The Attachment Page 10

  Loving well is a life’s work, isn’t it? We get so caught up in categories and labels, and in the complexity of that over-used, over-valued, de-valued word ‘love’. It always seems to me that the heart doesn’t have an appetite for categories and language. Its job is just to feel. The mind wreaks havoc with the heart, trying to tell it what it can and can’t feel, and about whom, and what age they must be, or what gender. The heart knows only that its job is to expand and love. Wherever it can. It does it with such ease and . . . well, grace.

  It’s grace that you and I got to find each other, I think. Grace bathes every meeting of a like mind, and every hard-won relationship. I find it incredible that humans get to love each other—and in such a variety of ways.

  By the way, I don’t mean some wafty, misty-eyed touchy-feely romantic thing, either. Love is the most active verb I know. It is putting oneself out to accommodate another, it is sitting by a deathbed, making soups and cakes, holding a hand, picking up pieces.

  And it is writing letters, you know, Tony. Responding, when tired or confronted. Turning up, when a question irritates or touches nerves. Extending, making time, straining to understand another. Co-responding. Letters are a kind of loving. Call them correspondence or call us pen-pals—what we’ve been doing is opening our hearts as well as our minds, and that takes effort.

  Funny.

  People throw the ‘love’ word around about the most vacuous things. I do it. ‘I love rhubarb,’ I will say—though let us not underestimate the mighty rhubarb—or ‘I love red nail polish’. But when the verb ‘to love’ is used for something real and true, something hard-earned, we are afraid to use it.

  I don’t dispute that there are different kinds of love, but I do wish people would own up to it more truthfully about the big things. I would be appalled at myself if any of my home village ever doubted that I love them—if I had not been generous enough to tell them. One of my fears is that I could die leaving anyone I love in doubt as to my feelings for them.

  Of course I do see there are easy and hard loves. I think the most demanding is with the husband, wife, partner, companion—the one who has to do the day-to-day turning up of domestic life. From the dropped towels to the shared terrors of health scares; from the coping with another’s family to the ache of their disappointments or frustrations; from the grind of routine to the ever-present gas bills—Hollywood and company rarely acknowledge such things, and most friendships don’t ask it.

  Look at us. We are not face to face. We get to choose when to turn up to each other. Which bits to reveal and which to erase—aren’t you grateful for that ‘delete’ button? We don’t have to manage each other when tired or grumpy or broken—your word. We can present our Facebook faces. We only have to answer to each other in time, rarely in space, as we did (with such happiness, can I say?) this weekend.

  I’d still argue that there has been a cost, at least in time and thought and willingness to engage. We have made something already, you and I, and it is formed out of a kind of love, that most demanding noun and most active verb.

  Good grief. So much more to write in reply to you, and I have gone off on a tangent, as I often do up here among the gums and the bottlebrush.

  I feel I lectured. Not the intent.

  Will press send before I hit delete, and continue after a stretch of the legs over to the dam.

  Buen caminooooooo . . .

  A

  What makes such an inexperienced kid like you SO WISE!

  No lecture. Just rich insights. Might steal it for my homily this weekend.

  Wish I had time to reply more fully now.

  Gracias (now you’ve got me speaking Spanglish).

  Shalom.

  T

  I’m back, as Arnie would say. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

  The dam is worryingly low for this time of year. Lots of kangaroo prints around the edges. They will be getting thirsty if this early heat continues.

  Meant to say that I loved attending the baptism, invited or no. Your words to the family gave me pause. I particularly liked your insistence that ‘happiness’ was not necessarily the best wish for a child, but rather we should wish for an embrace of the whole range of their emotions and character.

  And I loved being ‘backstage’ with the robes and the ‘props’—forgive the showbiz terminology! You know, girls were not allowed to be altar kids when I was little—perhaps if I’d had access to more of the ritual, then I might have stayed closer.

  That said, I found it oddly confronting to see you in your priestly regalia—your costume. It’s not that I’m unaware of your working life, or of your duties as a priest, but part of my irritation with almost all religions is the way the trappings help separate us into ‘performer’ and ‘audience’.

