I have one more story to tell about February 3. I’ve been holding back on it, thinking that you’d be tired of it all by now, or that maybe there was more to it that might be illuminated with a few more days of reflection and living (as is often the case with me), but here we are, and I need to move on, so I’ll just tell it.
I did something that day I had not done during that whole preceding year – I swear. I mean – I swear.
After I met with the electrician, I went back to the apartment (we still hadn’t moved) and got ready for Mass and the rest of the afternoon. I had the Mass said at our parish that day for Michael, but their daily Mass is early, and I just couldn’t make it, and I’d also had asked for Mass to be said for him that day at the Cathedral, so I knew I would be there for that at noon.
I changed my clothes and contemplated the few items remaining on the bathroom counter. One of them was the bottle of his cologne. About two months after Michael died, my friend Dorothy came from Florida and we packed up and donated many of his personal things. I kept enough for his boys to get a sense of who he was – representative sports shirts and hats and so on – but didn’t cling to the rest. He wouldn’t want me to. But I did keep that bottle of cologne.
And that day, just before I left the apartment, I did that thing which I swear (I swear) I hadn’t done – I spritzed some of his cologne on me. Just one quick shot. Then off I went.
After Mass I was rather at sea. I was at a loss. I had a mess of feelings and no idea what to do with them.
So I headed up the road to the local crisis pregnancy center.
It is not as strange as it might seem.
Not only is it a place of life, to which perhaps I was instinctively drawn – I also knew that the chances were excellent that there would be at least one person there who knew and valued Michael, and God was good – there were two. Jim Pinto was there, as was Charles Gardner – Charles had actually come to Florida for the funeral. I went in, and I just cried, and they, both former Protestant pastors now Catholic, listened and prayed and listened some more. It seemed almost as if they were expecting me.
A terribly good day is what Jim kept saying about the Cross.
By then it was time to go to school and start picking up the boys. The way it works is that little Michael’s day is over first. I have to get him thirty minutes before Joseph is done.
So I went to school, walked up and fetched him.
The first thing he said to me once we were in the car, was,
“It smells like Daddy in here.”
He’s five. Just a little boy. He had not seen, been in the physical presence of his Daddy in a year.
I asked him, “Do you remember anything Daddy used to say to you?” He said no. I thought of what might be the most memorable thing, just because it was something Michael said all the time. “Do you remember how Daddy used to call you and Joseph ‘Brother?’” He didn’t remember. He couldn’t remember any words.
But he remembered a scent, a smell. It had stayed with him. One body had connected with his body and even after a year, he recognized it.
He remembered.
As I said, God is good.
God made us, God knows us, God knows what we know the most deeply.
A Body.
A terribly good day.
Do this in memory of me.
