Put bluntly, tonight sucked. After our car broke down this morning and I missed all three Masses at my home parish, I got the opportunity to go to our sister parish for an evening Mass. For the sake of charity, all I'll say is that I'm very lucky I got to go at all.
I wrote about the experience privately, but I want to share some of it here. As it turns out, this church is my family's funeral church. I have never been there under happy circumstances, and tonight wasn't much better.
The place is big and white, open and empty, and within two seconds of my getting up to the main level, the smell hits me in the face like a brick wall. It's heavy and stuffy and immediately sends a chill clear down to the marrow in my bones. I'm sure it has little to do with the fact that I'm wet from the rain.
Incense. My parish never uses it, so it's never been the scent of comfort and beauty for me. Instead, it brings back awful memories, ones of a great cloud coming down over our heads as if to muffle the sounds of quiet sobbing in the pews. "The stuff of death," as my mother always said.
And here it was, after I had literally fought to get here, to get myself to the one place that could put life back into me when I was angry and wanting to give up. It was like a taunt. Had she not been furious with me at the time, I would have seriously considered heading right back down the elevator and home.
But no...down the little ramp and into the sanctuary. Front and center, just to the left of the altar. People stare. They don't know me here. I don't know them. I don't belong here. And as far as I can see, rows and rows of pews. Pews that were once full of my family, most of them now empty or occupied by strangers. I walk all the way to the back, eyes down to avoid conversation, and slide into the last pew. Immediately, tears come. The view from here was nearly identical when we buried my grandfather in Ocean City three years ago.
The acoustics are incredible though as we chant the alleluia a cappella. On a normal day, the musician in me would love it, but tonight all I can think of is Schubert's Ave ringing out as a last farewell.
You get the idea. It's the only time I can ever remember having seriously BAD mojo after leaving a church...even my worst days at my home parish didn't make me feel that raw. The Eucharist calmed me down, and my confessor being the celebrant helped (everything happens for a reason, I guess), but not by much.
I won't go back again, not unless I have to. The place holds too many memories that I'd rather forget.
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