Jesus Lives

Our Lady of Czestochowa slept in secret on the top shelf of my parents' closet for almost 30 years. My mother reminds me she hung above the sculpted red couch with the dark wood trim in my grandmother's living room. I don't remember, but after my mother's funeral I run across a black and white photo of Mr. Skinner at Easter and notice her — the Black Madonna — swimming small and lost on the big white wall.

I've been trying to find a home for my parents' crucifix. My mother'd told me it was given to her by her great aunt and uncle as a wedding gift. I have no one to tell this to who will remember — this knowledge will die with me — and that makes me unbearably sad. This crucifix is a clever thing, intended to be used to play priest when one can't be found. The face slides off and Jesus in his dying ecstasy props up in a groove at the head of the cross-box to watch over the faithful. A small booket containing instructions for the sacrament of the sick and last rites is curled around an empty bottle labeled

HOLY V WATER

Two partially burned candles, carefully re-inserted into their Cell-O package nestle into a small fold of linen that is beginning to fray at its starched edges. I wonder whose deathbed it was used beside.

My brothers leave me as my mother lay — finally — dying. Seems as if she might not have needed the pacemaker after all. The doctor'd waved his magic magnet over the bulge near her clavicle more than 24 hours earlier. I don't let them disconnect the cardiac leads so that I can “prepare myself.” Eight months, countless hospital stays, and two last rites (she'd declined a third and final last rite) weren't enough I suppose. I'm guessing it wasn't until she sensed that her cousin Patsy who'd been like a sister to her was close by that her heartbeat — finally — slowed. Her heart stopped within twenty minutes. I still cringe when I recall that the door'd been wide open and how my primal scream must have echoed through the halls as my own heart was ripped from my chest.

Later when I tell Patsy that my mom had been waiting to say goodbye to her before she died, how could I know Patsy would pray every night for two years for my mother's forgiveness for killing her?

I ask my friend to come to the hospital that is trying to kill my mother. I refuse to leave when visiting hours are over. It's been a week. My mother asks me to lay in bed with her to warm her. She has never done this. I try to say the rosary, but I never learned all of the fancy stuff you say in between the Hail Marys and the Our Fathers. I never was an adequate Catholic. When my friend arrives, I am relieved to give rosary duty over to her and I leave to wander the halls and let my tears out.

My friend tells me “Jesus Lives.” He's in her underwear drawer. At almost three feet long, he's not exactly modest. I look away but look back when she prompts me. “Look! Grandma Busia's belt. I made fun of my mom when she couldn't bear to throw it away yet here it is.” I tell her I could make something of it.

My friend shows me a MoMa repro reliquary (yet another goldtone Jesus). It's been gathering doghair and eyeshadow in the bottom of her jewelry box for at least a decade. She asks me if I might make something of it. I tell her yes, yes I could. Her father cries when he sees his long-dead sister's souvenir on a beaded chain draped around his daughter's neck.

Every time I unpack a box, it seems I find a rosary. I haven't been Catholic for almost 35 years. If Aunt Mickey gave each of us kids a rosary every Christmas until we were ten, there've got to be at least thirty rosaries squirreled away around here. My favorites were glow-in-the-dark. When my colleague is diagnosed with cancer, I gift one as a good luck talisman. I find out later that it is likely radioactive.

Madonna — with her twin scars — has awoken from her closet coma. My friend has cleaned her, dressed her in a new goldtone frame, given her due reverence — surrounded her with votive candles, loved her and prayed to her daily. This makes me unspeakably happy.