Honoring Parents

Follow me. Let the dead bury their dead. Mt 8:22.

Well this is a harsh command, isn't it? Luckily our good Bishop Kevin Rhoades was giving the homily this last weekend and this verse was included in Sunday's Gospel then as well as today. Guess it's worth repeating.  We are commanded to honor our parents. When they are dead it is a little easier to do, I think. all questions and situations are steeped in silence.
This past weekend my father in law was laid to rest and my husband's family gathered for a memorial service. His death became a finality on this day. Intellectually we all knew it , but the internment made it final; irrevocable. My parents, too, are gone. There was a cemetery visit to my mother's grave. I have boxes of her beautiful things here at home. It is very hard to get rid of them. It seems as if I am getting rid of her if I give them away or take them to the second hand store as she is so wrapped up in my memories of those beautiful things. It seems that if they are out of sight, then she will slip out of mind. I know there is a heck of a lot of living going on around me . I have spent time grieving. who says that it may be too much. Perhaps the Lord does. I do not want to get stuck. Maybe that is what Jesus is saying to me in today's Gospel. Don't get stuck with death and grieving. Move on with Christ. Follow where he leads in living well again. Trust that the memories will go along and not be left behind and lost.
This past weekend I watched a documentary called The Flat. A man was cleaning out the apartment of his Jewish grandmother. She had moved to Palestine in the 1930's from Germany. She and her husband returned to Germany often after the war . Their friends remained in Germany. It was discovered that the German man succeeded Eichmann to work with Goebbels. He was an authority on the Jews. The man's mother, the woman's daughter, knew nothing about what had happened during the war and who these 'friends' of hers had been. She kept insisting that she had no interest and didn't question that time of her mother's life. When she did, it was dismissed as  'forgotten.' This third generation man was in pain about it all. Who were these people? Why were such disparate people friends, and why did they remain so after the terrible time of WW2? The second generation's in Germany did not feel his need to open files and search for the truth. They were content with the 'stories' they had been told. Questions were not asked, nor answers desired. The dead were dead. Even their graves were gone. The truth was buried with them.
I think that man had to let it go. it mad ea very good documentary to see that he hadn't , and I most certainly understood his need to find the answers. But there is a time for moving on . Gently. following Christ as he leads us on. Trusting in our memories, our truth. And in the final Resurrection when we shall all be reunited and all the answers will be ours. Trekking Catholic.