Word soon reached Viola and her sister at the dance that their mother had taken a turn for the worse. Viola rushed home, and she and the family gathered with the priest at her mother’s bedside. As my great-grandmother got worse, the priest, Father Ducci, prayed on his knees, next to the bed, through the night. A doctor arrived, only to deliver the devastating news that nothing could be done. Giuseppina Covre Perin died before dawn the next morning, at the age of forty-three, mother to six children, the youngest, Lavinia, only five. Viola ripped the purple dress in two and vowed to never wear purple again, as it had brought tragedy upon the family.
My great-grandfather was bereft. On the morning that they returned from the funeral, a local farmer came to the house and pounded on the door. When my great-grandfather opened the door, the ashen-faced neighbor insisted that he had seen my great-grandmother walking in the field along the property line between his farm and theirs that morning. Knowing it was impossible, they still clung to the hope of what the neighbor had seen, and the entire family set out on foot to find her. They tried to imagine that the worst had just been a dream and that they would all soon awaken and she would be with them again.
Viola said the reality of going up into the field and looking for her mother, and not finding her, was devastating. Viola begged God to bring her mother back, but when He didn’t, Viola moved on to grieve for the loss of her mother her whole life. She shared the pain of this deep sorrow and regret with Lucy.
A good mother is irreplaceable.
The Infant of Prague
One day, I was with Viola, and she drove past a yard sale. She hit the brakes hard and threw the car into reverse. Her daring behind the wheel of a car was something to experience, I promise you. Something had caught her eye in the yard sale. She backed up in front of it and handed me a five-dollar bill. “Go and get the Infant of Prague,” she said. I reluctantly got out of the car, went to the lady holding the sale, and asked her how much she wanted for it. The seller wanted five bucks for the statue and the costumes, but if I didn’t want the costumes, the statue was three bucks. I went back to Viola and explained the terms, and she told me to buy the entire Infant of Prague kit, clothing included.
When I got back in the car, Viola pulled out on to the road. This wasn’t a good statue. It wasn’t like the Italian, hand-painted plaster version Viola had in her living room, with artful velvet costumes to be changed on High Holy Days. The orb the Infant held was cheap, and the overall effect was more poolside decor than chapel-ready.
“Gram, this is the worst Infant of Prague I have ever seen.”
“I couldn’t leave him there.”
“What do you mean?”
“A sacred relic in a yard sale is not right.”
Now I have the Infant to remind me of that day, and now I too cannot part with it. I have placed a Post-it on the base of the statue: Do not put in yard sale.
A Green Mountain
A couple of weeks before Viola died, I stayed with her. Now, this is the strange thing, looking back on this night. She knew the end of her life was coming soon, but I was going to convince her it was not the end. The more I tried to lift her spirits, the more agitated she became. Finally she dozed off, and I soon did too. At one point, she cried out. I woke up and turned on the light. She said, “I’m in so much pain, I can’t even cry.”
So I said, “Well, let’s not try and sleep. I’ll go and get you a snack.” I went downstairs, made tea and bread and butter, and brought it to her. Viola was not a touchy-feely person, and I never saw her reach out and stroke someone’s arm or pat their hand. She would hug me, but with a coda of quietly pushing me away with her hands after a few seconds. And when it came to kissing, she’d just extend her cheek, and I’d kiss her. It’s how I imagine affection is shown in the royal family in Great Britain. There was never anything fussy about Viola’s affection. It was slightly military.
But I knew she was in agony, and I knew from my Reiki sessions in New York City that rubbing someone’s feet can be a tremendous source of pain relief. When I was a kid, the washing of the feet on Holy Thursday was the greatest challenge for me, as I found the entire exercise hilarious, even thought the priest explained that this is what Jesus did. For me, it was just another example of how difficult it was for me to be Christ-like. But tonight, she needed it, so I rubbed my grandmother’s feet.
