Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
The Color of Departed Souls

The Color of Departed Souls

Last updated on: November 4, 2019 at 9:12 pm by Mary Pezzulo

The Color of Departed Souls 2019-11-04T21:12:42-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The leaves have peaked for the year, and the color is going away.

Pretty soon people will start to put up Christmas decorations, the green and bright color of real trees replaced with artificial trees and electric colored lights, which are also beautiful. People are also a part of nature. In a week or two, the world will look colorful, and won’t go totally gray until January. Right now, we are in a bit of a limbo, where the natural color is draining out and the artificial one hasn’t yet been switched on.

Right now, nature is going to sleep for the winter, and a good portion of it will die.

Sometimes, death seems glorious. Sometimes death looks like a bonfire, like a battle– not a real one, but the kind you read about in storybooks, all adrenaline and nobility. Sometimes, death looks like an October tree. But then the reality sets in, and death is colorless like January or the worst part of November.

Fitting enough that we think of the departed souls in November– not so much the glorious souls we know to be in paradise, but the ones we’re not sure about.

Of your charity, remember to pray for the soul of my mother’s father. He wasn’t a perfect man, but he was wonderful. He was enthralled with nature. He used to take me to the city park to feed the ducks, and when the ducks at the city park weren’t hungry, he would take me to the pond at the cemetery. We would stand on the foot path or among the graves, throwing cracked corn to the waterfowl, and he would tell me their names. Wood duck. Mallard. Merganser. Black swan.

When we got back from the pond, he would putter in the garden. He was as good at gardening as he was at enjoying nature; his house was on a triple lot, which I used to imagine was the same as a real farm. My grandfather had an orchard of wizened dwarf apple trees and red and yellow plums; he also grew peaches, which he brought to our family reunions in the back of his van. They filled the whole whole trunk, perfuming the passenger seats. Once, he tried to grow cherries. He brought the fruit to the family reunion– a small harvest of soft spheres the size of shooter marbles, blacker than they were red. My grandmother tried to get me to eat them, even though I didn’t like cherries. She said they were so sweet this year, they didn’t need any sugar. She said that the tree they came from was already dead– it had gotten sick, and Grandpa had to chop it down.

I was so little that the two ideas ran together in my head. I decided that the sickness of the tree were what made the cherries so abnormally sweet. The sweetness of fruit was a disease, and every tree that caught too much of that disease would be chopped down.

I couldn’t visit my grandfather when he was dying. I knew he was dying, that it was going slow, and that I couldn’t go and see him before he was gone. Someone texted me a photograph of him in the hospital, pale as a sheet and covered with a sterile blue blanket, with an oxygen mask on his face, and I panicked. I cried until I was sick.

I didn’t know what to do, except to write to my grandmother and tell her how much I loved her. Then I took Rosie to the park to fly a kite, and when we got back, I got the message that he’d left us.

That was several years ago, in Spring when the trees had just come to life. Now he’s been gone a long time. Rosie does not remember him. It’s late autumn, and the trees are falling asleep.

This is the time of the year when we remember the people who are gone– not forever, bur for all intents and purposes. Not gone from memory or the mind of God, but gone from vans, gardens, ponds, hospitals, from feeding ducks, from planting and harvesting, from cutting down trees that have gotten too sweet for this world.

Of your charity, please pray for the soul of my father’s father. He wasn’t a good man, but I’m sure that he loved me. He had a big house all overgrown with vines, with a jungle of bushes all around the front. There was a small ravine across the street, surrounded by woods, all hemmed in with respectable houses, but I liked to pretend it was wilderness. I liked to pretend I was a girl from Grimm’s folktales hiding from a witch. Then I would come inside to dinner which my grandfather cooked. He wasn’t a good cook, but he cooked the best quality ingredients money could buy. He once won an enormous charcoal grill in a raffle and he used it to cook the most expensive steaks, to boil a gigantic pot of water for lobster. He showed me how charcoal heats up, first gray-black, then red, then the very hottest color which is gray but a different shade. Gray is both the color of cold and the color of intense heat. In the middle is fiery red like autumn leaves.

