Catharsis

When my grandmother died, her passing left a vacuum in the life of our family community.  I could not have possibly realized as a child the extent of the spiritual felicity that had poured forth from her nor the empty wake that her spirit’s absence would leave behind. 

She was so subtle, even artful. She had always held closely a laconic sort of devotion.  Her morning prayers consisted of quiet reflection as she sponged off the counter and poured coffee into stained mugs touting “Grandparents are a gift of LOVE” and “Gone Fishin’” and Raisin Brain into spotted bowls with a brown stripe circling the perimeter. 

She was routine, and she meant every moment of it, like she was polishing the streets of gold.  She did truly love Jesus.  But she wasn’t about to say anything to the point.  If you mean something, don’t press it.  If it’s true, we know.

Everyone in our family wanted to live life by her side.  She couldn’t have realized the treasures doled out by her mere presence.  She was not self-absorbed.  What a poignant expression of the great inversion of Christ.  Soon, that heritage would flow out of her, transfigured, that fallen vessel of clay. And then, we would all die with her. Metanoia.

One night I saw a vision.  I could only see brown and haze, but I could make out her figure.  Strange objects floated around her, her skin translucent from the glow that grew brighter through her limbs and head. 

Her veins could no longer channel blood that had spilled forth into crevices of tissue covering its inconsequentiality. Then, her whole cavity began to burst forth with refulgence, breaking from its steady courses and baptizing her in the reality that water can only impersonate. 

The angel hovering over her body began to cry, and the tears were being exchanged for her blood, which passed straight into the celestial personage. 

Then I saw its face, and my own eyes began to burn as in the light of a Spring day as the sun appears from behind a cloud.  The blood had crept across her heaviness and dread and swept upward, evanescing into the beauty of this inviolable creature, which sang its own elegy for that creature was she, rising further still.

She did not weep long, but she wept prodigiously, with the tenor of an angel.  She wept for DaddyTroy.  She wept knowing what he would long endure before coming after her.  But she would watch over him.  She wept, and her tears cleansed the dingy pale wrinkles below her.  And then, she ascended.