“I had the strangest dream,” Viola said. “There was a very tall, green mountain, and your grandfather was at the highest peak.”
“Was he young or old?” I asked.
“Young. Like the day we married. And he said, ‘Come with me, Viola.’ He was smoking a pipe.”
(I knew the pipe well, and the Blackjack tobacco he used to pound into it. Once in my twenties I followed a man smoking a pipe for three blocks up Sixth Avenue when he was smoking the same brand, just so I might remember this detail of my grandfather.)
Viola holds her son, Anthony, “Sonny,” in 1933, with Father Ducci, Michael, and friends.
Viola continued, “And I began to head for the base of the mountain to climb it, and there in a rocking chair was an old woman. When I got closer to her, I saw that she was one of the machine operators at the mill. She pointed for me to follow my grandfather up the mountain. I said to her, ‘But what about you?’ And she said, ‘I stay here.’ ”
Immediately, in my denial and zeal to be peppy, I chirped, “Well, they’re helping you get well.”
Viola looked at me and said, “I’m not going to get better.”
I remembered visits when I was a teenager, and how I used to check and make sure she was breathing at night, afraid she would die. And one night she caught me and told me that she used to do the exact same thing with her grandfather, Jacinto, who emigrated when he was eighty-eight years old to live with his son and his family. Jacinto lived to be a hundred and one years old. One night he woke up, and she told him in Italian, “I just wanted to see if you were okay.” And my great-great-grandfather said to Viola, “When you are old, someone will take care of you, because you took care of me.”
I was trying to take care of her now. But I didn’t feel good about it, I felt helpless. The tea was cold, and the bread and butter was too much for her to eat. She tried, but then pushed it aside.
And then I asked her the biggest and most looming of all questions when a person is dying: “Are you afraid?”
I pictured all those mornings she went to Mass, and all the rosaries she said, and how her lips would move silently saying the Hail Mary as she cooked. And how she said “Jesu, Jesu,” when she heard bad news. And how she’d ask anyone for money when raising it for the church, and how she’d make you buy a ticket to the annual Cadillac Dinner. And how when you needed to sell raffle tickets for a fund-raiser, she’d take a stack and sell every single one. And how she’d bake a pie and leave it for someone sick, and how she went to every single wake and funeral, whether she knew the person well or not, whether she actually liked them or not. Her reasoning was: everybody should have a standing-room-only funeral. And how no matter when you dropped in, she could make you a feast from a bare cupboard—bread and salami, an egg in marinara tossed through greens, peppers thrown into a skillet with onions and a piece of sausage on the side, a glass of wine, crisp ginger cookies in a tin with hot coffee—there was always something for you, something for the unexpected guest. I thought of how she’d cut the grass at my grandfather’s grave, hauling an actual push mower in the back of the station wagon, me praying that we wouldn’t hit a curb and explode in a butane fire from the tin gallon of gas at my feet, the nozzle stuffed with an old rag. And how she’d put flowers on her husband’s grave every week until she died, and trim the weeds, and wash the headstone. And how suddenly it was her turn. I didn’t know what I would do without her. I was so sad, I actually thought, I won’t be able to do anything ever again once she is gone. I’d trade my future to have her here forever with me.
I wanted her to tell me that she wasn’t one bit afraid, that this dyin
g business was as natural as getting your hair done or sewing a hem. And I already knew that while it may have been natural, it was also lonely. I couldn’t do the thing for her that she’d done for me. I could not make her feel secure when she needed it the most. Viola knew it, and I knew it too. She was on her own.
She said, “You know, Adri, you get to this point, and you can’t pray anymore.”
“Sure you can.” I tried to be upbeat. Again. I reminded her of the First Fridays, the novenas, the rosaries. How about the old God Help Me? Three little words. How hard is that? “Come on, Gram. Pray.”
“I can’t. I’ve tried. The one thing I thought I could do, I can’t do anymore.”
