Raymond Tucker Cordani

A Pulverized Jewel Raymond Tucker Cordani

The raw truth of early trauma; the twists and turns through an honest expression of a road traveled through survival and healing. The ministry of death haunted the author through loss of family members and stability. In memory of the author's mother who passed away in 1989, just after his 18th birthday and his high school graduation. He spent many years attempting to resurrect a family that passed, feelings of hopelessness but he never gave up trying. Sylvia was a graceful woman with the class and elegance of a nineteen 50's icon. Everyone loved Sylvia, as she so delicately crocheted stockings for her family to hang on the mantel at Christmas. The love of family and her undying efforts to care for allying parents through end-of- life. Sylvia chose Catholic School for her son; he was dropped off at the door and attended mass alone. Sylvia had an inclination that her son would become an ordained priest someday. In the throws, the author's marriage breaking down he went back to church; his roots and his salvation. He entrenched himself in the word of the Lord; discerning the option of becoming a Priest. As a physician of souls, I attempted to save them retroactively, decades after they took up permanent residency in Elysian fields, the final dwelling of the souls of the damned, the virtuous, and the heroic, a two-dimensional exurb of heaven governed by the demigods Chronos and Kairos, the horizontal and the vertical respectively... Some called it Purgatorio. I referred to it as the land of the Cross, for it was Christ who stretched out his arms on the cross as he looked heavenward and beseeched his father, God to save him, crying out, my God, - My god, why have you abandoned me!