The room was shrouded in an institutional lime green. Scant light shone through the small window, highlighting the cracks between the cinder blocks. It was just before dawn and time seemed frozen in an odd gray half-light. On the wall a multitude of tubes and cables protruded, snaking their way down the headboard. In this space, time was not measured by the tick of the clock. That would have been too regular, too exact, too sure. Here, time was measured by the torturous flow of dripping saline and the uneven skip of a heartbeat and each moment was an epoch of unrelenting agony.
* * *
I met Columban in the summer of my novitiate rather abruptly. I was practicing final blessings at the alter for Sunday’s mass, my first solo. I had planned everything to the smallest detail. Each phrase, each canticle, each movement was strenuously practiced and repeated. I could tolerate no element of error, as my Confessor, if he were able to, would substantiate. In the early stages of my preparation I would curse my mistakes and add several pater nostrum to my daily penance. Pronunciation was particularly important to me, so many just casually mumbled through the Latin as if it wasn’t an integral part of the Holy Mass. I was determined not to be one of them. I would be pure. I was just finishing the benediction and as I spoke the nominee pater a voice from the vestry broke my concentration.
“Who are you saying the mass for lad?” he asked, “Yer feet?”
He stood in the vestry doorway, a wisp of a man in an oversized habit. His cord hung loosely around his waste with only two knots tied haphazardly in the end of it. I wondered which of his three vows he wasn’t practicing today. He was a Friar, so that meant poor by definition. His age indicated that I might safely assume that it wasn’t chastity. That left only obedience. Father Superior had told me last week that a new priest was being sent to St. Leonard’s, and he indicated that our new brother was somewhat of a problem. Father Superior did not elaborate further. It must be obedience. The priest’s face was old and weathered, framed by dark glasses with lenses as thick as a Coke bottle bottom. The whole effect was of two large omniscient eyes peering at me.
“Excuse me Father?” I replied.
“Yer benediction’s all wrong lad, nobody other than the front pew is ever going to see what yer doing. Yer too bent over.”
“I was bowing at the Holy Name of our Lord.” I hoped that my liturgically correct answer would persuade this old timer to leave me in peace. This uncharitable thought activated the guilt center in my… well wherever they are, and I added two salve maria to my list for the evening’s penance. He must have sensed my discomfort as he smiled widely and approached across the sanctuary to the alter.
“That’s fine for yer private mass or a small chapel affair, but look at the size of the room yer playing to.”
“Playing to?” I inquired.
“Yeah, playing to.” He grabbed my shoulders and twisted my body until it pointed towards the pews, “Look lad, centre row’s almost thirty-two pews a side, front to back. Side aisles are another two sets of thirty pews for a total of one hundred and twenty four pews, seating eight people a toss. Now that’s a good near thousand people sitting and God knows how many last minute souls standing in the back, that won’t be able to see what yer up to. It’s a big room and it needs big gestures. Now show me your nominee pater again.”
I did so, bringing my right hand molded in priestly benediction to my forehead, then traced the line of my nose to just in front on my chin and finished the oft repeated movement with a sweep, left to right, of the hand and a bow at the spititus sanctus. Each movement was precisely measured and in cadence with the words from my mouth.
“Too small,” he said. “You need to make it more visual for the parishioners in the back, and cut the bow. It’s all right for saying mass for the Holy Father, but to the rest of the congregation, you look like yer mumbling to the floor. A simple nod will do lad.”
“But…” I never finished my protestation.
“Look lad. Watch and repeat after me.”
I nodded that I would comply. I has always been taught to respect my elders, especially if they were priests.
“Spectacles.” He raised his hand to his forehead. I repeated his words and actions.
“Testicles.” He lowered his hand to his mid region. I followed his motion, but could not repeat the word in the sanctuary.
“Wallet.” He swung his arm as far left as it would go. My arm reflected his.
“And Watch.” He swept his hand across his chest to his far right side and in a dumbfounded haze I mimicked his movement. I let my arm drop to my side as I stood observing the old priest.
