“Run Along”

 “Okay, run along”….that was my mother’s way to let me know she needed a break from my intense presence. She needed time alone. 

The phrase “run along” came back to me the other day as I was reading a meditation by Dorothy Day for All Souls Day. She spoke about the process of her mother’s death. “Indeed for your faithful Lord, life is changed not ended, and, when this earthly dwelling turns to dust, an eternal dwelling is made ready for them in heaven. These were comforting things to talk about and to think about, those all-too-short afternoons by mother’s bedside….. And the evening that she died, so quietly, so gently, saying but a few moments before to my brother, “Kiss me goodnight and run along, because I want to go to sleep.” Life is changed, not taken away, and what a glorious change in these sad times, after a long and valiant life.” (Dorothy Day, Magnificat, 11-2-23).

It seems we all need time alone during our day and during our life. As parents, it was a good experience when the kids were in bed and we could have some time alone…. time to take a deep breath and experience peace and quiet. And it seems that at the time of our passing, our time of falling asleep in the Lord, we desire to be alone. Yet at that time we’re not really alone, we’re just saying goodbye to the bustle of this  world and hello to the deep peace of the next.  It seems Dorothy’s mother needed to be alone so she could get ready to go home to God. “Kiss me goodnight and run along, because I want to go to sleep.”

All Saints and All Souls Days are times of important reflections. They are days to  contemplate our future….a future filled with hope… a transition from a life of shadows to a life of brightness…. a time when we arrive after a long journey to our desired destination.  In Christ we can look to this welcome home with wonderful anticipation and joy. In the last words of a dear friend who recently passed, “the Lord is calling me and I can no longer resist him.”