Where do we go?

I live in Grand Terreno, USA and I don’t get out a lot. Grand Terreno’s a fine landlocked town in the American midwest and a peaceful place to live but it gets a little boring unless you enjoy one Bible study after another or, on the other side of things, one more stint at the local bar after another until you croak. There’s nothing really that exciting to see or do in Grand Terreno. We don’t have a fancy city nearby or anything of cultural importance.

So, perhaps because I was bored, one summer, I decided to visit Oxford 12 years after my first visit. To make the solo trip, I used up more than half of my vacation. After I came back and couldn't even tell her any exciting things I'd done, even my sister said it was probably a waste of time and money.

I’m not entirely sure why I made the trip. I think it was to revisit a part of me that was lost and, frankly, impossible to revisit. I knew I wouldn’t find it, but I still wanted to try. I wanted to find the poetic, little Christian that had gone abroad with his college classmates to such a quaint and storybook-like place.

Mind you, I wouldn’t have gone the first time if I hadn’t won the scholarship even though I probably did have the money to make the trip, or at least my father did. Getting selected was something of an honor, but not really even that. I went to a small school, my father was a huge donor, and I had managed to hold a 3.5 GPA for two years. 

To my disappointment, the airplane ride wasn’t thrilling the second time. It was only my second time in a plane, but this time the Atlantic just looked blue and flat. It had lost its sparkle or maybe it was because I wasn’t sitting next to my gushing classmates. This time my companion was a middle-aged man who, after watching a couple movies, slept the rest of the way. When we landed, he woke up, said "that was a great nap" in a stuffy British accent, and called his son to pick him up.

I landed with a very vague plan in my mind to revisit all my old haunts. After a very early British breakfast at a pub, I started to sketch out a plan on the notepad I had taken from the plane. There were about five places I remembered from my first trip that I wanted to see again. It was early in the morning, and I attempted to visit one of the spots that day, a bookstore we'd often visited. However, I’d barely gotten there when I felt my eyes shutting from fatigue and jet-lag. I decided to book a room at a hotel I'd never noticed was on the same street. I took a full day and a half to recover from my jeg-lag, but I finally emerged feeling ashamed to think of the once youthful version of my self who had walked the same streets and thought nothing of a little lost sleep.

Over the next few days, I visited all the old haunts--cafes, bookstores, and museums. I remembered them all more vividly than I expected to though a lot of my memory was of being led around by our guide, Dr. Peterson, a Catholic professor from Oxford. I found myself to be a less interesting guide, but I tried my best to mentally relive the past as I visited each site and to remember all the things Dr. Peterson had told us about Oxford and its history. Mostly, though, I remembered the conversations. Yes, there was the cafe where we talked with Dr. Peterson about Chesterton and Aquinas and the crisis in the culture. Here, was the museum where he had pointed out Kant's notebook and warned us about the dangers of rationality.

Even though the distances were short, I always took a taxi. I should have saved my money and walked but I felt perpetually tired and heavy. At night, I returned to the luxury of the hotel, sometimes quite early. The hotel was definitely not from the past. We had all stayed in dorm rooms at the part of Oxford University where Dr. Peterson was dean. Those dorms had had little airconditioning and beds full of creaky springs.

On the fifth morning I got up very early and after watching the BBC in bed and getting disgusted at how lazy I felt, I decided I'd leave my immediate surroundings and drive out to the countryside. I told myself, I’d go to the abbey where we’d gone to daily Mass. I ate a 6am breakfast in a nearly empty hotel restaurant and remembered that back then I would have foregone breakfast until after communion. Then, I hailed a taxi and took a 10-minute drive over to the abbey. I remembered my younger self walking the same distance once or twice.

And then there it was. There was the old abbey where I’d prayed so often and attended Mass daily. I was able to look inside just before Mass began. They were putting the same candle holders on the altar. I remembered the solemn, holy faces carved in the gold. I hadn’t gotten to know the members of the order, but I’m pretty sure they were much older now but essentially still the same. I left promptly as Mass began and got a hard look from a prim, British woman.

