The silence rests on us, like dust: but it is a dust playing in harmony with the gentle air and the colored light from stained glass. We wait, all of us, in the confession line, and I study the bowed heads and rounded backs of those few who have come early for Mass. Only a few children break with the strongly held quiet: they make jerky movements and strange little squeaks as they clack their Playmobil figures along the pew backs, the walls, the floor, in a practiced desperation of retaining normal noise in this stretched time before Mass.
We wait, and I should be focusing on my inward self, asking for guidance in understanding the state of my soul: there are little things, and all together they conspire against me and weigh me down. I ask for help, a usual prayer; and then my attention is sucked over to the heavy doors as they open, scattering the lit dust in a frenzied dance of surprise. Both doors are opened, as if a procession will enter, and I squint against the light to see what royal person might appear.
Here she comes, resplendent in her wheelchair, a face full of years, children, and suffering with cancer. She, who bore twelve children, is now little bigger than the ten-year-old girls who come to the sanctuary in a rush of ribbons: but she is absolutely still, a mask of white and wrinkle, except for the intense pools of peat which are her very alive eyes.
As she enters, she is attended by her husband, a scarecrow of a man: but a clean, groomed and dapper one, complete with polyester plaid pants that match a plaid tie. He is lanky but strong, and he almost looks like a devotee carrying his queen before him, with such care does he maneuver her over the threshold and gracefully close the doors. The procession of man and wife, patriarch and matriarch, stops at the beginning of the pew rows at the end of the vestibule.
He reaches into the polyester plaid pants, lifting the brown jacket tails up slightly, and pulls out a small comb. Carefully, gently, and with more love than I've seen (it is as if he were twining roses into her hair and planting a golden crown on her head), he combs her hair. It wasn't as if her grey bob cut wasn't neat. It is a work of ritual, of making her feel groomed and ready for the Mass. It is a small work of love and honor: if you saw him, and her, you would know what I mean.