“Well, Gram, I guess that means I have to pray for you.”
She looked at me, and her expression was so funny that I laughed. “I know, me of all people.”
“Yeah, you.”
And we laughed. We could always laugh.
Tumult
There is such tumult around religion. God is supposed to be in the blessing business, and indeed He is, but then, when bad things happen, when horror gives way to tragedy and then to loss, what are we to make of it? Isn’t religion supposed to help us?
Arguments about religion come at us from all sides—many that make sense, some that merely incense, and others that make a believer feel helpless and alone, which of course is the exact opposite of living in the limitless possibility of the human spirit. Wars are started in the name of religion, but sometimes other things start wars too: money, land, energy sources, and the explosion of long-festering jealousies. Religion is supposed to be all-inclusive, but pretty soon a list is revealed of folks who aren’t welcome inside those bright red doors. What we do to one another as human beings is often terrible. Our capacity to love, however, is greater than any differences we have, or the labels we are slapped with, or the lines we are asked to form—or at least, that’s what I tell my daughter.
I grew up in a southern coal-mining town, buried deep in the glorious Blue Ridge Mountains, where less than 1 percent of the population was Roman Catholic. A poor missionary order of priests and nuns called the Glenmary, whose mission was to serve in the poorest places in our country (Appalachia qualified), is still there, fighting the good fight and ministering to the people of the mountains. Their mission of serving the poor and seeking social justice in all things (employment, politics, fair play) and their devotion to honoring the land and the creatures that inhabit those majestic mountains are honorable and decent, and pretty basic. Not too many folks would argue with them.
I understand what it means to be a minority, and to defend a set of spiritual ideals that are just beginning to form. For as far back as we go, my family has been Roman Catholic; it is as much about being Italian as it is about religion. You can find out most any fact you need about my lineage by checking church records. But even then, with all this history behind me, I wanted to decide what I would be for myself. I wasn’t sure who I was in the eyes of religion, but I always knew who I was in the eyes of God. I didn’t like to be in the position of defending my church. This was something I was born into, not something I had chosen for myself. I felt that I should be allowed to seek God however I wished. I thought I should atone for the sins I committed, not the ones others said I had committed. I was often torn, and in spiritual exile. But those Glenmarys—they got me. I saw how they did it. It was plain, it was simple, and it was grassroots. It was person-to-person. And I realized, and now have seen many years later, they don’t even need the building. They don’t even need the costumes. All they need is a circle of folks who want to be still, and there it is, in the gathering of a few in prayer—the celebration of faith.
I am not a theologian or an expert in any matters of religion. I have been exposed to many, and found a deep beauty in the history and traditions that are at the center of organized religion. I remember moments at the wedding of my Jewish friends, who at the reception sang a beautiful song they had learned from a cantor as kids. I’ve shared Seder supper during Passover in Norton, Virginia, and then with the Luck/Schneider family in New York. I made a good Muslim friend in Annika in South Africa during Ramadan, and learned, by watching her, the beauty of sacrifice through fasting. The great sects of the Protestant Church—I’ve taken delight in their celebrations, covered dish suppers, and devotion to alleviating human suffering and being present for the poor. A Baptist funeral is a send-off to behold; it almost makes you believe that grief is a good thing.
Davide Perin with children on the field of Delabole Farm in the 1920s.
And I’ve seen the other side too—when God, and your notion of Him or Her, is used to manipulate earthly want. Well, it’s enough to make you throw your hands up and forget religion altogether. Organized religion is complex, and there is much good to recommend it—a sense of community, of connection, of purpose. The grassroots work done in the name of God in the Appalachians by the Glenmarys is practical and also transcendent. However, structured, organized religions are run by human beings, so our capacity for good can be well matched by lesser traits, and sometimes even evil.
