May 30, 2006 – The Rosary

May 30, 2006 – The Rosary

It’s Thursday afternoon, February 2, 2006, at 4:00 PM and I’m in Martin Funeral Home in El Paso, Texas on Montana Avenue as the public visitation for my mother Trinidad is beginning. Friends and family are assembled in one of two chapels in the funeral home. Ours is on the western end of the building nearest the intersection where Montana crosses Travis Street. The inside of the chapel is filled with two rows of long wooden pews. On television monitors at the front of the chapel a video loop is playing. It is showing the photographs of Mom, that my sisters and niece pulled from the family album accompanied by soothing music of no discernible artist. The family is seated in the pews at the left as you enter the chapel. Friends of the family are seated in the pews to the right. This order falls into disarray soon after the visitation begins as friends and acquaintances from times past gather to offer condolences and relive the past. A man of about the same age as my dad, his face chiseled by time and the experiences of a long life, partially hidden by a gray moustache, sits down beside my dad and says, “you remember me?” My father looks inquiringly at the fellow beside him, not sure what to say when suddenly recognition replaces the question in his face and my dad thrusts out his hand to grab the proffered hand of his companion. “How are you?” dad says. “I haven’t seen you in nearly 20 years.”

My dad introduces me to his friend, a work mate from his last job at ASARCO Smelting, and after I shake his hand, I excuse myself so the two of them can renew their friendship. Both my father and his friend worked at the smelter works from the late 1960s into the mid-1980s. This was during a time when the smelter was one of the worse polluter in the state of Texas. According to the El Paso City-County Health Department, between 1969 and 1971, the smelter emitted 1,012 metric tons of lead and was the principal source of particulate lead within a mile radius. Here the two of them were, seemingly none the worse for being exposed to all that hazardous waste—my father’s memory is far better than mine and his health for a man over 80 is pretty incredible. My father’s friend mentioned while I was still in earshot that he too had lost his wife a few years back. I walk away to let them commiserate.

I sit next to my middle sister LC who has been a cardiac nurse for most of her professional career. It had fallen to her to sort out the regime of medicines Mom was taking in her later years. LC was also the one who accompanied Mom to the hospital to sort out the medical mumbo jumbo about her heart ailments. Mom had a heart attack in 2001 and we had thought the worse but she pulled through. Since then she had been on a regimen of Coumadin (Warfarin Sodium Tablets), an anticoagulant to thin her blood. It was being administered to combat an atrial fibrillation—an irregular heartbeat that resulted from the earlier heart attack. Normally, atrial fibrillation would be treated by stopping and restarting the heart with a defibrillator but in my mother’s case, her doctor feared that the treatment might be fatal. (In her last hours, she had survived the procedure but died of an embolism in the recovery hours afterwards.) With Coumadin, dosing is complicated by its interaction with commonly used medications and other chemicals that may be present in food. To optimize the drug’s therapeutic effect without risking dangerous side effects such as bleeding, LC had to monitor the degree of anticoagulation by daily blood testing. The drug had other undesirable side affects, most noticeable a general tendency to bruise and bleed more easily.

LC and Mom had a strained mother-daughter relationship—each of my sisters and my niece who spent a great deal of her adolescence with Mom had their own unique mother-daughter engagement. LC and mom were both very strong-willed women and there was a tug of war that they both engaged in, each developing a respect for the other over time but each standing their ground as well. Over time the job of care giver and recipient changed with mom and LC reversing roles in later years. LC became the family cook at weekend gatherings first with Mom still preparing some of the meal or a special dish but eventually Mom surrendered it all to LC. The two were from two different worlds. Mom was and remained a pragmatist, a woman who saw life as a mechanical apparatus. You found levers that you used to get things done. Having lived through a war in an occupied country then giving over everything to leave that world and come to the new world only to find it as difficult and trying as the old one she had abandoned, Mom became expert at finding the right levers to exert her will.

By contrast, LC saw the world in black and white. Perhaps that is why she makes such a great cardiac nurse. For those recuperating from heart surgery, she provides a regime by which to live their lives to wring the most of the years they have left. She had imposed that regime on Mom and Mom had accepted it. The two of them were separated by their completely different view of life and neither could see through the other’s eyes. I could see that as LC and I sat and I asked her how she felt about Mom leaving us. LC felt abandoned and absent the closure she had sought throughout her relationship with Mom. It’s hard getting close to my sister LC. It’s hard seeing through her eyes no matter how hard I try. As she and I sat grieving, I kept probing asking her to let me inside and she kept coming close to opening up only to close down as I got near. In the end I settled for putting my arms around her and telling her how much I loved her. When words fail all you have left to convey thoughts and feelings is touch.

