Tuesday Morning Glory Story

I hadn’t had breakfast yet.

I have acute gastritis and IBS; medication keeps much of the stomach pain and swelling under control, as long as I don’t eat anything too spicy or anything with gluten in it. But the medication is supposed to be taken in the morning thirty minutes before breakfast, and that morning I hadn’t had my pills in the house. My husband had taken a bus out to fetch them, but he hadn’t gotten back before noon.

It’s not hard to stay lying down until noon when you also have chronic fatigue syndrome. Michael set Rose up with food, Legos and a cartoon before he left. I was looking after her, but she was so happy I didn’t have to get up. She is used to the idea that, during “flare-ups,”  Mommy lies on the sofa or in bed with her archangel icons for company, and Daddy takes care of her during most of the day. Mommy is the parent who reads to her and helps her play her preschool literacy games; Daddy is the parent who does the housework, and cares for Mommy when she can’t get out of bed. I wonder if she just assumes all Mommies are this useless.

Those of my family who still speak to us think Michael is a lazy deadbeat for not working outside the home. I don’t think they think I’m really sick. My mother used to tell them I was a hypochondriac desperate for attention, but I haven’t spoken with her for years so I don’t know what she’s saying now. I always feel the need to explain myself, to make them understand, but I don’t think I ever will get through.

When Michael returned I got up to meet him and took my pill. It’s been a relatively low-pain day so far, for which I’m grateful. The doctors initially said I had fibromyalgia, but lately it’s gotten so bad in my joints that I’m getting another round of blood tests to make sure there’s nothing else wrong. It could be that my rheumatoid arthritis is coming back. I’d been in remission for so long, I almost forgot I ever had it. Lately, though, the swelling and pain aren’t letting me forget.

I sat back down to wait those long thirty minutes for breakfast. Michael opened the door so Rose could play on the front steps with her chalk.

If my whole story had ended right there, life would be worth living and a miracle. We’re in a house, we’re fed for the moment, I’m alive, I’m a child of God. God is very merciful and I ought to spend more time contemplating that. But it wouldn’t be much fun for you to read about. Stories are only fun to read when exciting and out-of-the-ordinary things happen. The fun part starts now.

When Michael opened the door there was an old man there, in a tweed jacket and a plaid shirt.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m looking for a friend I know lives somewhere on this block. A fella named Pezzulo?”

I’m not used to hearing “friend” and “Pezzulo” together. Steubenville is not kind to people who suffer misfortune and aren’t quickly healed by Divine intervention. I’ve had pious people explain that I needed to pray and discover the reason I felt the need to go to the hospital so much, as if my illness was a moral failing of mine; I’ve had others call me a burden or claim the Holy Spirit told them to send me away. We keep to ourselves.

This man seemed quite friendly, though, so I answered. “That’s us.”

He explained that he had the three AM adoration hour, right after Michael– Michael walks to Adoration late at night after Rose and I are in bed. It’s one of the only times he gets out of the house at all, when I’m having a flare-up.  Sometimes the police stop him, if he walks home through the wrong neighborhood, demanding an explanation for why he’s walking at night.

The old man said that Michael told him one night about my illness and my fear of the arthritis coming back. He wanted to pray with me, “with a relic.”

Then he went to his car and got a framed picture and a balled up bed sheet.

The picture was a photo of Saint Mother Teresa, awkwardly holding a bouquet of red roses.

The bed sheet was rolled around a torn  and moth-eaten army-green cardigan sweater.

He explained that his daughter works as a missionary in Haiti, where she’d met some of the Missionaries of Charity. The Missionaries of Charity gave her a sweater that had been owned and worn by Saint Mother Teresa. I could put it on if I wanted.

I slipped the sweater on over my pajamas. It was somehow both too small and too big– it slipped down over my swollen, arthritic wrist, but I had to hug myself to get it around my tummy.

The three of us stood in silence while Saint Mother Teresa embraced me.

Then the old man took the sweater back and left. Rose went to play with her chalk. I drank an Ensure with some cold coffee.

“You know,” said Michael, “He once told me that his first wife died of multiple sclerosis. Back ‘in the old days’ when it wasn’t as treatable.”

I don’t know if I’ll ever understand the mystery of human suffering. It could be that not even the saints do.

Perhaps part of being a saint is giving up the need to understand your own suffering or anyone else’s. Perhaps sanctity involves letting go of the need for anyone to give you an account of themselves.

It could be that a saint is simply someone who turns up without questioning, and offers an embrace.

(image via Pixabay)