Kathy Ewing

Today I attended a funeral mass celebrated by a priest who has lived and worked in the same neighborhood for over thirty years. Four generations of the family were present, and the priest knew them all. He knew the great-grandmother who was being buried at the age of 92, her daughter disabled by a stroke, her granddaughter, and her great-granddaughter, a lovely girl of college age.

He had spent the preceding days visiting the hospital and sitting with the family as they decided to remove the ventilator that was keeping the woman alive. He was there and prayed with them when the ventilator was removed. He met with the family to plan the funeral. And he had met with the elderly woman more than once, discussing illness and end-of-life matters, but mostly joking and cheering up and telling stories.

In his homily, the priest referred directly to the great-granddaughter’s birth, saying that he knew the family before she was around. Everyone had been so excited, he said, anticipating her birth and wondering what she would be like. Her great-grandmother’s death was a little like that, he said. It was a great labor, like the labor of giving birth. It was a labor that all of us, even the men, would have to undergo. And it was also similar, the priest said, that in that final labor we give birth to our true selves.

At the end of the homily, he hesitated for a moment and then commented on the travails of several generations living in the same house, as this family had done for many years. He himself had grown up in his grandparents’ house. Sometimes he would hear other kids talking about the fun they had visiting their grandparents for holidays, and he would smile ruefully. Not quite the same thing, when your grandfather had yelled at you that very morning for stepping on his well-manicured lawn. Such a living arrangement creates inevitable tensions, and the priest knew that this family had endured some of these tensions. So, he advised, let all those grievances go, if any are still nagging at you. The person who has passed has let them go, so we should do the same.

All these gentle remarks the priest was able to make because he knew the family and had known them for decades.

Caleb Morris & Fr. Dan Begin

Now, as the Cleveland Diocese “reorganizes,” this priest may be removed from this neighborhood, where he knows literally hundreds of families, their family stories, the relations, the histories, the tragedies, and all the rest.  He may be moved so far away that he’ll be unable even to attend the weddings and funerals and baptisms in this neighborhood.

Instead, the families will probably have to rely on strangers — unfamiliar priests, no doubt kind and well-intentioned, who will administer the sacraments and perform the rituals as well as they are able. But they won’t be able to say they baptized your mother, or that they married your parents and your aunts and uncles, or that they sat by your great-grandmother’s deathbed and remembered the day you were born.

I just became aware of a weird habit that may be unique to me but probably isn’t.

First, I should explain that when we attend plays and concerts, we usually buy cheap balcony tickets. Touring company actors and concert soloists are generally unfamiliar to me and also several miles away, so I have no idea what they really look like.

Too far away to see clearly,  my vision muddled by foggy contacts, I involuntarily metamorphose each performer into someone familiar. I envision them as someone famous whom (I fancy) they resemble. I do this subconsciously.

For example, at Cosi Fan Tutte this week, we sat in the tippy-top seats of Severance Hall. Though we had brought both my grandmother’s little opera glasses and our whopping binoculars, I didn’t use them much. (Veering from the stage to the supertitles induces vertigo, I discovered).

Not Married to Matthew Broderick

So the little soprano playing Despina, the maid, became Sarah Jessica Parker in my eyes. She didn’t take on any other SJP qualities (except maybe a little spunkiness), so if you don’t like SJP, this transference had nothing to do with her really.  The singer just seemed, at an immense distance, a similar body and facial type. In fact, as I discovered later looking at her photo, Martina Jankova looks nothing like Sarah Jessica Parker, but I had someone to visualize during the show. Invariably, when I look the headshots in the program, I see how far off I have been.

Tonight at a Cleveland State Orchestra concert, the tall handsome student-clarinet-soloist became a Ben Affleck sort of person.

I didn’t even know I was doing this until, after seeing the musical Young Frankenstein, I said to my husband that the actress playing Inga, the blonde bombshell, reminded me of Victoria Jackson, formerly of Saturday Night Live. I didn’t mention that I was actually picturing Victoria Jackson whenever Inga appeared on stage.

He looked at me blankly. “She didn’t look anything like Victoria Jackson,” he said. When I checked out the actress Anne Horak’s picture, I saw he was right. The two merely share blondeness, but the faulty image served me just fine in the performance.

Does anyone else do this?

Say what you will, the snow (it’s still coming down!) is really beautiful.

It wakes up our old dog Shucks. He drags himself around the house on his arthritic legs, but outdoors in this weather he trots and even runs! You can see him here.

He digs his face deep into the snow to sniff, just like when he was a puppy, and raises his head with a neat ridge of snow balanced on his snout.