For a long time, I thought about myself and my life as I stood outside and listened to the faint sounds of the Mass inside. I was no longer very young and full of hope, the hope of the resurrection and all that other nonsense. I had lost my religion--no I had martyred it on the altar of life. Now I was an atheist who would have laughed at my former self. I had committed a suicide of faith and hope. I realized I had done it without really wanting to--day by day I had simply grown apart from the ideals of the Catechism.

Right then and there, it came to me. I knew I wanted to visit Dr. Peterson. I had wanted to make the trip without seeing him. I dreaded our conversation. Back then, he had known me as a pious Catholic. Somehow, I knew my atheism would come out during our conversation, and then we would have an argument and risk souring our time together. Still, I knew we needed to visit or my trip wouldn’t be complete.

I wasn’t sure what was best. I could go to the university where Dr. Peterson taught or I could visit his family where we had spent many nights enjoying ourselves after a delicious dinner cooked by Mrs. Peterson. He had seven kids and his house was always full of life. I hadn’t told him or his family anything about my visit and part of me wanted to see the look on their faces when I strode up to the door and announced myself. Surely, they would remember me. I had spent the whole summer with them. Or would they? They had probably been visited by many students.

At last, I took a taxi over to the university thinking I would start there. I asked my taxi driver if he could pick me up in an hour. I hadn't warned Dr. Peterson that I was coming, well, not really. I had sent him an email but received nothing back from him, and I was doubtful I had the right address. 

I thought I knew exactly where his office was from 12 years ago. I could have made my way alone, unescorted, but I went to the information center and asked if Dr. Peterson was in. In a curt British accent that didn’t invite conversation, the woman told me there was no Dr. Peterson nor did she have any recollection of a Dr. Peterson at the school. I was shocked.

I decided with a feeling of desperation to take a taxi to Dr. Peterson’s house immediately. Forgetting about the taxi coming in an hour, I hailed the first taxi I saw. Now, I realized how much I wanted to see him. I realized that all the beauty and color of the city were not as impressive as I remembered because they lacked the most important element, Dr. Peterson's personality which had breathed life into them. 

The taxi drive was twenty-five minutes--I remembered that he was set off from the city. As we drove out of the city again and back into the countryside, we passed quaint British houses with moss growing on their roofs. We were entering a kind of domestic bliss and stability that didn't exist in my life.

Peterson's house was quaint just like the others. A brick pathway led up to woolly bushes under antiquey windows. I could see the laundry was hung out to dry in the back, just as I remembered it, and I saw a child in the yard whose face I recognized as the much older version of one I'd know before. 

I told the taxi driver I’d call for a cab when I finished. For one thing, I thought if Dr. Peterson were there, we would take a walk down to the nearby pub to have a drink and catch up. I had so many questions to ask. I wanted to know first of all why he wasn’t in the university anymore.

The child, a boy named Ralph greeted me in the yard. He was one of the oldest. Now, he was 17 years old and looked much like his father--he always had. I explained that I was an old friend of his parents who I named. He seemed suspicious, but after I named some of his siblings, I won him over. He agreed to go into the house with me. 

Mrs.Peterson, probably barely a decade older than me, was surrounded by children when she came to greet me. I later learned the youngest was almost seven. It took some time and a lot of astonishment for her to finally remember me. At last she exclaimed, "Oh, you went to Mass with him in his car, isn't that right?" Her memory of the detail made me blush. He had given me a ride many times while my other classmates slept in.

When I asked where Dr. Peterson was, a silence fell upon the scene and their faces darkened. Finally, it all came out. After a grim illness, Dr. Peterson had passed away nearly seven years after my visit. His remains were in the cemetery next to the abbey where he had gone to daily Mass.

I offered them my condolences and stayed for the rest of the hour so as not to be rude, but my enthusiasm for being there had left me, and although the children were excited to have a friend, I had no desire to prolong our conversations or to stay for dinner. I answered the questions put to me but tried not to give away much about myself.

The next day late in the afternoon, I worked myself up to going to Mr. Peterson’s grave. As I watched the houses fly by my taxi window, I wondered where we all went. The 12 years younger version of myself hadn’t doubted the answer. My taxicab driver was silent during the trip. He was a young man, who evidently liked American pop music because he played it loudly the whole time. Normally, I would have objected, but I was happy not to have to make conversation.

