St. Mary of the Bay

We bought a decommissioned Catholic church on the East coast of Massachusetts in 2020. It was quite the cultural shock, having been a New Orleans boy my whole life. But the kids moved up here and then started reproducing, so I was granddoomed.

It's situated at the end of a little peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. The other side of the peninsula is Hull Bay, across from which we can see the Boston skyline 8 miles away, as the fish swim. We get the most spectacular sunsets over the buildings, from our porch.

The place has good vibes. I've lived in places before with bad ones, but this place is a friend.

It's a bit of a money pit, but that's OK. It's rock solid, on a hill of granite, with a lot of heavy mahogany inside, everywhere. When I tell people my place has cathedral ceilings, they don't think I mean 30-foot ceilings. Built and dedicated in 1927, the Kennedys and the Fitzgeralds used to go to Confession here. I still have the Confessionals, although one's a half-bath now and the other is a double bookcase with sides flanking the place where the priest used to sit. Oh, the stories they could tell! Sadly, no Kennedy ghosts.

When I see the sun through my stained-glass windows, the end of the day seems a blessing of calm from the cosmos. Sunset is followed by the cool ocean breezes and life is sweet. With all of the scary and horror literature coming out of old places, this place just seems to be, well, a hallowed place of succor. All 14,000 square feet, which includes a smaller chapel where the stubborn Catholics used to still prefer to hear their Masses in Latin.

Each window has a brass plaque with a name, in memory of loved ones who financed them. Many names, but no Kennedys. I looked. They're all long dead, of course; even those who paid for the plaques, to remember their dead, are all long dead, too.

We live with a cockatoo who, as I understand it, has a life expectancy in the eighties. St. Mary of the Bay will outlive me; my bird will outlive me. I wonder if I should pay for a little plaque for me right now in case no one wants to remember me fondly; or even just remember me.

Ah, but theprose.com will remember me. I hope. I wonder what their policy is of keeping material of people who go away for good? Shouldn't there be a section for those deceased that will allow their loved ones to read their material and clomp around in their once-thinking, once-witty, and once-relevant brains?

My agent once told me, "Great books die every day." That may be true in the writing vying for shelf space, but the Internet is--as they say--forever. It may be that once I'm dead and gone, as a five-time failed novelist and a Vogon-calibre poet, my only writing legacy will be here on Prose. It takes archival responsibility to a whole 'nother level. Even if not, the Sun I watch every evening burns out in another five billion years and nothing will last after that, anyway.

I try to write at least one thing each day before I see the sunset through my window or from my porch. It all becomes part of this church, my final resting place. I'm not being morbid when I say that. No, it's my fervent pledge to myself that I will NEVER NEVER move again. Imagine a time in your life where you know you will never have to move again!

I was raised Catholic, and although I'm semi-retired as one, I still value a spiritual side, which lately has been imbued with a quantum sensibility. I'm not ready to sing any swansongs yet, but if everything were to end right here and now, that would just about OK with me.

Just about. I reserve the right to update that sentiment.