My Sixteenth Year - Part 2

Continued from Part l

It was a pretty rotten start to our visit but life had to continue. My mother had to go to her father’s home to see how he was doing so she told me I had to stay at my cousin’s and have a nap. You can imagine how a 16-year-old feels about being told to take a nap but one look at my mother’s face and you could see something had died inside of her. I went to bed.

I lay there with the biggest lump in my throat. I was almost choking. I have never in my life felt so terrible even when my parents died years later. But the lump wasn’t from grief, it was from guilt. It wasn’t because my cousin said our grandma had a heart attack from the excitement of seeing us. It was because I had been angry with my grandma before we even left for the trip and now, she was dead.

When my father and his wife had visited Amsterdam earlier that year my mom’s sisters and mother had paid a surprise visit to them. I liked my father’s wife and we got along very well so I couldn’t understand why they did this when everyone else had clearly moved on. 

So, I lay in bed with the most enormous burden on my conscience. There was no way I could talk to my mother or anyone else about this. It was almost as if the enormous choking lump in my throat was a physical manifestation of that guilt. I think I was even too ashamed to pray for help. I didn’t know a lot about God but I did acknowledge his existence and I didn’t feel I deserved his help or his mercy.

If only I could have gone to confession to speak to a priest. I would have had a safe haven to unburden myself, listen to some wise words, and be absolved of this grudge. Surely the priest would’ve told me that my angry thoughts towards my grandmother did not kill her. I had not heard of magical thinking at that time but that’s exactly what I was experiencing. I know now that the only thing that killed her was blocked arteries, not the personal thoughts of a teenaged granddaughter or her somewhat ill-considered visit to her former son-in-law.

A few days after her death we celebrated my grandmother’s funeral Mass at her church. The church was beautiful, built of warm brick with gorgeous stained glass, patterned tile floors, and with stunning artwork of saints and biblical scenes painted on the walls. I was captivated by it.

I wasn’t overly familiar with the order of the Mass but I had been going to church with a friend earlier in the year so I knew there would be a fair bit of getting up, sitting down, getting up again. And then I realized with horror that there would be Holy Communion. Well, Holy Communion was not horrific. What was dreadful was that I knew I should not receive It as I had not made my First Communion nor had any instruction to prepare me for that event. Amazingly I did know the consecrated hosts were Jesus. I didn’t know much more than that but I knew this was not just ordinary bread and I must not trifle with it.

As we shuffled down the pew toward the aisle, I told my mother that I shouldn’t go up for Communion. I’m not sure why I didn’t just sit it out as I did in my friend's church. She gave me a stunned look as she was surely wondering where all this sudden piety had come from. I can’t remember how she replied but I knew I better not make a scene in church, especially on this day, and so I am sad to say that was my first experience of receiving Holy Communion.