The development of faith and a spiritual life that sustains us is not about religion; it’s something far more personal; it’s about cultivating the ability to be still. We must nurture our souls with the same diligence with which we care for our bodies, and in the same fashion that we have built our intellect through the development and study of ideas and the celebration of our particular gifts and skills. We cannot simply walk in this world subject to the whims of fate and materialism, of greed and want, of fame or recognition, or of grief and despair. We have to be strong inside. When we have fortified our souls, when we have taken it upon ourselves to be responsible and to honor the dictates of our own conscience, strength comes.
I watched Viola work through the despair that came when her three-year-old granddaughter, Michalynn, died of leukemia. I watched Lucy stoic and supportive when her grandson Paul was diagnosed with severe autism. They led our families with grace. They moved us forward.
We know how to love one another, to take in love, to return it. We know when it’s right because everybody wins; everybody is better for the exchange. The depths of self-love come from the connection we make to our souls. If that connection is made, if we become aware of the force of the unseen, we cannot be swayed to go against the voice within us. We will hear it, and we will do the right thing.
Always.
The finest people I have ever known never went to church, or went and don’t go now. The finest people I have ever known might go to synagogue once a year, or on occasion stop in church to light a candle; still others make sure they go every week. There is no one path to learning to be still. You use the tools you have, and if that includes gathering in community, then that’s for you. Some people go to the gym, and others put on a pair of sneakers and run as far as they can go. Both build the body, and so it goes with the soul, the path to faith is personal.
I cannot separate out the dutiful Catholic from the imperfect one, or the agnostic from the atheist, or the diehard Presbyterian from the cultural Jew. No one belief system, or lack of one, has the ticket to the concept of heaven with a guarantee that Saint Peter is there to punch your card and send you in. But there is a difference in people who have the ability to be still, and go inward and keep their own counsel. They have peace.
As Sister Bernie Kenney (a nun who is also a nurse and operated the Saint Mary’s Health Wagon for years in the Appalachians, delivering medicine to people who had none, and a modern-day saint according to Father John Rausch) said to me, “There are no labels on the other side.” Hopefully, we won’t act like there are on this side either. But somehow, it’s an ongoing struggle—when we are adults, the invisible dividing line remains, akin to what we experienced in the high school gym at school assembly: different beliefs often represent strains of humanity, and not the whole. You have the popular, the artsy, the geeky, the jocks, and subsets of all; but in religion, it’s wor
se. Sometimes religious leaders believe they are above us, and that’s when exploitation and evil take root to destroy the very beliefs that we hope will sustain us in our quest for inner peace.
How do I acquire this inner peace? Just as the sustenance of anything that matters to you takes care and diligence, focus and attention, it takes daily commitment. Each day we must carve out time to go inward, to embrace the silence and listen to the voice within. Some spiritual people find this voice through the physical—they break through to their souls by using their bodies to focus on a particular thought, or a goal. Others immerse themselves in the service of others, and in so doing, find the still voice in the strength they need to serve. We all come to it our own way, and if we are wise, we pay attention to everything that comes our way that opens our hearts. That’s really all it takes.
I learned to pray as a Catholic girl. The mysticism, the prayers, and the rosary in particular matter to me. The greater goal of serving others is never far from my mind, though I come up short often and plenty. But I know how to pray, and I can thank my religion for that. I learned how to be still watching my grandmothers. Sometimes they were so busy caring for their families and doing their work, they had to steal a moment to be still. But they did it; they insisted.
I found rosary beads tucked in their pockets, and prayer cards in their wallets, and small books of wisdom, dog-eared and marked up, on their nightstands. They owned the destiny of their souls, knowing that there was very little of the physical world that they could control. Loved ones would die, money would come and go, friends would disappoint, family would hurt, disaster would strike, but nothing that ever happened to them would catch them unaware and render them helpless, because they knew how to pray. They knew how to be still, and tap the state of knowing that deep within you are all the answers you need, and an endless well of strength that will sustain you. This is spirit. And it has nothing to do with the pew you sit in, or don’t.