In the wee hours of the morning on April 24, I realized I had missed the anniversary of the death of my dear friend Kate O'Beirne. I've been thinking about her a lot lately, as I typically do, but I didn't do anything special or different to mark the occasion. And so, I felt like I did something wrong. Kate died on a Sunday in 2017. Her family was praying the Litany of the Saints by her bedside as she took her last breath. After being present with them in her hospital room with family and friends late into the night, I was at Mass when a member of Congress, a friend of ours, texted me that she had gone to our Lord.
Grief is a multifaceted mystery. It never fully disappears, but it will turn its own volume down now and again, only to spring back onto the forefront of your life when it is most unexpected. It seems to come and go, but it is truly omnipresent. It's inescapable. Many of us fear it, deny it, and reject it. If we face it, though, we may just come to learn something about the depths of our hearts and how they reflect and are healed by the creator of the universe.
I am somewhat loath to mention consolations right after someone's death — the sadness is all too raw. As C.S. Lewis put it in his "A Grief Observed": "Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand."
Death is likely still a shock, even if you knew it was coming. I remember that night emailing people I hadn't talked with for years to ask them to join in the vigil of her final hours in prayer, wherever they were. So many loved Kate because Kate loved them with class, humor and radical generosity (she and her husband would frequently pay for young priests to go to the Holy Land, if they knew a priest hadn't been).
I first met Kate at the Heritage Foundation; she was vice president for government relations, and I was a Catholic University of America undergraduate interning there when I didn't have classes. That eventually led to a job at National Review and one of the most important friendships of my life.
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Kate loved Pope John Paul II. I never told her this, but Kate reminded me a bit of him. There was a coolness about them both -- they made Catholicism chic, but never in a pretentious way.
Recently, I've become beleaguered by death fatigue. Life feels as if one more person dies — and they will — I will break. Even with faith in God and an eye on eternity daily, it's hard. It's painful. It can be agonizing.
Death, of course, is also clarifying. How many things do we do throughout the day that don't matter in the end? What are we prioritizing that is distracting us from love and virtue, faith and family, service and mercy? We've got responsibilities — some of them arduous, some of them mundane. We can choose to do them in a spirit of gratitude and glory to God for the opportunity to live. We can offer our crosses in the workplace and everywhere else to our God.
I say "our" because it is personal, our relationship with the divine. God made us, he doesn't abandon us, he wants us with him for eternity. Does the way I live my life — today, this very hour — reflect that? These are the kinds of questions that lead to the kind of lives that show people that Christianity can make an unmistakable, transformational difference. It's the stuff of radical revolution — and there is no political ideology. Only love.
Next year will be 10 years since Kate died. I'm looking forward to planning something big to introduce Kate Chic to a new generation.
(Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book "A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living." She is also chair of Cardinal Dolans pro-life commission in New York and is on the board of the University of Mary. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.)
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