World Series Joy Contrasted with a Boy's Mourning in the Loss of His Mother

Death, Resurrection, and Carlton Fisk's World Series Home Run

Excerpt:

On Tuesday, I didn't go to the visitation. Instead I watched the World Series with Wally. I didn't care who won the game, but as Fisk hit the game-ending homerun, Wally and I got caught up in the moment of the event. NBC replayed it over and over again until it was engrained in my mind. The next day, my family buried my mother.

... The Western calendar is divided between B.C. and A.D, with the birth of Christ marking the transition from one era to the other. My life could be divided between pre-October 1975 and post-October 1975. Carlton Fisk's homerun became a permanent marker of the transition from one period to the other, from carefree childhood to adult loss, disappointment, and pain.

... For years, I had hoped my mother would not have died when she did. I had hoped my life would have been different. I had hoped that I was not defined by death and mourning. My mother's death was the end of the story. All that was left was for me to die one day. All I saw was death. All the disciples saw was crucifixion, but what they did not see in Jesus' crucifixion is that God was submitting himself to and participating in a world where so much fails to work out the way we want or plan or expect. He doesn't stand aloof, accepting the results. God is not a spectator in heaven, untouched by suffering, pain and death. God enters our world of crucifixion and makes it a world of resurrection. I now react to Carlton Fisk's homerun with what Lewis called Sehnsucht, the longing "to find the place where all the beauty came from," my country, the place where I ought to have been born, the longing for home. It is a bitter reminder that we were not meant for death yet daily experience the many faces of it, waiting for the time when death itself will die. The Bible reveals very little about heaven. But it speaks of a new earth and a new heaven, where God will dwell with us, where he will wipe away every tear, where there no longer will be any death or mourning or crying or pain.

Comment: A very good read by a man now 50. He lost his Mother at the age of 12. I remember this World Series so well because I'm from Cincinnati and was a huge Red's fan. Kathee and I were newlyweds and living in Tampa Florida