OK...

...here goes.  I have finally found the relevant metaphor.  Starting one’s first blog is like the first time you try to jump double Dutch.  You’ve seen other people do it.  Some of them do it well, some badly.  But people you know have done it.  How hard can it be?  But  you’ve also seen people unexpectedly fail, winding up looking stupid and in a few cases, flat on their asses.  My daughter, Jessie, set up the blog for me a while ago and I’ve been standing there in front of a blank screen, leaning forward, leaning back, leaning forward, leaning back in the same kind of rhythm I stood in front of the two girls swinging heavy ropes double Dutch and grinning, waiting for my hoped for failure.  (Only girls who jumped double Dutch could swing double Dutch.  Everyone gathered around could laugh at failure, however.  And I was surrounded by people hoping for my failure, given how often I had ruined the curve for 43 third graders.

Interestingly, I have no idea whether or not I succeeded that first time.  I only know that eventually I was an amazing double Dutcher and won the right to swing the rope too.  I have no idea how long it’s going to take for me to find out whether or not blogging is a useful part of my future.  However, today I’m jumping in.  Why today?  Because this is in two ways a significant day.  This is the 42nd anniversary of my marriage.  It is also the day that Mary Catherine Hayes went to paradise.  I don’t always believe in an afterlife but when I do I am reminded of a hymn I used to play often when I was a church organist playing the organ for most of the funerals and requiem Masses in our parish. That hymn is the only reason that I am sorry I can’t be buried in a Requiem High Mass celebrated in Latin. The hymn is called In Paradisum.  After all of the sad parts of the Mass that preceded it, this hymn, played and sung properly, means that the soul today lives today in Paradise.  This morning Mary Catherine’s family announced her passing to her SU friends with an email whose subject line was In Paradisum.

I have lost many people including, most sadly, five students in Pan Am 103.  I have lost my father, my mother, and eighteen uncles and aunts, five close friends and many acquaintances.  All of these have deeply affected me.  However, while I was pretty sure that my father was on the fast train to heaven, Mary Catherine is only person I’ve ever lost of whom I am preternaturally certain that at this moment she is in heaven, leading the angels in a dance.  She was a dancer, a smiler, a lover, the bravest person I’ve ever known.  I hope she looks after all of us.  We need it if we are going to become a lot more like her.  OK, I’ve jumped in.  I don’t know if I’m going to do this every day, once a week, once a month, or never again.  But I’m glad I have a blog today if for no other reason than this.

 If there is another edition, I will explain why the name of the blog is “The Truth Is . . .” besides the fact that everyone who knows me know I say that a lot.  Really a lot.

(posted for Geri Clark by her daughter)