My blessing

 

OK, here's the thing. Exactly half of us who live here, out of the two, are Roman Catholic. And I'm not the one. Peggy is, and she wonders why I got this blessing in the mail. I don't know the Edmundite Missions or even anyone named Edmund. This came randomly in the mail the other day, and even though it was clearly not meant for me, I am holding on to it. Just in case.

It's always possible that they got my name in 1964, when I was not quite thirteen, and at the time, reaching thirteen was no sure bet when I got sick that March. They thought it was polio or encephalitis or meningitis or any of another handful of problems they tossed around. An ambulance took me to Church Home and Hospital down on Broadway near Baltimore's now-fashionable Fell's Point section, and that Sunday evening, while my parents met with a doctor, they sent in a priest to offer me the last rites.

I should say the last "rights" because nothing felt right. I can still see this kindly old priest, reading from a book and preparing me for extreme unction. I knew I was in the right church or the wrong pew or something when the priest crossed himself and looked at me, expecting the same. When I did not make the appropriate gesture, he looked at me quizzically. I said, "Uh, I'm not Catholic."

Even at 13, I was a master of what to say to whom and when.

He asked what I was and seemed satisfied when I told him I'm Protestant. I'm sure he would have recoiled in horror had I been anything else.

But he told me he knew I was sick and didn't really feel like talking a lot (see? He didn't know me at all!) but he told me that when I went to sleep that night, I might wake up in a totally different place, surrounded by angels and happiness and no more pain and suffering.

I suppressed my urge to say, "Wow! I'm going to Los Angeles!" and kept it fairly serious, by my standards. It was not a subtle point he was making, and even I caught on quickly that he was hinting that my next stop was the Elysian Fields, with the virtuous and the heroic. 

If that were to be the case, I would need a hall pass, and maybe this is it! Perhaps that priest jotted down my name and saved it for all these years, and now, they pulled my name out of a bulging file cabinet and sent the free pass to me to hold onto until such a point arrives that I am in need of a blessing.

Since my life is a daily blessing, I don't expect to cash it in anytime soon, But it's nice to have it in my hip pocket!