Monthly Archives: May 2012

I promised I would tell about my angels and this remarkable story.

When my mother (Helen), age 92, fell and was sent to Emergency (see earlier post), I realized that she would need to go to Assisted Living. While she had lived on her own terms, independently, for over thirty years, I could not trust that she would survive another six months without direct oversight. Such supervision was not something I could provide, nor could my sister.

I also realized I could not make these huge decisions for my mother on my own. I felt overwhelmed. So I doubled my morning and evening prayers, with an emphasis on worship and adoration, recently having read that this kind of prayer allows God to work within me, guiding my choices.

I sensed the clock was ticking. The skilled nursing facility could only look after her for a limited number of days, and I would need to provide a place for my mother to live with assistance. I was told that they would give me only two days’ notice of her discharge. I wondered how to go about this, and in spite of my prayers, which became nearly ongoing, I tried not to panic.

I met with several eldercare counselors and they helped me with a list of facilities close to my home. I soon began tours – three local Assisted Care facilities, all excellent, but each having  some kind of drawback. I decided that the third residence was the best and I was ready to sign papers to secure a studio for Mother.

Then I tracked down Ginny, Mother’s best friend.

After checking on Mother in the nursing facility the first day, I went to her home to listen to phone messages and look over her apartment. The only personal message was from Ginny, a longtime friend. They had lost touch when she had moved to Assisted Living over a year earlier. “I guess,” my mother often said with great sadness as though accepting fate, “that’s the last I’ll see of Ginny.”

So, when I heard Ginny’s crackly humorous voice on Mother’s voicemail, I thought, what a time to be calling. It appeared from the date on the answering machine she called soon after my mother fell. She could not have known about the accident. She said something like this:

“Well, you probably wonder why the hell I’m calling after all this time, but I just wanted to know how you are… would  you please call me, I have the same number…”

She sure sounded like Ginny (whom I have had the great joy of meeting over the years).

I made a mental note to contact her, but continued with my search for a facility, all the time thinking about the call. Finally, I dialed the number.

“Where are you?” I asked, curious.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Something to do with Pleasant Hill.”

“That’s okay, I’ll find you.”

As I was touring the other residences I kept thinking of Ginny. Eventually I tracked her to a place in Pleasant Hill, Chateau III, about fifteen minutes from my home.

I was nearly ready to sign papers on the third residence I had toured, but as I reported to Mother in the nursing home the latest turn of events, the phone rang. Mother looked confused, and I searched for the phone, buried in a drawer. I grabbed it and pressed the red button. It was Ginny. I handed the phone to Mother. Her face lit up.  It had been, after all, over a year, I thought.

So Ginny had called two times out of the blue. The coincidence was too much to ignore. I decided that I should at least see where Ginny lived before settling on the other residence. So I scheduled a tour for the following day.

In the morning I met with one of the staff, Lisa, who informed me, her eyes wide, that the only studio available was next door to Ginny. (I had told her the story.)

As I absorbed this third great coincidence, I figured the angels were batting me with their wings. This had to be the place for Mother. Two oddly timed calls, and now the only studio available was next door to my mother’s best friend, whom she hadn’t seen in over a year.

Angels or coincidence? My prayer life had not ceased, and this clearly seemed to be a heaven-sent message.

“Would you like to see the studio?” Lisa asked.

I nodded, stunned.  I can’t believe this, I thought.

It was a lovely spacious room, looking out on leafy shade trees. I couldn’t decide, it was so amazing.

As Lisa led me back to the lobby to sit down and give me all the information about the residence, I asked, “Could I visit Ginny?”

“Of course! She doesn’t take part in anything, you know, she stays in her room, even for meals.”

I wondered about that as we knocked on her door.

Soon I was standing by her bed. It was noon and she had not gotten up, but had chosen to spend the morning reading. She recognized me, and was delighted, as was I. We chatted a bit and I said what did she think about my mother moving in next door?

Her face lit up just like Mother’s.