After dinner, I would go swimming in his pool. My grandfather was proud of that pool, but he never once went in swimming. He didn’t like to swim. The pool was a status symbol, not something to enjoy, not for him. He liked that I enjoyed it. He liked that I enjoyed the expensive food and would fret if I didn’t clean my plate. He liked his great big house across from the ravine. He liked to take lavish vacations in tropical climates where autumn and winter never came. He used to abandon my grandmother in the great big house and go on cruises with his mistress– I didn’t find out about the mistress until much later. I only knew that he was in Singapore or Borneo or the Bahamas, and sent me postcards that said “greetings” or “ahoy” and nothing else.

He died on one of those trips.

I was shocked to see him in the coffin, back in Ohio in late November, looking withered. His hands were mottled and wrinkled like cherry pits.

I didn’t remember him old.

The people who bought his house tore up all those vines and bushes and cut down several trees. They made it look like an ordinary house. But they kept the pool.

This is the time of the year when we remember that you can’t run from autumn and winter– that death comes even if you jet-set across the world to hide from your discomfort. That bitterness comes even if your surround yourself with the most expensive treats and cook them over coals that went from gray to red to gray. That the house you built up for yourself will someday be somebody else’s house, and you will be under the ground. That when the Day of Wrath comes, every tree that does not bear sweet fruit will be cut down, but every tree that died producing sweet fruit will be taken up to where sweetness never ends.

And yet, it is also the time of year to remember that God is Mercy, and does not wish any of His children to be lost. We will see the souls that are gone again. Nothing that died in the Lord is lost forever; it will return to us, as the color returns.

Of your charity, remember to pray for the the souls of the dead.

The color is draining now, but it will be back.

(image via Pixabay)

Steel Magnificat runs almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, visit our donate page.

Previous Post

November 3, 2019

A Shocking Decoration from a Weirton Officer

Next Post

November 6, 2019 Mrs. Laurent Goes to Purgatory: A Meditation for All Souls

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abortion Abuse Advent America American Christianity angel angels Annunciation Appalachia apparition apparition chaser apparition chasers apparition culture art art review babies baby baby Jesus Bad Lip Reading bad statue contest bath beauty Bible story blog blogkeeping blood book review Brandon Sanderson breastfeeding bus Catholic catholic conspiracy alarmism Catholic Oppositional Disorder Charismatic Renewal Charlie the Cat chastity Christ Christian idenitity Christianity and Judaism Chronic Illness clean clothing COD piece comedy compassion conscience conspiracy theory conversion cop-on-black violence Crucifixion cry of the poor culture Daesh Daily Saints death death penalty devotional diaconate diaper diapers dirty disability Donald Trump Dorothy Day dream drugs Eastern Catholicism Eastern Christianity education election election update Elsewhere on Patheos empathy environment Fear feminism film review fish flashback fluffy buns food Franciscan University of Steubenville Friendship Room fun Gabriel gardening gospel hair-splitting Heaven hell heresy Hillary Clinton history Holly the Witch Holy Spirit holy war Homeschooling homosexuality horror human dignity humor Icon idol immigrants infection inter-religious dialogue Interpretation of Scripture Islam Jesus Jihad Joseph joy laity and lay vocations lamb dinner laundry lent lgbtq literature love manners Mary Medicine and Science Meditation mercy mess milk misogyny Missouri monasticism monster motherhood mourn with those mourn movies movis music mystery nature neurodiversity New Pro-Life Movement news nonsense nostalgia O antiphons obituary objectification Ohio Valley Ordinary Time ordination Ordo Amoris parable paradox Passover peanut butter personal beliefs pets philosophy Planet Charismatic poetry politics polls poop Pope Francis Pope Leo power in the Church prayer prayer request prayers preferential option for non-violence president presidential election priest primary private revelation pro-life prophecy Public face of Catholicism Pure Flix Q and A race racism random rape rape. sexuality reader's request Reckoners refugee religious trauma ressurrection Right to life Saints saints and celebrations same-sex same-sex marriage satire scandal secular feasts seder Seven Joys Seven Last Words sex sexual ethics sexuality silencing six months skid row slavery social justice Speculative fiction spiritual abuse spoon stain story suffering suffrage suffragette Sunday Gospel temple Tenebrae Responsories Terror the exorcist The Friendship Room The New Pro-Life Movement Things I Learned on the Internet tin cup traffic true story tv review Uncategorized USCCB vice and temptation violence Virtue virtue and vice war Way of the Cross whimsy whole life women's ordination work of mercy Year A

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was Boaz's mother?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Naomi Rahab Ruth Sarah