Memento Mori
Teach us to count our days aright,
that we may gain wisdom of heart.
(Psalm 90:12). (1)
Memento Mori
When I was growing up, “Remember your death” was an almost universal expression of Christian practice during Lent.
Parents taught their children that we are “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” My own mother, and a variety of other mature women I knew then, quipped their excuses for not mopping under beds with the old joke, “My friends might be down there, visiting me today.”
It’s human nature to fantasize that we are the exceptions, that we will never wrinkle and decline, that we ourselves will never die. The elders then were offering us as children an essential grounding in reality.
Last September, I lost my beloved husband of almost 50 years
Although I recognized our advancing age, decreasing energy, and the burgeoning of necessary medical checkups, I shied away from his earnest attempts to provide me with important survival information.
My response was bright-eyed and cheery. “But we’re not going to die,” I kept telling him. “At least, not yet.”
I know he showed me where he was hiding the outdoor emergency house key … Five months later, the kids and I still haven’t been able to find it. Fortunately, we had other keys.
A massive heart attack, caused by blockage in the LAD, left artery descending, took Charles away from us far too soon. This silent and deadly killer is nicknamed “the widow maker” by medical professionals, for good reason.
I’m deeply thankful for the memory that last April, he raced me across the parking lot at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Tucson, right after we had received Eucharist together on Easter Sunday. I’ll never forget his grin when he beat me to the car.
Despite my evasion, a spiritual call to prayer for the dying does run in my maternal family line. I experienced it even in my Methodist childhood, with elderly family members “checking in” as their time of passing neared.
Once I was confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church in 1989, insistent calls to pray for fellow parishioners, and even total strangers, drew me to the Adoration Chapel more and more often.
After a while, I began to notice that every time I felt a particular call to prayer, the same people were already there, or coming through the door right behind me; each of us always with a rosary in our hands.
At a Catholic Life in the Spirit conference held at Notre Dame University in 1998, I heard a speaker on the topic of charismatic gifts say, “Here’s a terrible one – knowing when people are going to die.”
I disagree. It’s a beautiful gift in the Body of Christ, a blessing that Our Lord pours through us, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
These calls to prayer mean that someone who loves us knows when we’re coming home; someone is lighting a candle in the window to guide us and welcome us; someone is calling companions together to support us. The transportation provided for that journey is prayer.
Every time any member of the Church prays a rosary, aren’t we asking the Blessed Mother for this very assistance at the time of our own deaths?
Catholics who respond to a felt call, to pray a rosary for others, are serving Mother Mary as her hands here on earth.
Has this understanding spared me any of the dreadful earthly experiences that follow the sudden death of a spouse — the incapacitating waves of grief, the hollow feeling of emptiness, the seemingly endless sleepless nights – the lawyers, bankers, and brokers, with their complicated rules and reams of paperwork – the daunting responsibilities to console grieving children and grandchildren, and to navigate the family through a disorienting new universe?
No. I have not been spared any of these.
But I’m grateful that, by mystical grace, I was granted the privilege to be with my husband, in prayer, at the time of his death; with God’s love swirling around us and through us both. That, for me, is everything.
T.S. Eliott wrote, in the concluding lines of his profoundly religious poem Ash Wednesday:
“When the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away,
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.
… Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
… Spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.” (2)
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now, and at the hour of our death.
Amen.
Notes:
1. https://bible.usccb.org/bible/psalms/90
2. https://englishverse.com/poems/ash_wednesday © 2003-2025 English Verse
Copyright by Margaret King Zacharias, February 15, 2025.
Feature photo used by permission of the author.
Photo by Eugenia Remark: https://www.pexels.com/photo/decorated-cards-golden-plate-and-ring-in-box-14784845/
into the 21st Century. They shaped the church in some way through their sacrifice and devotion to one another and to their families by making the prayer their foundation and God the center of their lives.
