Ripples of shadows

Friday morning when I awoke, there was nothing to plan or do, no activity needed, no calls to be made. My Mother's Memorial service and the dinner for close friends and family in honor and celebration of her life were both Thursday, no longer in the future or the present. The day I was waking to was a day in which there was nothing, nothing at all, that needed me or my time. Nothing, that is, but me.

I gave the day to myself, to my heart, to my grief, to who I am. I relished the coffee and ignored the paper. The brown dog and I spent much needed sunshine time at our neighborhood park, she sniffing and exploring, and me looking at the sky and the trees, then closing my eyes and filling my lungs with the crisp morning air, and my mind with the the blue and gold and brown colors surrounding me.

When we returned home, I picked up my camera, remembered how good it feels in my hands, how familiar its shape. I got in my car and returned to the church where just the day before, I prayed and sang and celebrated and mourned my mother, formally. I wanted to return, informally, wanted to return to the halls and light and my faith without anyone there but me. I wanted to kneel in the quiet and peace of the chapel. And so I did. There on my knees, I prayed and I breathed, just breathed, and felt profoundly calm and at home.

My Mother and Father joined this church in 1955. It was one room then. My brother was baptized in that one room, we held the reception following our Mother's Memorial service in that room. We were raised in this church and over the years it has grown in both membership and architecture. It's quite grand now, and along its exterior facade is a brick with my parents' names engraved on its surface because they supported both faithfully and financially the growth and grandness of this once small church. But to me, it's the same church, the one in which I was baptized, the church of my Sunday School years, the church that held the first library I roamed, the chirch of the religion into which I was confirmed. To me this church is always as simple as I was told, the House of God. Today I visited His house and He welcomed there.

This is the church in which I was an infant held in my mother's arms as she celebrated her faith, in which I discovered my own faith, in which I've prayed and rejoiced beside my parents, and for my parents, and now, without my parents. The church that Friday afternoon I walked through by myself, but not alone. No, not at all alone.