Sunday Night Thoughts

Last Saturday Wifeofdadwithnoisykids and I had to pick up some clothes for the little children; they needed something nice to wear to the Viewing on Tuesday, and something more formal to wear to the Funeral on Wednesday. We went to a mall in Dallas - one full of nice stores and beautiful people. The kind of place where Theodore would have a blast shaking everyone's hand.

It was getting late, so we dropped into a restaurant in the mall to grab some food before picking up relatives at the airport. While our waiter tried to get us excited about eating lots of good Mexican food, we alternately talked about Theodore and tried to keep from crying. I am sure our waiter thought we were going to leave him a small tip.

Anyway, my wife mentioned to me that she did not know how we were going to go on without Theodore. I told her we would just have to simply 'go on.' We would just have to keep going on with our daily activities despite the pain and sorrow which have become our constant companions. Kinda like this dude; we put one foot in front of the other:



Rankin/Bass were truly deep philosophers.

This has been the case over the past 10 days. Up until the end of the funeral luncheon, we had something to do, some task to look forward to(sort of). But after Wednesday night, there was nothing else that had to be done.

I take that back. I had to start paying the bills for the funeral.

So for now we live our lives, trying to pray harder for our living children and trying to continue our daily routines. Some family from Michigan, including Wifeofdadwithnoisykids' favorite older sister, will stay on for a while. Sleep is hard to come by, and the simplest things cause my wife and I to suddenly burst into tears - the Consecration seems to cause a lot of tears, probably because I am used to Theodore sitting on my right side at Mass. The holy water bucket brought tears to my eyes, when I recalled how Theodore didn't like getting sprinkled with Holy Water during Asperges. Father P. would allow him to dip a finger into the bucket to get a drop of Holy Water to bless himself.

Ketchup, Theodore's favorite vegetable, reminds me of him.

I was reminded of a book I reviewed here in August 2006: Cry, The Beloved Country, by Alan Paton. In brief, the book relates the story of two men, two fathers; one(Jarvis) is the father of a man who was murdered, and the other(Kumalo) is the father of the murderer. After reading the book, I figured I needed to do what i could to keep my children from becoming like Kumalo's son. It never even dawned on me that I could end up in Jarvis' shoes.

Jarvis's son was a brilliant writer; Theodore was an artist.

In the book, Mrs. Jarvis is given some form of sedative to help her deal with her son's death. While I can see where this may help, I would prefer to not have any kind of pharmacological relief from the pain that is in my heart. Right now my heart is broken from the loss of my son, but in a strange way experiencing the loss, pain and sorrow that come with this mourning is part of Theodore's life. Even though he is dead, this pain is part of him that must be lived through, perhaps to firmly impress memories of him in my mind, my heart. Right now everything of Theodore's is precious, even the pain of his loss.

But I have to keep going on with the rest of my life. This song has run through my head over the past week. The words are listed below the video:



I'll look up while I'm walking
So the tears don't fall from my eyes

I think back to spring days
It's a lonely night

I'll look up while I'm walking
And count the scattered stars

I think back to summer days
It's a lonely night

Happiness is above the clouds
Happiness is above the sky

I'll look up while I'm walking
So the tears don't fall from my eyes

Even while I cry I walk on
It's a lonely night

Sadness is in the light of the stars
Sadness is in the light of the moon

I'll look up while I'm walking
So the tears don't fall from my eyes

Even while I cry I walk on
It's a lonely night
It's a lonely night