Finding Faith in Grief

I’ve never considered myself to be a good Catholic. I’m pro-choice, I often forget to abstain from meat during Lent, and I can’t remember the last time I went to confession.

That said, I can’t imagine myself not being a Catholic. It’s an inextricable part of me, similar to the way that I am American or white. My family is Catholic, and so growing up, I didn’t have much choice in the matter—we went to church on Sundays, and that was It.

After Mass, my parents and I often ate breakfast at our local diner, the Bark River Café. There, I would often share a booth with my two closest friends, as their parents had the same ritual of going to the café after church. As the adults sat at another table and talked about the upcoming high school boys’ basketball game, my friends and I ate chicken fingers and giggled over our elementary school crushes.

That was my life growing up—going to Mass with my parents, hanging out at youth group meetings, and sitting through religion classes. I often gave up pop for Lent, and when Easter came, I gorged on candy.

My religion did not mean much to me until the spring semester of my senior year. Knowing that I would be away at college in the fall, I began to see Sunday Mass as a time to be close to my parents in a way that college plans, homework, and extracurricular activities prevented me from doing during the week.

Shaking hands with the people sitting around me, as is the practice during Mass, became a way for me to really look at the people in my community and to consider how their support had helped me over the years.

Walking out from Mass and seeing the wide expanse of land that surrounds the church made me more aware of the area that was my home, with its clear-sky afternoons, seasonal foliage, brilliant night skies.

It was also during my senior spring that my closest friend’s dad was dying of cancer. My friend and I had been closer when we were younger, yet her dad’s illness affected me more than I expected.

In February, he left his treatment in Milwaukee to spend his last days at home. On the night before he died, my friend Brooke and I went over to our friend’s house to be with her and, in our own way, say our goodbyes.

I’ll never forget that night. The three of us were together, as we had been for years through games of tag on the playground, truth-or-dare in the haymow, junior high sleepovers, and high school dances. But tonight we were children no longer—we were young adults, sitting together quietly on the night one of us lost her father.

The next day was Ash Wednesday. I woke up in my bed, not caring whether I went to school or not, my textbooks and papers strewn across my room. When I realized that it was Ash Wednesday, I decided to go to Mass. I left my calculus assignment on the floor and drove my Jeep to church.

I had acted without really thinking, and I arrived at the church realizing that I was there on my own, without my parents. I took a seat, sat through the Mass, and noticed the teary eyes and drawn faces of the people around me.

I found Brooke and our friend Cory after Mass, and I went to them. I did not know for certain if our friend’s dad had died, and I struggled to ask them. They nodded in affirmation, and we stared at each other. What more could be said?

Brooke and Cory invited me to come to the café with them, and I deferred their invitation. After driving home to retrieve the work I had abandoned earlier, I arrived at the café to discover that other friends from my childhood had joined Brooke and Cory.

There was now a small group of us sitting in a booth, skipping school, and trying—for some of us, for the first time—to deal with the loss of someone who had been a part of our lives.

Just as I’ll never forget the night before, I’ll never forget that meal. Because it was impossible for us to talk of our common sorrow, my friends and I talked instead of our common memories—from the time I tried to pants Cory on the trampoline to the time David attempted, unsuccessfully, to balance on top of a wire.

It had been a long while since the five of us had all been together, and I was amazed to discover that the memories from my childhood that I cherished were the same ones that were meaningful to them, too. Knowing that we all could have cried during that meal, we chose instead to laugh.

While I still may not consider myself to be a good Catholic, I now treasure my religion for the support it has provided me—I went to church the day my world fell apart, and there I found my friends.



Brittney L. Moraski ’09 lives in Mower and knows what a haymow is.