Leaning on people I know I can trust to bear some of it with me.

I no longer have any favorite relatives, because each one who used to be a favorite has since made life decisions I judge to be wrong. – And there’s the rub–that judgment thing. Maybe it’s time I walk that back.

On an episode of the TV show “Malcolm in the Middle,” guest star David Cassidy once delivered a line that more or less went, “This moment is a gift. That’s why I call it “the present.” I love that pun. – If I believed every moment is a gift, I’d probably spend fewer of them watching reruns of “Malcolm in the Middle.”

My mother, deceased since 2009. It wasn’t an easy relationship, and sometimes I’m quite bitter about the sins that went both ways. But when I’m in a better place, I remember how hard she fought to provide for us after my parents divorced and my dad fell out of touch with us.

My maternal grandparents, too, who always had Mom’s back when she couldn’t quite keep it together herself.

I don’t remember a perfect day. But, feeling as I do that my levels of self-absorption border on narcissism, I believe that if I had one, it would have been a day in which I was so taken up by some wonderful something or someone outside me that I effectively forgot myself the whole day through.

The life, love and salvation I, who sins have made me chronically unworthy of them, nonetheless receive as a gift from the God the Father, His Son Jesus the Christ, and the Holy Spirit that proceeds from Them. I have become exceedingly convinced in recent years that by God’s mercy alone, I would have to go exceedingly far out of my way – into the most willful and final forms of blasphemy, in fact – to lose those.

By making a list of the tasks that show I’m engaged in the welfare and the interests of my wife and family, and then making substantial progress in getting them done. – Also, having been raised Catholic, by returning to the sacrament of reconciliation, and by committing myself to Thomas Merton’s notion that we will never be anything but beginners.

The day my wife and I brought our newly whelped golden retriever, Honey, home from her breeder. She’s eleven now, a little slower, a little lower in her energy levels, but still with that puppy attitude.

I can sit down to my paying work with a singular focus on completing the job and delivering value to my employer instead of allowing distractions to interrupt me. I can avoid the little white lies I tell others and myself to make room for appetites that do not need to be indulged.

My vision, if I could call it that, is pretty basic: to replace my self-centered self with one that loves my neighbor. But I haven’t been pursuing it at all for several years due to cherished angers and resentments. I hope to return to the Bible, to prayer, and to time spent in meditation to correct this omission.

Recently, the rough road my marriage has been on has forced me to take a hard look at my chronic lack of attention and empathy toward the people I claim to love.

Your journey to retroactively celebrate the sister you didn’t know well is quite moving. And I think you’re right that expectations, whether our own or someone else’s, should have little place in determining the paths our walks through grief should take.

Bless you, Christine.

I think birds, bats, lizards, frogs, and some fish are obligated by creation to see them as a gift. The rest of us can be forgiven for seeing them otherwise. 🙂

The smell of pluff mud is something my wife and I have experienced only in the past decade, as we’ve taken our sailboat down the Intracoastal Waterway and through the Low Country. It may not be to everyone’s taste – one cannot confuse it, for instance, with roses – but it is a rich, fertile, wonderful smell.

Thank you, Malag.