Enough
My uncle’s funeral mass is at my childhood church, a large raspberry colored building that towers over my Catholic elementary school. As I sit in the rigid, oak pew listening to the Gospel of Thessalonians memories flood from the pulpit, seeping into my skin through the incensed air. The playground where I broke my hymen while playing with my first lover, the jungle gym, is behind me; the four-square game where boys looked under my uniform skirt to see my bright white underwear with hot pink X’s and O’s scribbled on them is to my left; and the strip of pavement where my friends and I sat in a circle under a rusting basketball net, trading Bonne Bell makeup, spraying Electric Youth perfume and Aqua Net Hairspray is cattycorner to the freshly painted four square area.
The church smells the same—a mixture of carpet cleaner, incense, sulfur, perfume, and spit up. The forbidding, lifeless, damp atmosphere also endures the test of time. This is where my friends and I would pretend pray to escape frigid winter recesses, which occurred for four months out of the year in rural Pennsylvania. I remember sitting in the pews whispering to my friends and trying to suppress the giggles that were mysteriously more contagious inside these walls than outside of them. One afternoon Mrs. Rodriguez, a stalwart churchgoer, caught us pretend praying and yelled at us for doing it wrong. You are supposed to look at the tabernacle, not the crucifix! she said, her voice bouncing off the surrounding Stations of the Cross enveloping our eleven year old selves. You could never do anything right in this church, in this playground. Regardless of how much Dr. Pepper lip-gloss I painted on my lips I was never pretty enough; no matter how good I tried to be I was born wrapped in the blanket of original sin. I was a young girl; an object to be protected and controlled like the poufy, curled bangs sticking to my tender forehead.
Years pass since the Aqua Net cherry popping elementary school days. My uncle’s body lies in a comfortable looking, cushioned casket, draped in religious cloth, perpendicular to the raised altar. I have not attended mass in a long time and, while I forget to genuflect before entering the pew, I remember all of the hymns. Someone catches my eye in the middle of one of my favorite songs On Eagle’s Wings—a flaxen young girl standing next to the priest. I knew that young women are allowed to be alter servers now, and have been for quite some time, but this is my first time seeing one in action. While I am no longer Catholic, I feel momentarily connected to the church through this little girl. After all, I was once that age, coming here to pray the wrong way.
She stands nervously next to the priest in her baggy, red and white vestment. I wonder how many young girls felt excluded, or not good enough, before she felt included. Seeing her stand shoulder to shoulder with the young boy on the altar should excite a feminist like me. It means progress, right? I close my eyes and try hard to birth some pleasure for my younger sisters and pride for my older ones for our many facets of progress, but I come up empty. It feels superficial, contrived, like Sarah Palin’s Vice Presidential nomination.
I am at a funeral for a man who died too young and too quickly. The spectrum of pain felt in the walls of this church is palpable. The priest comforts our quivering hearts by telling us my uncle is in heaven and none of us should feel sad because we will see him there shortly. He advises us to live for a time when we are with Michael and the Archangels in heaven. Prayer after prayer deflects, defers, and minimizes grief, stuffing the suffocating lump in our throats deeper and deeper within. All of this supposed consolation feels nonsensical. The girl standing on the altar symbolizing progress morphs into a living, breathing contradiction. She learns to control, to protect, and to exist outside of herself before she learns long division, and without the symbolic curled, stiff, lifeless bangs.
I take a few deep breaths while everyone else receives Communion, exhales fighting off the emotional suppression cast off the pulpit. As the mass comes to a close, I process behind my uncle’s casket to the song How Great Thou Art. I remember all the words but I can’t sing because the lump in my throat has traveled to my mouth triggering a hearty sob. I reach for my mom’s hand because she is also crying. I have not held my mother’s hand since I was a little girl, playing jump rope and four square in the nearby playground. Her hand is cold, boney and comforting. My uncle’s death gives me this moment with my mom, which is painfully beautiful. I observe my always stoic Aunt tearfully falling into people’s arms like an imploded building falls to the ground. That, too, is painfully beautiful. In this moment I feel impermanence of life and the myriad ways we fight against fear—we hairspray our beliefs to statues, infuse our future full of hope, and spray perfume to mask to avoid the present. However, hidden below the foreboding layer of fear is a beautiful, broken heart.
I no longer pretend pray, or run away from the cold, or have bangs to spray with Aqua Net. I allow the memories; the pain, the sadness, fear, and joy flow in and out of me constantly, without controlling, questioning, or masking them. I hold the delicate, sharp slices of my shattered heart in my hand and throw them in the air like confetti without piecing them back together or making them look pretty. I watch one piece return to the playground, another to the jungle gym, and others just fly away or fall straight down to the ground. Standing beyond the raspberry walls sitting in the muck of loss, I see beauty just below the surface and I feel grateful for the cuts in my hands and the pieces of my shattered heart exposed, flying away. I feel like I am finally doing something right in doing nothing. I am finally good enough not because I am good, but because I am enough.
- Alisa Guthrie was born and raised in rural Pennsylvania where Catholic nuns taught her more about patriarchy than about the Bible. She graduated from Moravian College with a major in Sociology and Women’s Studies. She currently lives in Florida where she is working on her first book.
