Easter Sunday

I went to church yesterday for Easter Mass; last week I went for Palm Sunday services. Along with Christmas these are probably the only days in the year when I will attend. I thought of what I should pray for during the services and thought less about beseeching God with his help on my problems but that I should reach out to my mother, my father and my sister Diana. There must be someway that I can experience the manifestation of a spiritually connection to all three, now deceased. It's been so many years since my mother died, my memory of how she looked and talked has faded some, though I can still slightly hear that New England accent when i think of her. When I try to remember her I primarily now have in my mind a photo I have of her with my father that was taken on the sun porch at our summer cottage in Maine. If I can only have one vision of them then let it be of this picture. It's a good picture because they are both smiling and I can imagine how happy, especially my mother must have been to be my with my father that day, in that place she loved dearly. I decided that would also be the spiritual image i would want to see of my father. We had so much that was good together and his voice is louder and boisterous in my memories. The spiritual image I have of my sister is more uncertain. Strange that she, so photographed in life, yet I only have the sad photo of her that my brother made copies of to commemorate her life at her memorial. That sad beauty of that photo was so uncharacteristic of her it can not be the primary memory I will have of her. I have that framed picture on my night stand but it got in the way of the mental image I tried to use as a spiritual template for her. It was better to put away thoughts of her looks, not an easy thing to do, and more to focus on how funny she was. The laughter was my spiritual connection to her yesterday. The sounds of the voices of those now gone is not a lesser memory that the visions. I wanted to find also those that I never knew. My brother Ricky, my mother's father and the uncle who I never knew but after who I am named. I held out hope that I might gain some insight on to the spiritual remains of all these and others who are no more for this worlds, even though I am most doubtful about what is claimed about an afterlife by religion.I had no illusions of a deep revelation but I held out a slim hope of having an epiphany moment of making some sense of all this. But at the end of the Mass as I walked out I thought that it's all about the effort in trying. When we stop trying to reach them is when they are no more in spirit.