“My name’s Columban,” he said with a wry smile and extended his right hand.
“Francis Xavier.” I replied shaking his hand, and slowly returning his smile. I considered for a brief moment the theological impact of uttering the word testicles within earshot of the alter, but something in this old priest’s eyes told me life at St. Leonard’s would never be the same again.
* * *
The respirator wheezed and hummed as it pushed oxygen through the clear plastic tube. The flowers that had been so fresh the day before were now withering and dying on the windowsill. One of the nurses should have removed them yesterday, but I suppose even their dull faded colour is an improvement over the lime green walls. Why do they paint everything lime green? There are so many more refreshing colours. There are so many more pleasant shades of green, aquamarine, for example. Okay, so it’s a mesh between blue and green, but it reminds me of the sea, when it’s calm and the sun is low. There’s forest green too, dark, silent and thoughtful. How can you be calm and thoughtful when the color of the walls makes you want to puke your guts out? There’s already been enough of that. It is my firm belief that purgatory is the same sick colour of lime green and if it were up to me, hospital administrators who approve of lime green paint would spend considerable time there.
* * *
I had never seen Father Superior’s face turn such a shade of red. It was a hot red, full of unvented rage and anger. I imagined that Spanish bulls were well acquainted with this variety of red as they faced down the toreadors, who distracted and the matador who held the final sword. He stood in the rectory doorway snorting, puffing, and stomping his foot. Father Superior was a formidable bull indeed.
“While I live and breathe and a Holy Father sits in Rome, I will not have women in the sanctuary” he bellowed.
“They’re not women Father,” I replied, “they’re girls.”
“Don’t quibble with me Francis. You’re still just a young pup and I won’t have you trying out every new fad that comes along,” he snapped.
“Father, be reasonable. They only want to be altar servers. Even Martha and Mary waited on our Lord.”
“Yes Father,” added Sister Frieda, always eager to join the fray. “Other than St. John, there were only women awaiting the resurrection of Christ. Surely their younger sisters could serve Him in some small ways?” Sister Frieda was young and newly consecrated to her order. She carried the zeal and commitment of our generation, bolstered by the new wind billowing the sails of Mother Church in the wake of Vatican II. Her idealism was matched only by her lack of worldliness, which Father Superior always exploited to advantage.
“No they can’t sister,” he said.
“Why not?” she was almost on the verge of demanding as she dropped his formal title of address.
“Because, they don’t have a penis Sister. If the Lord God Almighty had given them penises, I would have no objection what so ever, but they don’t and so they are out of luck. Period. End of discussion, final.”
The retort was well placed and devastating. It was not something Frieda was prepared for nor could she likely respond to it. She stood still in a perfectly shocked indignancy, but she was out of the fight now and only I remained. The bull often gored one of the toreadors in the course of the conflict, that was a given. It was worse when the bull trapped toreador and horse against the wall and sunk his horns deeply into their flesh.
“But Father you’re being unreasonable,” I interjected. Maybe the bull would turn his attention my way for a while. Father Superior shot a gaze at me that made me wish I had confessed earlier that day. The image of meeting my maker unshriven was somewhat disquieting.
“And as for you Francis…”
The image was becoming very clear and distinct now.
“Oh Gregory, stop yer blustering,” Columban said as he entered the room accompanied by two small girls. Angela and Theresa Carnelli, twin sisters who were nine years old, and prime candidates for the altar server program. Father Superior turned towards Columban and I gave silent thanks that my flesh was to be spared for the present time. The two men looked each other over warily, each attempting to size the amount of fight left in the other.
“My two friends here want to know why they can’t play ‘set the table’ with you on Sunday.” Columban always did have the most colourful metaphors for the liturgy. “I told them that you’d have an answer, and mind yer language what you tell `em.”
“Columban, we’ve been over this before,” Father Superior replied, although he seemed to have lost a little of his bluster in front of the children.
“I know you told me, and Francis and Sister Frieda, but I thought you’d like a chance to explain it to these two seraphic youth here why they’re not welcome at God’s table.”
