A Catholic Grief Observed
How the Loss of a Loved One Is an Unexpected Gain
by David Paul Deavel
My mother died in July and I only went back to daily Mass the following February. I went on Sundays because I had to. For many months, I left the practice of reading several chapters of Scripture a day, given up only in the chaos of my mother’s funeral, undone. I gave up praying as I drove over to a nearby suburban elementary school on Saturday mornings to play basketball. I did not go very often, and when I did, the radio didn’t blare (I am too old for that); no, it simply played loudly enough to distract me—as I tried to avoid entering my own thoughts too deeply.
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David Paul Deavel , a doctoral student at Fordham University, is associate editor of Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture and a contributing editor of Gilbert Magazine, a magazine dedicated to the work of G. K. Chesterton.
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