“You know,” she said with a wink, “I don’t like to go downstairs for meals, but I just might with Helen here!”

“Good,” I said. “She’s moving in.”

We’ve sinced move some furniture in and await Mother’s discharge from skilled nursing. One big decision behind me.

Today, on the Feast of Pentecost, when we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples, giving them power to proclaim the love of God to everyone, I am again stunned by how very much God loves us, and how active He is among us. He watches every moment in our lives. As long as we are open to Him. As long as we are faithful in our prayers and give Him a chance to enter our lives. As long as we worship and adore, as His Body the Church.

And I give thanks to the angels who keep brushing me with their wings.

I haven’t posted recently because my mother fell.

My mother, ninety-two with little skin on her athletic bones, lay on the rug in her home for four days before she was found, sucking on a towel she dipped in the toilet for water.  She survived, amazingly, at the age of ninety-two, with no broken bones, but many bruises. What did she think about, we asked, during this ordeal?  Earthquake survivors, she said, all those people who managed to hold on.

She was found by her housekeeper who called 911.

I was out of town, in Rome, when I got the call. It was four days before we could return home, and I monitored the hospital progress, then the skilled nursing progress. My sister helped from LA.

My mother was and is an independent woman, who refused to wear her MedAlert and to take the daily check-up phone call offered. But she lived as she demanded to live. It was her choice.

So now I oversee her healing, checking daily on her needs, and arranging for an assisted living situation for her.

We returned from Rome and after checking on her and holding her and comforting her as best I could, I went to her apartment. I was overwhelmed. Here, I knew, is where she lay, her legs torn and bloody, waiting for help, and I was so far away. Was it my fault? I walked through the rooms, saw the blood on the carpet. Others had bundled the soiled linens they found wrapped about her, others had taken her on a stretcher in the ambulance. Her neighbor had watched her go, placing a hat over her eyes to shade her face. She was alert. I was not there.

I moved through the rooms, through the space that held furniture from my past, surrounded by the photos of my childhood, my father and mother’s early life, those black and white hopeful images. He wore his Navy uniform, just discharged, having served in World War II in the South Pacific. She wore a tailored blouse, her hair curled, her young face hopeful. They were married soon, and I was born two years later. They had met through friends in college, but courted through the vagary of wartime letters, and the wedding when he arrived on shore was hasty, my grandmother preparing them a special wedding breakfast. They wanted to marry, begin their life together, to forget war.

They did live their life together, a life of joy and suffering, of happiness and sorrow, of peace and turbulence. They moved through the perfect fifties into the tumultuous sixties and on into the liberating seventies. Families were torn apart in those days, but my parents managed to stay married until my father died in 1981 of ALS.

So my mother lived alone for thirty-one years. That’s a long time, I think, but she managed with style and verve. She liked her independence and she liked living alone, choosing her society, keeping life on her terms. But now, she says, she is ready to be cared for, ready to retreat a bit.

So I walked the rooms of her home and absorbed the voices from the walls, the memories of times spent with her here over the years, the conversations, the laughter, the photos of my sister and her growing family, the photos of my son and his growing family, the older photos of me with crooked teeth and a strange haircut in fifth grade.

London, Paris and Rome receded from my memory, but the glorious visions of God in the churches returned occasionally to comfort me. The angels were near, but I did not know it then. The angels since that day have guided me, hovering close, and they want me to tell you about it.

So, soon I will.

The last few days in Rome sped by in a whirl of color, image and song:

Finding Santa Croce closed (we were too late), after visiting Maria Maggiore, we continued up the wide park-path to the St. John Lateran and soon found the road barricaded by police. Loudspeakers blared. As we approached, we recalled it was May 1, May Day, the national day of strikes and union demonstrations for much of Europe. This year the demonstrations were held in front of the Lateran where an amphitheater had been erected to the left of the basilica. The throng was thick, boisterous but orderly, with a strong police presence. I recalled that the church has been named “the Roman people’s church” so it was appropriate that such a gathering took place here. But we could see it was not a day to visit St. John Lateran, so we worked our way through the light rain back to our hotel, stopping for lunch at Le Caveau, a charming neighborhood restaurant serving a reasonable daily menu.