Father Superior looked sternly at Columban and then at the two girls. He was imposing and towered over top of them, yet the showed no sign of fear. They were blissfully unafraid as only children and fools can be, returning Father Superior’s stare with an innocent questing look. How I envied them. The silence was unbearably long and Father Superior periodically switched his gaze from the girls to Columban, to me and then to Frieda. Each glance reflected his inner turmoil and growing confusion, as he tried to grapple with his isolated position. He was in a staring contest with two opponents that he could not bully into blinking, and he didn’t have the stomach for making children cry. Capitulation was inevitable.
“Oh, al right” he said. “Saints and Powers preserve us all, but only for the early service. Understood?”
I nodded my complete understanding.
“This is just a trial,” he added trying to preserve some dignity from his earlier position.
“Of course it is Gregory. We wouldn’t want it any other way,” offered Columban.
Father Superior left the rectory and retreated to his office down the hall. Columban ushered the two girls to chairs at the table and sat between them.
“Now, if Sister Frieda and Father Francis don’t mind, perhaps they could fetch the three of us some ice cream from the kitchen.” Columban said to the girls, who eagerly nodded agreement. Frieda and I started for the kitchen, but before I left the room I turned to take a last admiring look at the elderly gray matador who was now performing parlor tricks for his twin swords.
* * *
It’s seven o’clock now; the sun has started its eastern ritual, cresting over the horizon, bathing the world in it’s warm orange glow. The dim room light grows steadily brighter, making it easier to see, making the awful colour of the walls more accentuated. The nurse comes into the room. She’s round and pleasant with a perpetual cheery face. Her disposition strikes me as odd. In a place where death and suffering are constants, she has the strength of will to be cheerful. She is my sun. Each morning at this time she crosses the horizon of my lime coloured world and pumps the contents of a syringe into one of the tubes in my arm. The rush is slow but sustained and I am bathed in the warm orange glow of morphine. I don’t care what colour the walls are now.
The pain in my side has subsided somewhat. The morphine is still working. In one of my more lucid states the doctor informed me that a time would come when even the morphine would be ineffective. I disliked the doctor. He was cold, clinical and professional and he used words like ineffective to tell me that I might sometime soon be in unimaginable gut-wrenching pain. I felt like a car in a mechanic’s shop every time he came into the room. I rationalized, when I was rational, that this was his emotional defense to me. Too much involvement might impair his ability to conduct diagnosis and treatment. But the diagnosis was already made and the treatment was irrelevant at this point. Comfort, but do not resuscitate, was the phrase I believed the doctor used.
Columban sat in the chair in the corner of the room. He read from his breviary, silently saying Holy Office. Whenever I was awake he was in that chair, and if my memory is correct, and I don’t know that it is, he’s been here for the last ten days. He must have found it cool in this room as he had pulled his cowl over his head for warmth. All he needed was a large scythe and he would have been a dead ringer for the Angel of Death. All I needed was for his namesake to visit.
“Morning Father,” I mumbled slowly and softly.
“Ah, yer up lad,” he replied flashing a warm smile my way. He got up and came over to the bed and took a wash cloth from the side table and wiped the sweat from my forehead. The sensation was cool and refreshing and very comforting. The doctor was right, comfort was what I needed as I lay in bed while my body slowly crucified me.
* * *
The pain had developed over a period of six months. At first it had been a dull ache in my lower back. I thought that I had just pulled a muscle while trying to convince the altar servers and myself that I was still a young priest. I lunged a little too exuberantly after the tennis ball during our regular Saturday road hockey game in the church parking lot, and landed, after sufficient tumbling, flat on my back. The pain has been my constant companion and crucifix ever since. The weeks dragged on and the pain progressed from annoying to unbearable. At the insistence of Columban and the command of Father Superior, I checked into a hospital for some tests.
