Otherwise Christian spent his remaining days tending to his potato patch and rabbits, reading, and praying the rosary waiting for the great journey beyond. He still had medicinal herbs his late wife had planted in their front flower bed, whose roots he would grind up and make into a tea to relieve his pain. Pain being a part of the Cross, offering it up being one of the “good works” required for Justification and not only Faith, contra the heresy of Luther, the natural remedy helped ease the pain and his mind enough to better offer up his other Crosses, especially the grief he naturally carried at the loss of his wife, and living alone.
But Christian was thankful for his Faith, and that a younger man he once knew in the city many years before had introduced him to the Traditional Mass and Catholic Tradition, practical necessities for living a full Catholic life. He hadn’t seen that at first, until he and his wife started to attend regularly the TLM, opening their eyes.
This year he was able to attend the Mass on Christmas Eve, visiting with families, bringing homemade toys for the children, little painted carved animals and Christmas ornaments for the tree. Anticipating this trip down the mountain, sharing fellowship with his fellow parishioners, and later reminiscing on the joy of this occasion back at his homestead, took the edge off of his daily loneliness and severe pain. This being the divine design of the Church by Christ, to be not only a place for Mass and doctrine, but a community of believers giving each other support.
A week later, a parishioner living near Christian around the bend found him very sick in bed, appearing to be at death’s door, going down the mountain to fetch the parish priest. Father and several members of the parish Legion of Mary made the trek, coming around the death bed of our dear Christian, for the Last Rites, rosary, and giving him comfort. That night, New Years Day, Christian passed away, in a state of grace and peace, ascending to God and to (eventually) join his wife in heaven.
The End.
If you enjoyed this story, this post, please consider a token donation/e-book purchase of a mere $4.95 to the Okie Traditionalist, and I will respond gratefully in turn with another post. Proceeds go to increasing my stockpile of beef jerky in my prepper pantry. For every book sale, I can buy enough beef jerky for me and mine to enjoy as a morale booster after each time we have to fend off the zombie trespassers with our AR-15’s when the zombie apocalypse begins. Plus others might benefit from the content of my novel.