prayer for lent
my grandmother was the kind of catholic who watched mass on tv when she got too old to make it to church. her ziplock bag of souvenirs from the vatican arrived on ash wednesday. almost precisely a year since she died. i’m holding this too big to wear cross inlaid gold pink roses and green thinking i wish she could come to my church. it was the easter she careened her lincoln into the church parking lot, railing against the pope’s policies and barely missing several children, that i knew. that i knew i wanted to live there in the stained glass shadowed pews, in the candle light and incense. i was the one child praying that mass would never end. thirty one years later i make the sign of the cross on a woman’s forehead: to dust you shall return. the ash won’t wipe off my hands. mary eileen, may your irreverence lighten me and your faith lead me. amen.
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