afternoon dreamng

mother dad and my brother patrick and i are getting ready to leave for trinity church.  she has gone back inside to get her pink cope (cape).  i ask why she does not wear the purple one.  i know she has one.  then i realize that she can't.  the bishop will be present.    not an especially unusual dream, markedly liturgical.  one of mother's proudest moments was walking in procession at the consecration of a bishop who had been our parish priest.   she was such a loyal episcopalian.  and democrat. and burgeoning feminist.  i'm not sure how she would have adapted to today's social and political climate.

she just about lived to be a part of it, but she had been sick with alzheimer's for years when she died fairly recently.  she knew i had become more conservative as i recovered from my own mental illness, and she would probably have followed me wherever i chose to go ecclesiastically, but she would have had her reservations. she would, however, have been happy for me, and maybe that would have been enough.