It had gotten that way between Mom and me in later years. I would call home. She would speak to me for a few minutes first asking about her great grandkids and grandkids. I would then ask how she was and how her friends in the Filipino community were doing. I could tell she was talked out after a few minutes on the phone and she would end it by calling Dad to the phone. Sometimes she would listen on an extension as the two of us chatted. With Dad, it was usually me asking a question and then listening for the next 15 minutes. She would listen when we talked about topics that engaged her but would hang up if we were going on about something that she had no interest in. I never quite knew when she was listening and when not, though on some occasions, she would ask a question after a lengthy silence. When I was at home, we would talk about things we had discussed countless times in the past: where my childhood friends were now, how many children each of them had, what the kids were doing, good and bad. When we had talked ourselves out, I would sit beside her on the couch and stroke her head or rub her small feet—she had such tiny feet—or hold her hand as she lay watching a continuous drone of Fox TV. She didn’t seem to be engaged in what was being broadcast but rather intrigued by the people appearing on the screen—the show and not the substance.

After LC and I had had a good cry, I said we should go to the open casket where Mom was all dressed up in her dress and jewelry. When we approached the casket, she and I both saw the shadow of the person we knew as Mom. When we last saw her in her hospital bed, she still had the appearance of a living being still warm to the touch though devoid of breath. Now as I touched the forehead of the form that lay in the casket, the warmth I had felt when she lay in her bed at the hospital Sunday night was gone. It was replaced by a cold that was eerie and unnatural. I kissed her forehead and told her I loved her hoping that the spirit that once resided within was within earshot. LC said it wasn’t Mom and I had to agree. It was her physical body bereft of the force that made her Mom. After that brief encounter, LC wandered off to spend time with our youngest sister DD. I was at a loss drifting in and out of conversations with my daughter ME and wife IM, sitting beside my father for a period after his friend had sat with him for the good part of an hour, speaking at length with a couple of friends I grew up with that I hadn’t seen in nearly 30 years.

One friend was WZ who I had first met in 1958 when his family and mine shared a large house in Lawton Oklahoma. WZ had an older sister and a younger brother. He and I were just 12 years old and we both had paper routes delivering papers on bicycles early in the morning then riding off to school afterwards. The thing about growing up in a military family is you get used to moving around after two to three years and forming friendships fast and forgetting them equally as quickly. He and I had a great time the year my family spent in Lawton. My father was stationed at Ft Sill, Oklahoma and Lawton was a picturesque 1950s town, four seasons, tree lined streets, neighborhoods of older wooden houses each different from the next. We didn’t live in the house our two families shared for long, several months at the most. Our family moved into a rental home in a new Levittown-like subdivision just outside the main downtown of Lawton and I lost daily contact with WZ though we saw one another on occasion. Our conversation this afternoon was about that part of a year and then moved on to the time we spent together in El Paso after both families had been relocated. Afterwards, I sat quietly as WZ related his years in the service telling me war stories of his years in the Air Force. I was the perfect audience for his monologue as I felt myself talked out. His words washed over me as a blanket of sound.

After WZ had finished his story, I sat for a while with my other childhood friend HR, who has lived next door to my parents off and on since he got out of the service in the late 1960s. HR and I had gone through high school together. He and I both had paper routes and we each owned Vespa Motor Scooters which we used for delivering papers. I left El Paso in my Junior year while HR went on to get his degree from Austin High School where we had spent our first three years together. After high school in 1963 HR went on to attend Texas Western College, which became University of Texas at El Paso just after Coach Don Haskins turned the TWC basketball team into the come-from-nowhere NCAA champs. HR was on the fast track for a brilliant career in business, while I had enlisted in the Navy. He had gotten his degree in 1967 and was enrolled in the management program at the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, Walmart for servicemen worldwide.

Then just before he began the program, he got drafted and thrown in the Army’s Officer Candidate School, where draftees with college degrees go. Something happened in OCS and HR flunked out and got fast tracked for Viet Nam as an enlisted man. He somehow survived got discharged with a full-blown case of post-traumatic stress disorder that completely destroyed any chance of him ever being a fully functioning member of society. He has spent the rest of his adult life on full disability from the U.S. Army going in and out of the VA Hospital in Waco, Texas with rhythmic regularity. Of all the people I’ve met in my life HR is the most fascinating character of the lot. When we were kids, I could look into his penetrating brown eyes and see a very intense being, someone wound so tight that the slightest disturbance would cause him to tear apart. I suspect OCS had been the catalyst and the resulting emotional wreck was shipped off to Viet Nam as fodder. How he managed to survive is anyone’s guess.

Among the members of the Filipino community, Mom and Dad were very close to the HR’s parents. His father, ER, was a jolly soul who always seemed to have a smile on his round face. HR’s mom, BR, was the complete opposite, a tall woman, taller than his dad and possessing a very stern visage that infrequently hosted a smile. If you looked into BR’s eyes, you could see that same intensity present in HR’s own stern penetrating gaze. BR died in the late 1980s. ER lived on into the new millennium. He was close to 100 years old. Several years before he died, Mom and Dad introduced him to NT, the widow of my mom's brother George. The two were married and BR spent his later years in marital bliss with a bride nearly 35 years his junior. I saw him shortly after he had gotten married and he had the look of a much younger man, his smiling face seeming to beam as he described the latest happenings in his life. HR had his issues with both his mom and dad, during his years growing up and in the years afterwards. It contributed to his emotional turmoil.

