I’ve been writing regularly, but my last post here was about how impatient I was for Thanksgiving Break. I recounted how I had spent the summer in a boot due to a bad break, a broken ankle. I just couldn’t wait for five whole days in a row off from school and being free to cook to my heart’s content. My Thanksgiving Break was fabulous.

After Thanksgiving, I turned my greedy eyes to Christmas Break. My younger daughter flew in from Los Angeles (#veryworriedaboutherrightnow), and the four of us were all home together. It was glorious.

When a teacher returns to school from Christmas Break, there is a certain sense of urgency to lesson planning as the rest of the school year flies by with little breaks here and there: MLK, JR Day in January, a faculty retreat and Presidents’ Day in February, and for my school, a professional development day in March. Next on the calendar is Easter Break. For a Catholic school, this is a big deal. We observe Lent at school with no meat in our lunches on Fridays, extra prayers in the classrooms, attendance at Mass on Fridays as usual but in the afternoon we return to church for the Stations of the Cross. We have Holy Thursday and Good Friday off, and then all of the next week (Easter Week) for Easter Break.

This year, wow, this year, we have been thrown a curveball. Yesterday afternoon, Thursday, March 12, 2020, at 4:15 pm, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan announced ALL the schools in Maryland would be closed for at least two weeks, from March 16-March 27, out of an abundance of caution (this is the # phrase of the year) in light of COVID 19. Our school was scheduled for its spring professional development day today, March 13, so our school was already closed; thus I have an unexpected eleven school-day break stretching out ahead of me.

A bigger shock occurred later in the evening last night. I received an email with an announcement from the Archdiocese of Washington (DC) stating that ALL church services would be canceled starting Saturday, March 14, 2020. ALL? No Mass on Sunday? No Stations of the Cross on Fridays? This is a first for me. Even with my bad break this past summer, I attended Mass every weekend except for the week before the surgery and the week after the surgery. Sure, it was quite the palaver as the British would say (wheelchair, crutches, cane, oh my), but for me, it was non-negotiable that I was going to Mass.

This morning, on the first day of my COVID 19 Break, I went to 9:00 daily Mass. When the priest started Mass, he announced that it was the last Mass until further notice. There was a collective sigh from those present, the majority of the 50 or so parishioners who attend daily Mass year-round, but the mood worsened as Fr. Bob went on to say, in a poignant and personal address to us, that in his 46 years as a priest he had not been stopped from celebrating Mass for his people. It was a beautiful Mass with a short but meaningful homily, and then after, some stayed behind to pray the rosary while Fr. Bob heard confessions.

Many of the regulars stayed in the church, some praying and some just sitting. It was as though we didn’t want to leave. As Fr. Bob said in his opening comments, “We don’t miss something until we don’t have it.” We don’t have Mass for at least two weeks. No receiving the Eucharist. No standing in communion with others, celebrating the Mass. No listening to the liturgy of the word. No homily. I miss it already. Heart break.

💔