As I watched the woman
die, I was gripped by a powerful awe of life. The appreciation of my
existence which I suddenly felt because of the death of that old nun seemed to surpass the feelings I
remembered from my most exhilarating experiences. Then came a wave
of questions and – oh, I am a man of little faith! - fears. I was getting increasingly powerless and
vulnerable. What is life? How do we partake in it? What is the human body
after the soul departs it? Do we die because the soul leaves the
body, or does the soul depart the body because the body dies first?
What if I have fooled myself in believing that there is a way I can hold on
to life forever? And I saw my soulless body being buried under a layer of nothingness.
I was ready to collapse on the simple stone
floor and lie there speechless, overwhelmed by the profundity what I
had just witnessed and of what I was – but how? - part of. Instead,
supported by a nearly decade's worth of priesthood, I started a prayer and none of those present would
guess what was going through my head as I was uttering words which were meant to be as much help for sister Rosalie's soul as comfort for those
left behind in the small candle-lit room of the simple convent tucked
into the side of an ancient forest at the outskirts of M. I finished the prayer and
looked at the faces of the two - excluding the dead one – nuns who
were with me in the small cell.
The warm, elderly abbess, whom I knew
and liked a lot, kept eyeing me with slightly unsettling regularity
and the other sister, a stout middle-aged woman whom I hadn't seen
before, had a face of a hardened soldier and I couldn't for the life
of me tell what emotions went through her, if any, ever. I always
found surprising the practicality and cool-headedness most women I
knew could muster when confronted with extreme events, but there was
something else going on here. Somehow, the nuns were more concerned
with me than with the deceased nun. 'Come, Father, let's talk about the funeral in my
office', the abbess made a move towards the door. 'Sister Thérèse
is going stay
here and pray a little more'.
I turned
around to give the parting look to the woman I'd just sent off to greater
things and caught the eye of Sister Thérèse,
who wanted to fake a delicate smile, but failed. She came up to the bed and
wanted to push in one edge of
the blanket covering that was hanging unevenly along the side of the
bed. She must have moved the
body a little and suddenly a limp arm dropped down and emerged from
under the blanket. It was all covered in scratches and dry
blood. The fingers were clutched tightly and from
between them something stuck out. It looked like very short human
hair - or clusters of an animal's fur. The abbess pulled me and
said 'Let's go and talk in my office.'
She gave me a half-commanding, half-pleading look. 'This is a difficult time for
us. Very difficult', she added. I glimpsed once more at the hand whose fingers
chillingly confirmed the mystery the nun's closing eyes had promised
a short while earlier – and left the room. A door nearby closed quickly. The abbess led the way down a silent and dark corridor at the end of which a
flickering light of a single candle was marking our aim - her room,
where I expected the veil covering sister Rosalie's person and death
to be removed. However, I was to be proven wrong.
*bloody good progress, isn' it :\ Half a year after Page One : / (Yes, can I have your footprint in my backside, please?)
*bloody good progress, isn' it :\ Half a year after Page One : / (Yes, can I have your footprint in my backside, please?)