As the abbey came into sight, it struck me that not once in these 12 years had I ever questioned the existence of this abbey or Dr Peterson, yet roughly seven of those years, Mr. Peterson had not been. It struck me that it is only later when we see black and white pictures of World War II soldiers and concentration camps that we take it, as a matter of fact, that entire worlds, filled with the good and the bad, have simply ceased existing.

It also struck me that Dr Peterson must have assumed the existence of my faith. He must have pictured me practicing it as he had done--that is if he had ever even thought of me. Maybe he’d offered up his sickness for me or at least for those struggling with their faith. Maybe, he'd pictured his Catholic friends praying for him during the Mass. As he lay dying, he must have hoped that there would be Masses said for his soul. 

I wouldn't be offering a Mass. Only three years after that trip, I had given it all up. He would have been deeply shocked and disturbed if he had known that the young man who went to daily Mass was actually a lukewarm follower of Christ. Wrestling with doubt the whole time. Well, if there was a heaven; he knew now.

It had started with my first real relationship at the ripe old age of 28. While it hadn’t worked out with Carla, we’d lived together for three years, and I think I had truly been in love for the first time in my life. Of course, to make it work, I had had to give up my core beliefs; I had traded the promise of eternity for the comfort of her love. I'd done it all much more easily than I'd expected. I probably had never believed in God. The fact that it had all happened proved that.

At any rate, I didn’t go unpunished for trusting in the flesh. Two years into our relationship, I discovered that Carla was cheating on me with a mutual friend. When I told her that she’d ruined my life and that I'd left everything because of her, she claimed she had always doubted the sincerity of my love for her because of my faith. “You’ve still got Jesus,” was one of her last attacks before she left me forever. She was wrong, I didn’t have Jesus. I didn’t even have my romantic blinders.

The abbey graveyard probably only had about 20 graves. Likely, the only reason Dr. Peterson and the few other laypeople were allowed to be buried in it was because of their devotion and charity to the abbey.  I walked up to his gravestone and read the dates and his name on the stone. He had died at 47 years of age leaving a young widow. No doubt, he could have gone on living another 30 years. A merciless cancer had taken his life. 

I stood looking at the grave while in view of my taxi for about 15 minutes. Instead of praying,  I was trying to reach Dr. Peterson. I remembered his love of Hopkin's poem about the resurrection. I struggled to recall the name for a while. Then, it suddenly came to me "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection." It was a funny combination, flux, and the hope of ultimate stability. I could believe in the flux at least.

I have never been one to write poetry but finding a small notebook and pencil in my pocket from the hotel which I had used to write down addresses, I took them out and found myself writing in verse. It was not even a real poem but I still remember it mostly. 

Dear Dr Peterson, farewell.

You’ve gone on while we stay here.

Who knows where we go.

I used to think I knew

But that was when you were here

And my faith was living too.

Now both are gone and I do not know.

For what you gave me, thank you.

You were a good man and deserved

Better than this dirt we all will someday share.

Farewell.

I placed the flimsy bit of paper next to his gravestone where I knew it would blow away with the next wind.

In the past, I would have gone inside to pray for Dr. Peterson’s soul, but since I hadn’t done this by his grave, I wasn’t about to do it in a church.  

As I walked to the car, I saw that the young taxi driver was watching me with curiosity. For my part, I felt the need to share my experience with another human being. “I can see you’re curious, and, no, I don’t know any of the monks here,” I began. “The man buried there was a professor of mine 12 years ago. I came to pay my respects.” The taxi driver seemed more talkative as well. He spoke to me in a Cockney accent, “Is that so? I’m an orphan, me mum and dad are buried up the road. They used to come here all the time.” "Do you come here, too?” I asked to keep the conversation going. He laughed sardonically then said, “No, I don’t share my parents' religion. When you see your mum and dad taken out of this world by a drunk driver, it’s hard to believe in God.” The conversation was hard to revive after that, and soon he had turned on his favorite radio station.

That night as I lay in bed trying to sleep, I realized that I had a flight in the morning. I had totally forgotten about it. The thought of getting away gave me a strange sense of peace. I was finally able to fall asleep. Boarding the plane the next day, I felt certain I'd never come back. The End.