A quick postscript to my posting earlier today: I do have more to say on these points, and have a posting sketched already. A tiny bit under the weather these days, though, with a summer stomach bug. We also had house guests yesterday and overnight, and I've been distracted by the hosting and talking and laughing, and now the need to do some tidying of the house.
More importantly, yesterday was the 63rd anniversary of my parents' marriage, and the 61st birthday of my (deceased) brother Simpson. This occasion always brings a mixture of sadness and happy memories for me--a mixture made perhaps a bit sharper this year by the fact that my nephew Colin has kindly sent me a picture taken yesterday in New York, where my brother is now living, of my brother Philip and his sons Colin and Patrick.
Very happy to see all of them looking hale and hearty. Also sad at the geographic distance between us now that my brother has moved to New York (and Colin and his sister Kate are also there). And at some struggles and heartaches we've shared in the past year as a family--which I'd dearly love to lift from the shoulders of those most burdened by them, but can't. Because that's life: the burdens find their way to our shoulders, and we simply carry them along.
One comment my brother made to me several months back in an email discussing these: he said that it would mean a tremendous amount to him if he thought he had a place in the (Catholic) church as he walks through his patch of pain right now. But he doesn't feel that place, doesn't feel welcome, and so he feels--he told me in the email that discussed this with me--all the more alone as a result.
And I understand. And grieve for him and along with him. And, unfortunately, he's absolutely correct in this assessment of how the church regards him now--something I don't feel free to discuss in more detail for a variety of reasons, all centered on not wanting to make a painful situation more painful for anyone involved, until it has been worked through.
Strangely enough, to the best of my knowledge, my parents did not have a wedding photo made. If they did, I haven't ever seen it, though I have a picture of what must have been a dinner party my grandmother gave for my parents the day prior to their wedding. So, in commemoration of their anniversary yesterday, I've selected pictures of my mother and father taken around the time of their marriage soon after the war ended (hence my father's uniform).
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