After

Last night, I actually took something to help me sleep, something I never even did when I suffered from ongoing insomnia. I was in bed, I have a viscous cold, I had buried my friend, and I had eaten Peruvian-Asian fusion food for dinner. After these things in combination, I was somehow disturbed.

There is such an interesting AFTER moment, isn’t there? Sometimes after is full of disappointment when the experience was exciting and long-anticipated. Often after is exhausting, or after can even be a relief. I am in my own after moment.

I recognize Diana is in her own after moment too – the after-life. At the graveside I read a passage from the late Cardinal Bernardin’s book, The Gift of Peace, where he writes, “Many people have asked me to tell them about heaven and the afterlife. I sometimes smile at the request because I do not know any more than they do. Yet, when one young man asked if I looked forward to being united with God and all those who have gone before me, I made a connection to something I said earlier in this book. The first time I traveled with my mother and sister to my parents’ homeland in northern Italy, I felt as if I had been there before. After years of looking through my mother’s photo albums, I knew the mountains, the land, the houses, the people. As soon as we entered the valley, I said, ‘My God, I know this place, I am home.’ Somehow I think crossing from this life into life eternal will be similar. I will be home.

What I would like to leave is a simple prayer that each one of you may find what I have found – God’s special gift to us all: the gift of peace. When we are at peace, we find the freedom to be most fully who we are, even in the worst of times. We let go of what is nonessential and embrace what is essential. We empty ourselves so that God may more fully work within us. And we become instruments in the Lord’s hands.”

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
St. Francis of Assisi

The whole prayer is an after prayer. After sadness, joy; after pain, pardon; after darkness, light.
I want to be an after person.