Thanks to all my readers, listeners, and those whoâve wandered by to pray with me through Flashđ„Devos these past few months. I offer you this gift of a walk-along with me on a visit to the town where I grew up and how I found perspective among its buried and living treasures. Goodbye to that Holy Ghost by Marianne Abel-Lipschutz I said goodbye to a lot more than my Aunt Mary Jane when I attended her funeral in the west Chicago suburb where I grew up. She was 92, and had died on October 1st after having spent several years in a nursing home following Uncle Joeâs death in 2017. I hadnât visited Glen Ellyn in twenty years. From hearing the Chicago & Northwestern train whistles on the incoming ride to passing the Seven Dwarfs Restaurant (for the best banana splits after swim team practice) on the way out, the 36-hour visit surprised me by refashioning my past. Mary Jane was a mythical pixie dynamo affectionately called Bebe who shepherded eight children into adulthood. She and my Uncle Joe had moved from New Jersey to Glen Ellyn in 1963 to be near our family with (eventually) five kids where we could all live happily ever after. Unexpectedly in 1965, my father accepted a transfer to Belgium for four years, and then to suburban Philadelphia. No one in my family ever lived in Glen Ellyn again. We became âthose who move on.â Glen Ellynâs gorgeous trees lit up every street that autumn--birch, every kind of oak, Eastern white pine, walnut, firs, junipers, cottonwood. Box elder, black maple, silver maple, and sugar maple are native to DuPage County. At the last tree census in 2020, the county tallied over 19 million trees, 21 times more trees than people. This protective canopy surrounds my strongest memories, along with the black silty clay loam of our yard, turquoise waves in the swim club pool, and afternoons crouched in the sumac thickets watching our pennies flatten on the railroad tracks when trains roared past. And peonies. I remembered how my motherâs luscious magenta peonies shook their tight fists in the wind before dancing like Byzantine jewels in our gardenâs hot June glow. *** Driving toward my cousinâs house, I passed Main Street School where I attended kindergarten, now a vibrant community center. We lived for a decade at 248 Crest Road six blocks away. Our street was blocked for resurfacing, so I parked and walked into an eerie hologram of the past. As kids, the concrete sidewalk paved our way around the world. I didnât recognize many locations until I walked by them because weâd left Glen Ellyn before I drove cars. What was once our foursquare Georgian home looked externally the same but the linden tree in the front yard had been cut down long enough ago that only the stump remained as a dent in the grass. The flagstone knee-wall along the neighborâs driveway that propped us up for games of marbles had disappeared. Wrinkles and puckers marked the deteriorated asphalt alongside our old yard. I chose not to strike up a conversation with a woman who hustled packages from the screen door into her SUV, clearly in a hurry. I was not in any hurry at all. Anonymous on the sidewalk, I relished my detachment. I felt no triggers whatsoever. No desire to enter the house, talk to the residents, or wander the yard--affirming years of therapy that had effectively deactivated the traumas that had occurred in that building. I felt clean and clear and wildly entertained by a preposterous seasonal spectacle that filled the front yard. Many neighbors still competed with garish Halloween decorations that revealed the sinister side of suburbia. Gigantic skeletons, gravestones with rhyming couplets, supersize wooly-legged spiders clamped over front doors, and spooky witches with broomsticks strung through tree limbs reflected the nightmares some kids experienced inside their homes. Inflatable goons tossed in the breeze, shaking the laughter out of me like a howl rising from the deep. Skulls tucked under the lime-green Mophead Hydrangeas scoffed, too. Three life-sized sorcerers tended a cauldron in front of the dining room window. A cheerleader skeleton doing splits bobbed her Golden Eagles pompoms in the breeze, next to bone-white flamingoes, hideous gargoyles, and body parts sticking out of the dirt. As a young girl, Iâd had a recurring dream of evading the hard things inside our home by flying up into the air like Casper the Friendly Ghost in my Saturday morning cartoons. Then Iâd dart underground where Iâd be safe (albeit buried alive). Now I laughed out loud at that lawn littered with death as if my past had finally breached daylight. One plastic headstone read, âDear Departed Brother Dave. He chased a bear into a cave.â The current homeowners had no clue how uncannily well that metaphor fit what had actually happened with our older brother David. One younger brother, who also suffered at the hands of dear departed Dave, captured the scene by saying, âWow, thatâs mind-bendingly weird.â A cosmic cleansing helped me see this home place as a dollar-store freak show of my traumatized imagination. Liberated from its past, I could acknowledge my formative Glen Ellyn years as the source of safe place markers that I still respond to everywhere: echoes of trains; standing with trees; feeling safe on dark soil. *** I felt caught off-guard in a different way the next morning. Aunt Bebe was the last of the elder generation whose passing drew friends and relatives from across the country. They honored her briefly in the open casket stationed against the funeral homeâs wall then stood in groups, leaving empty chairs lined up in rows in the center of the room. I imagined the angels of Aunt Bebeâs former life taking their seats and reminiscing, too. It became a family reunion in the front parlor of a funeral home without the booze. After two hours, the group processed as a caravan the few blocks through town to St. Petronilleâs Catholic Church where many of us had grown up and attended grade school. The church recently celebrated its 75th anniversary by restoring the interior to its original condition--an unadorned nave ordered by wooden pews oriented toward the white Carrara marble altar, all of it illuminated through gigantic windows supporting a vaulted ceiling. Two chandeliers lent an elegantly domestic feel, as if we were guests in a fabulous dining hall. Measuring ten by seventeen feet and named âLight of the World,â each chandelier held 5438 crystals and 140 bulbs. I had not identified with this denomination in decades although I had reclaimed commitments from my childhood faith through the spiritual traditions and peer support of 12-Step recovery programs in my adult years. As I glimpsed the open chapel ahead of all the cousins who walked informally behind Bebeâs casket through the narthex, I felt curious and glad to be back in a real church. Nowadays many religious programs rent buildings constructed for other purposes--a gymnasium, an old department store in a strip mall, even someoneâs living room or screened-in porch. I felt swept up all over again into this spectacular sacred space where a brilliant atmospheric mysticism had infused my nature with the fullness of a spiritual life. The clear glass windows directed our eyes to the skies, including but overriding the difficulties outside. Since our last name began with the letter A, we had always sat in the first seat or the first pew. There I was again by default as a member of the bereaved extended family, second one in from the aisle in the first pew. I surveyed the altar spread before me, restored architecturally and updated liturgically. Adult males still led the mass but they were attended by two altar girls, roles my girlfriends and I were never allowed. Despite the limits of discrimination, I felt safe there: questioning, alive, stimulated⊠Get full access to Marianneâs Substack at marianneabellipschutz.substack.com/subscribe