For a week they could not determine what was wrong. Tests, scans, pokes, and prods revealed nothing that would account for any trauma to my spinal column. This was perfectly natural, as the doctors and I later discovered the fault was not in bone, it was in the blood. The results of my blood work tests indicated, in the words of doctor ‘Auto-Mechanic’, that I had cancer in my lower intestine and kidneys, and that it was quite advanced. Advanced? What the hell did that mean? I had prepared myself mentally for being crippled, or bed ridden. Contemplation of death had never entered my mind
.My rage and fear were indescribable. I felt abandoned and alone. Despair and pain competed for mastery of my soul.
Father Superior dropped by for a visit after he heard the news. He tried to console me that Our Lord has a purpose in my suffering. I knew that he was trying to be kind and that he was quoting me the book and verse on death and dying, but I really wanted him to go away. No, I wanted him to be in my bed dying in my place. Let God choose him. In my morphine controlled condition I was able to hold my emotions from him, nod politely and feign sleep until he left. The rage did not leave with him, and neither did the pain.
Columban entered the room and came to my bedside. I was not in the mood to see anyone. I doubted that I would ever be in the mood again. I continued to pretend I was sleeping.
“Wake up, lazy bones,” he said.
I could not believe my ears. I was dying and he was making jokes. No amount of morphine induces passivity could restrain me this time.
“Fuck off,” I snapped. “Just fuck off and die old man.”
“Francis,” he said softly, “If I could, I surely would. No one wants you well more than I do.”
“Don’t give me platitudes Columban, I’m sick of them. I’m sick of being hooked up to tubes and pumps. I’m sick of people telling me it’s God’s will, I’m sick of this room. I’m sick of the never ending pain, and I’m sick of you.”
“And I’m sick of yer fucking whining.” His words slammed into my brain like a fist. “Oh it’s my pain, God is so unfair. Why Me? Really Francis, you’re a priest for God’s sake. I should have thought that you’d at least have the guts of yer convictions. Or has that been a fucking sham?”
“You don’t understand old man.”
“Oh, I understand. I understand more than you know. When I first saw you, I thought that you were one of those peacock priests. The ones that like to dress up in the robes, pontificate over everybody, and when it comes to the real issues of faith, couldn’t give a flying fuck. You bowed at the proper places, wore the proper attire and called yerself Father. I really wondered if the habit you wore ever went deeper than yer fucking skin.”
I looked up into his aged eyes and saw tears forming.
“I decided to give you a change to prove me wrong and by God you did. You turned into a true son of the Church. Yer compassion and care were real, the people knew, I knew, God knew it. You stood up to Gregory when he was being a narrow-minded fool. I was proud of you lad. But now you’ve sunk into despair and self-pity. It’s disgusting.”
Columban’s face streamed with tears the ancient riverbeds of lines worn deep with age channeled the moisture across his cheeks.
“I’ve said enough,” he was trying not to sob. “I’ll go now and if you have a mind you can call me when you want to see me again.”
He started toward the door. I watched him through my own watery eyes. I did not realize how much my pain had prevented me from seeing the pain my illness caused in others. I thought that I had dedicated my life to the service of others, but when confronted with the finality of my existence I was as self-centred as anyone else. Where were the guts of my convictions? I did not fully know and I was too emotional to attempt an analysis but I knew if I let Columban go I would never have the will to find out.
“Father,” I said, “please don’t go.”
* * *
“Is it bad this morning?” he asked
“Yes Father.” I replied, “it’s bad.”
Columban picked up a small black bag from beside his chair and placed it on the side table. He opened it and took out a purple stole, kissed it and placed it around his neck. He set out a chalice and a palette and opened the bottle containing the chrism for the rite of Unction, the last rite, the rite of healing.
“It’s not St. Peter’s, but it’ll do.” Columban said. “Are you sure you want to do this today?”
Unction was the spiritual finale. The omega to the alpha of baptism. It was a popular superstition among lay people that a priest doing the last rites was a harbinger of death and many postponed it as long as possible. I preferred to take part in mine. I felt it necessary.
“Yes Father, I’d like to do it today”
“All right then,” he said. “In the name of the Father…”
“No Father. It’s spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch,” I chided gently through the pain.
“It’s a small room lad,” Columban replied with a smile and continued.
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