Your church. As Klara well knew – because we talked openly about such things – it was never really my church. Yes, I was very much raised to be a serious Catholic. Yes, my parents maintained until the end of their lives that the priest’s word was law. Yes, my mother was a daily communicant. Yes, I was still married to a woman who had not only become a daily communicant but a serious Catholic militant after tragedy scorched our lives. As for me … I stopped going to Mass some years back. Especially when things in my marriage started going wrong. Just as I started struggling with the idea that all I was raised to believe – especially when it came to the Paradise awaiting us all as long as we played by the rules during our messy time here – was Divine Truth. My friend Todor once told me that, to borrow a line from the Book of Psalms, our life on earth was a true ‘Vale of Tears’. He said that when I was reeling from the nightmare that had upended our lives. He also said that, after a ‘personal catastrophe’, it wasn’t unusual to have a crisis of faith. It was understandable that I was angry at God. Todor advised me to pray hard to the Holy Spirit to help Him guide me back to belief. I’ve known Todor for over fifty years. We met in third grade in the local public school down the road from our homes in the Valley. From the outset we were pals – especially as we both had emigrant backgrounds, stern but responsible fathers and stay-at-home tough-cookie mothers. Over the years we truly watched each other’s backs – even if our paths very much diverged when he announced in our last year of high school that he was seriously considering becoming a priest. The Holy Spirit had spoken to him. As it did to my mother and father and later my wife … yet somehow sidestepped me at a moment when I truly needed faith.

Somehow a corner can be turned … tomorrow is another day … Climb ev’ry mountain, forge ev’ry stream …

One of the things ingrained into the vast majority of Americans is the idea that things going wrong is a personal flaw; that we are all capable of picking ourselves up and dusting ourselves off and starting all over again. Even if we secretly know that beginning again at a late age is a tough call we want to nonetheless buy into the belief that everything is still possible. That’s another American self-delusion … but maybe a necessary one. Otherwise how the hell do you get up in the morning?