Glimpses Through The Wall

Taking a break from commentary on the great “Out There” ; just a few asides about me.

I have been busy the past couple days with the funeral and wake of someone I cared alot about, but someone whom I’ve not had much contact with in recent years. She gave meaning to the idea of what an impact a SAHM can have, a woman whose life centered most definitely upon her family.

She died full of years, and with many good memories. My thoughts were that as more of that generation are passing from this world, we are now the generation of elders. That is a strange thought. We will soon be the resident emeritus, to pass on encouragements and hopefully wisdom of our experience.

It was a Latin High Mass in the morning. Helpful booklets were passed out so we could follow along…. the last time I attended a high mass for a funeral might have been when her husband passed away some years ago, but the one I best recalled was before that, my own paternal grandmother. I don’t think that was in Latin however, but it had the same service and the things that you never see with Protestant funerals: sprinkling the casket ( in the church) with holy water and the circling with the censer and the smell of the incense rising. The chants of the priest and choir were quite beautiful, and her grandson-in-law played the plaintive pipes in full piper regalia. It was a peaceful requiem.

That was all of the morning, and all of the afternoon was a wake at a most hospitable household. It wasn’t a raucous reunion because of the circumstance, but its atmosphere was full of happy sentiments of memory. In a way, a wake awakens you, to go on in life with appreciation of each other and of the experience that yet lays ahead. It transitions, with a dignified place made for the departed and a continuing of their link in the chain of life.

For we must all pass this life at some time, and we will leave behind our efforts whether for good or not. It is something like the word for today:

caesura sih-ZHUR-uh; -ZUR-, noun;
plural caesuras or caesurae sih-ZHUR-ee; -ZUR-ee:

1. A break or pause in a line of verse, usually occurring in the middle of a line, and indicated in scanning by a double vertical line; for example, “The proper study || of mankind is man” [Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man].
2. Any break, pause, or interruption.

Caesura comes from Latin caesura, “a cutting off, a division, a stop,” from the past participle of caedere, “to cut.”

I had never come across that word before. It is similar to the meaning of the Bible term, Selah, which you find in the Psalms. A pause in the middle. That is all that death is…..