For All the Saints, Especially Juanita and Patricia in 1960 and 1961

Their names are typed on old documents by old typewriters. Carefully completed and solemnly signed in 1960 and 1961 at St. Joseph's Hospital in Orange, California, by hospital officials, county clerks, and my young parents. Documents folded in half and kept in safety deposit boxes, moved from place to place for decades, and tucked amongst well log reports and pension information in my mother's last portable safe. A strong box, fireproof, holding papers proving all of us were born and some of us have died. This box came to live with me when she could no longer live alone. It holds history. It holds eternity. 

May 14, 1960 - Nurse Juanita Anderson bore witness to the two hour and twenty-nine minute life of my brother, Baby Boy Rowland. And during those precious two hours and twenty-nine minutes she baptized him in the name of the Roman Catholic Church. His birth certificate, his death certificate, and his baptism certificate all live in the strong box.

June 6, 1961 - RN Aide Patricia Brady bore witness to the five hour and twenty minute life of my brother, Scott George Rowland. And during those precious five hours and twenty minutes she baptized him in the name of the Roman Catholic Church. His birth certificate, his death certificate, and his baptism certificate all live in the strong box.

A simple, small, white linen cloth also lives in the strong box. It must have been used for one of their baptisms. It's the only thing I can touch that once touched them. Just like the white cloth folded in the Tomb, it bears witness to eternal life, to resurrection.

This past Tuesday was All Saint's Day and we went to Mass that evening. This morning I went to the Presbyterian church where All Saint's is celebrated the first Sunday of November. I wrote the most precious names of our spouses, Rod and Cheryl, on a note applied to a large wooden cross. Their names hung with about one hundred others from the congregation.

And then we entered into the mystery of the Body and Blood of Christ where we believe the Communion of Saints are present - those who have been canonized by the Church and those who lived their lives for God in very quiet and giving ways. This is how I think about Juanita and Patricia. They simply showed up for their shifts on those days and didn't know Mrs. Rowland would be there to deliver her very premature babies. They were ready with open hearts and lovingly fulfilled their responsibility to baptize my brothers. 

Grief was ever present in my childhood home and I've always wondered how in the world my parents survived the deaths of three infants (my stillborn sister died in 1959) between my birth and my only surviving sibling, Mark in 1962. How did their marriage survive such losses? I can't say they were extremely happy or dealt with their grief in healthy ways, but I can say that something held them together. Something beyond them and beyond us. 

Perhaps it was the comfort they may have taken from knowing their babies were with God. Perhaps it was the assurance they trusted as they continued as faithful Lutherans for many years. Perhaps it was the strength they drew from knowing they would see their babies again. 

This had to have been the case. They rarely spoke about the babies, but I know they were always present to them. And I know they carried the grief of their unfulfilled lives until the day both of them died and were reunited with their little ones.

Juanita and Patricia each gave my family the most sought and the most undeserved gift this life holds -- assurance of God's love. They gave my parents peace of mind that otherwise would have been impossible. They gave my family stability and strength through their loving acts of gently holding those little one pound bodies while saying, "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen." 

All of us, every single one of us, are shaped in profound ways before we turn five. Our personalities are set and our nervous systems are wired for whatever comes as we grow up. We now know that toddlers feel their parent's grief and they know when something is very wrong in their home. They understand that mommies go to the hospital to have babies and the babies are supposed to come home with the mommies. When this doesn't happen, over and over, the toddler can become insecure and begin to think they did something wrong to cause all the trouble. They have no capacity to understand what really happened, but only to respond to the environmental cues that something has gone very, very wrong. There were very good reasons why my Mom laid in her dark room for days and days, but I didn't understand. I just knew she wasn't with me. She was unavailable and I must have been a bad girl. This is very normal toddler thinking and understanding. I thought I could do something to make the next baby, or the next baby, or the next one come home with Mommy. I worked hard at it, and the truth is, I've been working hard at it all of my life. 

But, the time spent this week with the old documents and the baptism cloth have helped me deeply understand what Juanita and Patricia did for my family. It's been very healing. I can stop trying to save the babies. They are just fine now and together again with their parents, my parents. My parents are just fine now and together again with their children, my siblings. I can take a deep breath and relax. I don't need to fix anything or be a certain way in order to help them anymore. There was nothing I could have done when they were born and when they died. Nothing. This speaks to the truth that so many things happen in life that we have absolutely no control over. As I age, this is something that becomes more and more real.

However, I do want to continue in amazement and gratitude for the simple act of two nurses doing their religious duty within the rules of a Catholic hospital which provided a healing stronghold for my family to survive.

"I baptize you in the name of,,," "Take, eat, this is the Body of Christ..."

These are not hollow religious phrases. These are the keys to the Communion of Saints. These are the mysterious containers we move within and have our beings. 

May all of us continue within the Communion of Saints. It is our history. It is our eternity.

Amen, Let it be so.