceremony—by the sprinkling of holy water and waving of incense over the casket (I spent many moments in my internal monologue contemplating the incense. Is there an official Catholic brand? Do all churches use the same scent? Surely this isn't the Nag Champa that hippies use, right? How far back does this tradition go? Is it borrowed from Asian incense ritual?*)

I liked the priest who presided over the ceremony—his energy was joyful, very down to earth, and he obviously had great respect for Adele, who had been a daily—that's right, daily—church attendee for at least the last thirty years of her life. There was an intensity in the church during communion, a very meditative energy, when everyone who was Catholic, or at least familiar with the ritual, got down on their kneelers and focused intently on the priest as he quoted from Scripture about the Last Supper (in my mind, I ran the script that the Last Supper was a Passover seder, and that the wafer was like matzo) when Jesus knew he'd be betrayed and killed, and instructed his disciples to eat and drink of his body and blood. Then the priest put the wafer to his tongue, and drank a generous gulp of wine, and everyone rose from their pews and formed a line down the middle aisle of the church.

I cried twice during the funeral, once as the family walked in with Adele's body—I could feel their grief like a wave moving over each pew as they passed. And I cried once during a song, as the organist accompanied from the balcony behind us. The rich tones of the organ and the voices of the congregation filled the church, and I looked up at the family in the front rows. Gerard's son had stood up with his baby nephew in his arms, to comfort the baby and try to alleviate some of his fidgeting. I thought about what a strong, dedicated family they have, how I'd met a lot of them in the four years I worked at the shop. I started thinking about how Natasha and I no longer share a life together, and I remembered that I'm in mourning, too. My face almost contorted before I allowed the tears to stream down, and my old co-worker, Carole, without missing a beat, and without, either, making a thing of it, handed me a tissue, which was pink.

• • •

Nat and I have been in some heavy negotiations over the last couple weeks. We've sent each other letters, and we met up last Saturday for some serious examination of what was not working in our relationship. It is just astounding to me how you can be with someone for five years and have excellent communication with them, and still, there's so much stuff you just bury and hope won't surface. Nat and I have differences between us that we've known from the very beginning, but as she said to me on Saturday, by the time we became seriously involved, our hearts were already locked in. How can you let differences that seem almost petty get in the way of love? And so you make a life with someone, your differences become your strengths. There are so many ways in which Nat and I are completely dissimilar, and those differences have enriched our relationship. I've helped her to take things a little less seriously, and she's helped me to become an adult. She's felt accepted and loved by my family and my community, and that has helped her begin to bridge her relationship with her own family. I've relied on Nat's amazing emotional acuity and support to help me confront very deep, old scars that I now feel less burdened by. Our distinct personalities lent to our ability to build an amazingly unique, independent, intimate relationship together.

And so, what of these incompatibilities that have sounded the end of our relationship as partners, as lovers? We've known them from the start. They never went away, but they shifted over years. We talked about some of them, we failed to talk about all of them. They grew more important. They became intractable. They started growing legs. People talk about the invisible elephant in the room—for me, it was invisible, but still on the edge of perceptibility. Natasha couldn't ignore it any longer; it was sitting in her lap.

• • •

I look up at the lectern and the stage where the priest is reading (we Jews call this area of the synagogue the bimah). Hanging on the back wall, high above the priest's head, there is an impressively large crucifix, I would say it is three feet wide by about five and a half feet tall. I study the form of Jesus, sculpted in a brown resin, hanging in agony on the birch wood cross. Despite all the problems I have with the institution of Christianity, and with the modern Catholic Church, I respect the traditional imagery of the pain and suffering of Jesus. It's all out there, to confront and to acknowledge. Life and death are about suffering and loss, but it's not beyond redemption.

The priest is talking about the coming of Jesus, about cups that runneth over and rods and staffs and stuff. I know it's the biggest cliché ever, but I'm sitting in a Catholic church—at a fucking funeral, mind you—thinking about sex, thinking about how kinky this whole thing is, and thinking about how I've realized of myself that I care much more about concepts of sex and talking about sex than I do about actually having it. I'm much more of a pervert in my own mind than I am in actuality. I'm stuck on a sexual path of my own making, and I don't know how to do it any other way. I'm a middle aged heterosexual man who can only do it in the missionary position (an apt pun, in this context) while I'm paying too much attention to the skirts walking by my window. It doesn't matter any more that I'm honest about it, that I'm not a cheater, that you get what you pay for with me. It doesn't matter how I got here, or why I am the way I am. What matters to me in this moment: is this how I am because it works for me, or is this how I am because I'm afraid of anything different?

_________________________________
*Timeline of incense use for ritual purposes:

• 5000 BCE - The Indian Vedas describe using incense in ritual
• 1530 BCE - Incense in wide usage for spiritual ritual in Egypt.
• 500 CE - Introduction of incense in Christian ceremony

R.I.P. Sergio
July 24, 1979 - March 3, 1995
On the tenth anniversary of your death (and owing to the fact that while I was thinking about loss and healing and sex in a Catholic church yesterday, I was also thinking about you) it is to you I dedicate this entry.

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