Amy Welborn in Catholic World Report:
A few days after Pope Francis died, I drove from Alabama to Wyoming.
The ostensible reason for the journey was not to sit mobile shiva for the dead pontiff, but simply the delivery of my 2019 Mazda 3 to the college student son. He gets a vehicle; I would then “need to” purchase a new one: everyone wins.
So it began: a mid-morning in late April as I headed north from Birmingham on I-65. Usually, I road warrior this trip. My preferred time frame: a day and a half. Oh, yes, it can be done, even for a late middle-aged gal like me.
This would be different, though. It would probably be the last time I’d make this particular drive, so I decided I should carpe diem, meander, and see things. The Atlas Obscura and Roadside America sites gave me enough reasons to pull off onto side roads and countryside corners, far more than the five days I was allowing myself. Some were quirky: Buddy Holly’s crash site, and a church where Dvorak played organ for Mass one summer. Some were tourist givens: the Corn Palace, the Devil’s Tower. Others were simply necessary for life, with no notes: Flannery O’Connor’s ghost in Iowa City.
I don’t mind driving long distances, and might even be a little weird about it, as my introverted, solitary self can move along in that wheeled tube for hours, taking in the world alone, with no conversation, podcasts, audiobooks, or even music, content with her own thoughts. Which are, frankly, the best thoughts.
Thoughts which, on those days, were quite a bit about popes. Dead popes, possible popes, new popes. That first day was a Sunday, and I had left Mass at my own parish, where I’d entered through a portal that told a story of both death and life in a glance that morning, in a single step: Doors decked out with wreaths of bright Easter blooms—draped in solemn black. Inside, amid the explosion of white and gold, lilies and Alleluias, the long face of the dead pope gazed at us from a framed photo standing on a black pall, a candle burning in front.