We did eventually revisit San Giovanni Laterano, with the wonderful leaping apostles along the sides of the nave and the heads of Saints John and Paul in the canopy over the high altar. The church is a feast for the senses and a joy for the lover of history, as well as a setting for my new novel, The Magdalene Mystery. As part of my research we visited the cloisters, making more historical discoveries, solving more puzzles.

Another day we visited Il Gesu, the first church of the Jesuits. St. Ignatius of Loyola lived in the rooms next door and his remains are in an urn in a side chapel. There is a stunning chapel off the north transept with a street Madonna brought inside for protection, the Madonna della Strada, who comforts me each time I visit, and I have read that she comforted St. Ignatius as well.  Like Maria Maggiore, this Madonna is a humble one, glorified in this golden church. I love the glorification of humility.

Near Il Gesu is Santa Maria sopra Minerva, built over the old Roman Temple to Minerva, another example of the Christianizing of the pagan. Today in this magnificent church of blue domes, it is good to pay a visit to St. Catherine of Sienna, whose relics lie under the high altar. A third order Dominican, she spent her last years here in the convent attached.  The façade of the church may seem austere, but inside the starry domes presage heaven.  Fra Angelico’s tomb is in the north transept, alongside another stunning Madonna and Child. The church holds many other treasures as well.

In the same neighborhood is La Maddalena, at the top of my list, but with opening times only morning and late afternoon, it took some scheduling to visit. (Also true of Il Gesu, but Sant Maria sopra Minerva is open all day, as is Saint John Lateran). This church, of course, is one of the settings of my new novel, The Magdalene Mystery, and it was so good to have the chance to revisit, and check my original impressions for details. The church is a perfect Baroque jewel, and this time most scaffolding was removed, the restorations complete. The glorious golden organ loft, the miraculous crucifix off the south transept (through which Christ spoke to Saint Camillus) and the lovely carved Magdalene to the side are all surprise joys.

It was fitting that we were able to visit Sant’ Agostino on the feast day of Saint Augustine’s mother Monica and pay honor to her relics there. Such a mother, to have so gently converted her son, and such a son to have become one of the great Church Fathers. The church was lovely, and I made sure to say a prayer before the Madonna of Childbirth in the back of the church. In our world there seems to be little respect for the unborn, and even less respect for mothers or their vital vocation in our culture.

A  highlight of many highlights this week was an unexpected delight, as often happens when one enters a church in Rome. We visited the French church near the Piazza Navona, San Luigi dei Francesi (Saint Louis of the French). I recalled that there was a famous painting there – St. Matthew by Caravaggio – in the north transept. But I wasn’t prepared for the organist practising Bach.  The notes filled the space, soared through the gold and white vaults, and we paused, resting in a pew, being restored by the notes filling our ears and senses.  This is one of the pleasures of visiting churches in Rome – the sudden fullness of sound in a glorious and holy place, unbidden, graciously given. We left smiling, a bit teary at such a great and unexpected gift.

We couldn’t leave Rome without heading to the quiet, green Aventino district where palaces became churches in the fifth century. We wanted to revisit the fifth-century basilica of Santa Sabina, built over an earlier house church. Santa Sabina is home to the Dominican College; St. Dominic resided and St. Thomas Aquinas visited.  I included a scene in Pilgrimage where Madeleine describes the profession of young nuns at Santa Sabina:

Tall Corinthian columns lined the bright and airy basilica, towering over the congregation assembled in the long nave. Elena and Cristoforo knelt in the front with others from the convent. We found seats in the back as ten white-robed Dominicans entered from the north aisle and circled the altar.
Parts of the church dated to the fourth century. Like Roman ghosts, the old stones carried into the present that other terrible time, a violent time, a time of torture and execution by crazed emperors, a time of slaughter and pillage by savage tribes.
Today, before the novitiates took their vows, the Eucharist would be offered just as it had been then; the infinite would enter the finite, as God gave us himself in the humble bread and wine. Banning the pagan ghosts of the past, this transformation ensured a new way, a way of redemption. Chants echoed from an upper balcony as today’s light streamed through clerestory windows onto yesterday’s fluted columns. The church danced to the counterpoint of time.
The young women in white blouses and black skirts, their faces partially veiled, sat in the front row, their friends and family behind them. Each girl approached the altar, spoke her vows before the bishop, kissed his ring in obedience and respect, and returned to her seat, glowing. Carlina, tears of joy streaking her face, smiled to us as she rose. Jack took my hand, squeezed it, reached for his handkerchief, and dabbed his eyes. The girls sang a lilting melody, and their song floated high through the upper windows and over Rome. Surely, the angels sang too.
I reached for Jack’s hanky.

(There is also a lovely gift shop off the courtyard).

And nearby is San Allessio, with it’s amazing tale of a boy coming home and living under the stairs (you can see the actual stairs from the Roman times), and also where a haunting Madonna adorned the south transept chapel.

Further up the road in this quiet Aventino district of Rome is San Anselmo, home to Benedictines who sing the offices, and a popular wedding venue.  Tall cypresses and a long drive, a lovely porticoed narthex.  The keyhole through which you can see St. Peters is nearby.

From the high Aventino we descended stairs (to the right of Santa Sabina’s orange garden) to the Tiber, walked along the river to the ancient footbridge, Ponte Fabricio, another setting in The Magdalene Mystery. Crossing over, and passing under another lovely street Madonna, we visited San Bartolomeo, where the relics of the apostle Bartholomew (Nathaniel) rest under the high altar.

San Bartolomeo is home to the young people’s community of San Egidio, who do mission work for the poor. Present now throughout Italy, they have revitalized the young Catholic community with service to the poor and daily evensong. The church is as I recalled – three vaulted aisles, but still intimate and ancient, charming. The relics of the apostle lay in an ark under a slab, creating the altar. Primitive and touching.

And there are great photos from the bridge, up and down the raging current pouring around the island, Isola Tiberina. One of these days we will make it across to the other side, to Santa Cecelia, worth a visit for the mosaics.

We planned to pack our bags the day before leaving for home on an early morning flight, but I wanted to donate a few more copies of Pilgrimage to the American Church, Santa Susanna, for their library, so we stopped in at the 6:00 anticipated Saturday Mass. Such a beautiful church, but to be there during a mass, with full organ and Easter Alleluia hymns, was a true blessing, so glorious. And Father Greg was most gracious in accepting my little novels.

A magnificent last few days in Rome.

And while we didn’t actually throw coins in the Trevi Fountain, a handsome waiter sang “Three Coins in the Fountain” at our table one balmy evening in a neighborhood trattoria (Vladimir’s near the Via Veneto), so maybe that counts. We now know we will some day return to this magical, mystical, and marvelous Roma!

Ciao, Roma…. only for now.

We arrived in a taxi at breakneck speed as though the driver was practicing for Monte Carlo. Within minutes it seemed we were circling the Coliseum, maneuvering through narrow one-way alleys, cutting in and turning and nearly skimming cars alongside, then up the Via Tritone, pass the Barbarini Piazza, and around to our hotel not far from the Borghese Gardens. The driver sported ear-rings, and manically grasped the wheel with tattooed arms. His biceps were scarred, whether from knife wounds or burns I could not tell.  No seat belts in the car.  I tried not to worry, and in any event, we made it, arriving with screeching breaks.  My husband, usually a cautious man, surprisingly said, “He did an excellent job, going the most direct route.” I just looked at him quizzically as he praised our driver and gave him a hefty tip.  The young man grinned and I was relieved.

