It took every ounce of me to avoid stopping by the hospital to see her. What Peter had said the other night resonated with me; if I were to decide to go back, there was no point in seeing her. Besides, she told me to stay away, and these were requests that I had to honor. This situation, what did Peter call it? Temporary insanity? For the first time in a long time, the holidays had me feeling lost and displaced. This was the first Christmas that wasn’t spent celebrating mass at the church, helping out with the choir or leading the youth group in the preparations for their trip to the Vatican. I spent the day at my parents’ place, in a house filled with forty of our relatives and friends and nowhere else to go after brunch was over. Every so often, I caught my father glancing at me awkwardly as I stayed glued to the television screen, sprawled out with my legs up on the La-Z-Boy, watching the Cardinals play the Cowboys with a bottle of beer in hand. I proceeded to scandalize my mother by cussing at the terrible plays.