However, here at the Rosary, I saw an entirely different person. He seemed in control of his life for the first time. He had met BL, his new found love, and the two were making a life together. She had accompanied him to the service and we spoke briefly after HR and I had caught up on the latest happenings in his life, most centering around finding BL. I was taken with the complete change I saw in my childhood friend. How long this will last is anyone’s guess, but HR seems to want to wrest some measure of happiness from a life lived on an emotional rollercoaster of highs and lows, brought under control by a regimen of drugs. HR is such a sympathetic character because he has lived a completely alienated life. The man who seemed destined for a career in management in the corporate world of retail ends up after military service unable to hold down a nine-to-five job.

Shortly before the actual rosary service begins, RM our funeral home representative assembles us all in the conference room nearby the chapel that we’ve been using all week to speak with the minister, XM, who will be leading the rosary service. We find him in the conference room and he stands to greet each of us as we enter and take our seat at the conference table. He has a copy of the longer obituary that appeared in the El Paso Times today. Using this he asks us about Mom, her church activities, her community service, her time as a nurse's aide at Hotel Dieu, her volunteer work in the Filipino community, about her family in the Philippines. He concludes by asking us if there is anything we thought she would like for him to do and I see my youngest sister DD suppressing a laugh pretending it to be a stifled sob. We return to the chapel to await the beginning of the rosary service and as we take our seats in the pews reserved for family, I ask DD what she found funny in the discussion and she said that LC had whispered to her in response to XM question at the end, that Mom would like him to say the service in Tagalog, which caused both LC and DD to unleash the earlier suppressed laugh. I had to smile with them. We had made a mistake allowing a stranger to say the rosary. There were at least two priests who knew Mom well that we could have asked to read the service. They would not have said the service in Tagalog, but they would certainly know far more of our Mom’s life than XM.

As we sat waiting, SY who was sitting near by leaned over to the girls and asked what the words at the end of the video was supposed to mean. It was in Tagalog, she said but they didn’t make sense. We told her it meant “we love you.” SY smiled and said the construction was backwards and asked who we had written the phrase. We mentioned it was NT, to which there was another round of knowing smiles. It would become the inside joke among all the Filipinos attending the service.

With his limited knowledge of Mom, XM does a good job of leading the service. He begins with the Apostle’s Creed: "I believe in God the Father, Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost. I believe in the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen."

Starting from the cross XM leads us in the prayer on the first large bead "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, amen. After an anecdote from Mom's life he starts with the Catholic prayer "Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee, blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thou womb, Jesus." this is recited for the next three bead with the following intentions (the theological virtues): for the increase of faith, for the increase of hope for the increase of love, respectively. He next announces the mystery, this being Thursday, the Luminous Mysteries (added by Pope John Paul II). This is one of four mysteries, the other three being: Joyful, recited on Mondays and Saturdays; Sorrowful, recited on Tuesdays and Friday; and Glorious, recited on Wednesdays and Sundays. He follows this with a "Glory Be to the Father" on the next large bead accompanied by an "Our father. who art in heaven..."

On the Catholic rosary beads we have now reached the 50 beads grouped in sets of ten (a decade), with an additional large bead before each decade. For the Luminous Mysteries, the five decades correspond to (1) The Baptism of Jesus Fruit of the Mystery; (2) The Wedding at Cana Fruit of the Mystery; (3) The Proclamation of the Kingdom of God Fruit of the Mystery; (4) The Transfiguration Fruit of the Mystery; and (5) The Institution of the Eucharist Fruit of the Mystery. We begin moving along the right fork of the ring of beads with ten recitations of "Hail Mary, mother of God..." led by XM with anecdotal statements of Mom's life interspersed. We conclude the decade and begin the next with an “Our Father, ten Hail Marys, the Glory Be to the Father, and Fatima Prayer for each of the following four decades. The Fatima Prayer consists of a dialog between XM who says “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins.” We respond with “Save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of Thy mercy.” We conclude the five decades of prayer with “Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy! Our life, our sweetness, and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley, of tears. Turn, then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us; and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb Jesus; O clement, O loving, O sweet virgin Mary.” XM then says, “Pray for us, O holy Mother of God.” We respond with “That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.”

Unlike this evening, I’ve not recited the rosary like this since I was a prepubescent youth still attending Sunday services at Our Lady of Assumption Catholic Church in El Paso and then at the Catholic services held on base at Camp Losey and later at Fort Buchanan in Puerto Rico where our family was stationed after the Army closed Camp Losey. I lost my taste for organized religion in Oklahoma where I substituted Southern Baptist for Roman Catholic. Now, reciting the prayers I grew up with, I flashed back briefly to my innocence and a time when I believed unquestioningly everything the church told me. For a moment, too, I saw the world through my mother’s eyes. It was a nice view.