Rome is a city of contrasts.  Opinions are heated, loves are joyous, hates are intense. Perhaps it is the colors of the sunshiny days, the energy of the city of scooters and artists, of opera singers in small restaurants singing Three Coins in a Fountain to you at your table. Perhaps it is the deeply religious Catholic life of childhood if not of adulthood and the abundantly sensuous life of adulthood if not childhood. Everything is embraced with gusto.

The Americans left their mark here during and after the war, and American Bars are common in this grateful Italy. For our troops swooped up from the south and freed this country of poets and painters and sculptors from a misleading dictatorship of cruelty. We, in the end, won the war which became theirs as well. So Italians for the most part are friendly to Americans visiting their paradise.

I love the churches in Rome. There are nearly five hundred I am told, but I am so enthralled with the main ones I spend my time devising routes to revisit them all. I shall never get through the five hundred.

Tuesday we visited Santa Maria Maggiore, the international Marian church, housing a piece of Christ’s cradle and an incredible Madonna and Child reputed to have been painted by St. Luke. The ceiling is gilded in gold from the new world of America. the church is a setting for my first novel,Pilgrimage, and my novel in progress, The Magdalene Mystery. InPilgrimage, Madeleine says:

Mary Major stands on a vast square on the Esquilino Hill. Legend says it snowed on the site in August of 352, a rare occurrence. When the Virgin Mary appeared to Pope Liberius, commanding him to build a church within the boundaries of the snowfall, he obeyed. Since then, every August 5 in the Ceremony of the Snow, white petals shower from one of the cupolas onto the congregation.
We crossed a broad parvis and climbed massive stairs. Opening a heavy door, we paused in the narthex. A long straight nave led to a gleaming altar and glittering apse. Forty marble columns ran up the side aisles marking the two hundred feet to the altar.
I stepped into the nave, leaving the dark entrance and turning toward the light apse and its canopied altar. Circular marble tiles covered the floor, and, at the far end, the apsidal mosaic showed Christ crowning his mother. The entire ceiling was coffered in gold—American gold, I recalled, brought back from the New World. Behind me, Jack checked his guidebook as he studied a row of mosaics high on the side walls. Pilgrims and tourists milled about; some sang hymns, some knelt in prayer.
We reached the end of the nave and descended curving stairs to a shrine in the confessio beneath the high altar. Whose relics lay here? Mary’s body was never claimed; many believe she was taken bodily into heaven, a miraculous event called the Assumption.
“It’s the Christmas crib, the manger cradle,” Jack said.
Inside a glass ark topped by a cherub rested a small piece of wood. Behind us was an oversized statue of a pope kneeling.
“Now I understand,” I said, half to myself, “why this church was first on the list.” Here was the beginning of God’s great act for man, his momentous intersection in man’s time, the birth of his Son, the God-man, in a manger. The child became a man, died and rose from the dead, fulfilling ancient Jewish prophecy. My own loss seemed insignificant in comparison, yet just as real. Maybe I was to take my grief seriously and not to overlook the small, the humble, the seemingly little things of our world. Maybe there were no little things.       Pilgrimage (OakTara, 2007)

So we returned to Maria Maggiore, and all was the same – the stunning nave, the Madonna in the side altar. But alas, the Christmas crib had been removed for restoration. Even so, we stepped through the adoring crowds, some singing, some attending masses in side chapels, praying for our world, our parish, our communities, our families, and our friends. There is always a list, I thought, with some more urgent matters moved to the top, and this was true this first day in Rome.

I gazed upon St. Luke’s Madonna and gave thanks, and in the thanks, began to adore her son in the tabernacle beneath, and within the adoration understood my imperfections and unworthiness. I began to love. For it is only in recognition of our smallness, I suddenly realized, our failures, that we can understand what it is to love. For love comes from an emptying, and then a filling, and then an emptying for the beloved.

We left Maria Maggiore and headed up Via Contra Verdi to Santa Croce, to the Basilica of the Holy Cross.