Father James Martin

She's serious, right?

Yeah, well, it sounds like she's also grieving or mourning those 10 years too, right?

So it probably represents something that's larger for her.

Yeah, so maybe it's a question of just letting go of that part of your life or that period in your life, you know, more than letting go of the burrito.

Yeah, I don't want to trivialize what she's talking about because it, you know, like Proust's Madeleine, right?

It can kind of stir up memories.

And as I said, it does sound like she might be grieving the last 10 years.

You know, I lost my mom a couple of weeks ago and I was actually with her on the last day of her life.

So I was able to say goodbye.

But for people like letting go of people, I think, you know, as a Christian, I believe, you know, they're in heaven and we can say goodbye to them in our prayer.

One of the things that we can do to sort of help us say goodbye to something was something that was recommended to me by a Trappist spiritual director.

My mom had moved out of her house

And he said, as a meditation, why don't you imagine yourself going through the rooms with God, or if you're not a believer, just kind of going through those rooms and remembering all the things that happened in those rooms and letting it go, which was really quite powerful, you know, in your house, your bedroom, the living room, kitchen, all that.

And what happened to me in this meditation, which I found very powerful was, as I imagined myself leaving the house with Jesus in my prayer,

I expected in my meditation I would shut the door and that would be it.

But the door was open and I realized that I could go back anytime I wanted to.

I could go back to that imaginative recreation of my house and sort of live there and dwell there and remember things there.

And maybe for your caller, it's an invitation to go back and look at what happened in the last 10 years and kind of grieve that and say goodbye to it.

That's really beautiful.

That is.