  I’ve always had mixed feelings about the paraphernalia of religion. It led me to a love of ritual as a child, and I suspect it may have taken me to the theatre, but when I returned as an adult seeking meaningful dialogue and interaction, I felt as though I’d matured, and the Church hadn’t. I wanted communion—‘the sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings’ as one dictionary defines it.

  I think of my love of the word ‘compañero’—that bread-breaking is at the heart of the Mass, and how lovely it would be to be able to commune in such a way with those who share beliefs (and those who don’t), as opposed to the structured, hierarchical ‘staging’ that is my experience of church-going.

  I suppose I read space and costume in a particular way, given my years in the theatre, so the architecture of most altars and pulpits with their elevated areas for priests, and the elaborate expensive robes, and the monologue/rote nature of the service, all conspire to make me feel distanced.

  But I digress. See what happens up here in the bush?

  Wow!

  A flight of ducks just flew over—about a metre above my head. Immense burst of noise—an urgent flapping, not at all like the silent flight of the parrots when they swoop past. It’s hectic here on the bird highway. Blue wrens, choughs, ibises on Ida’s dam next door.

  To your three-part recipe for relationship . . .

  No, it’s not gobbledegook, and I don’t mind trying to label such progressions in order to mark or understand them, but that sequence doesn’t describe my experience. I agree there is enchantment, if we are incredibly graced. I’m not mad on the words ‘necessary disenchantment’ to be honest. They imply something sour to me, but I take your point. I would probably choose to call that stage ‘unveiling the ugly bits’! That process of revealing can break some bits of the fairytale, but they are usually replaced with a clear-eyed nonfiction narrative, which is intense and lasting. Learning to love ‘in spite of’ rather than ‘because of’ is how I think of it. The Camino never broke me without repairing me in better order, and that seems to me to be what happens with such relationships. Like the broken shell—light comes in through the cracks.

  Finally, yes, hopefully there is consolidation, which may well be mature but which can also feel infinitely childlike. I’d probably prefer to call that phase, which is hopefully endless, ‘deepening’.

  I meant it when I said I felt I’d been tapping my foot, waiting for you to show up again in my life. That day at lunch I knew I knew you. I feel it quite deeply. I ‘fall’ frequently for people, love a little too easily perhaps, but THAT . . . no, that was not just the effortless freefall toward a shiny new playmate. There is something more, Tony, and I think maybe we suspected it when we encountered each other’s words on a page for the first time—your article about the Camino hit home to me too, you know. It was verified for me when I saw you and thought, ‘There you are.’ I recognised you as one of my tribe. I sat at lunch nibbling Chinese food while you greeted a string of folk and introduced me to them, but all the while I wanted to say, ‘Where have you been all this time?’

  So. There ’tis. A mystery—a favourite word for both of us.

  I know what you mean about me taking on a Monsignor in public
discourse or private correspondence, and yes, some of my personal village might think me worryingly close to either conversion or lunacy—but they don’t pay my bills, and they know me well enough by now to understand that I will go where my heart leads—and it rarely leads me down blind alleys. The seeker is hijacked by ‘what others think’—even if they are the near and dear. I could never have written the letter asking people to donate sins if I was worried what people would think of me.

  No. That’s not right.

  I did worry what they’d think. But I did it anyway. What else could I do? Live life for others, or against an impulse that felt true. When my internal compass tells me a path north leads home, I can’t walk south just because that road is more appealing to other people. I try to trust that what I’m doing is finding a way to incorporate as much as possible of the world into my small and ordinary existence.

  Funny. If you were an Imam, friends might be equally anxious. Or perhaps not! That might be a more fashionable choice, just now. Or a Buddhist monk. Or a declared atheist. But fashion, as anyone can tell from looking at me, is not my shtick. My shtick is a walking stick, and you and I are two pilgrims walking together for a while. That’s how I see it.

  Yes, yes, wasn’t it good to spend a couple of hours? Little it was, but also much. I’ve been reflecting on our conversation about my time in Sydney all those years ago. When I recall living there, I always picture jacarandas, the signature blossom of Sydney for me. How often I have flown in or out to that sea of mauve below, just as I did this last time. The street where I used to live was carpeted with them in November. They’d drift about me as I strolled from the Domain through the Botanic Gardens to the Opera House to see chums in a play, and I recall a glorious specimen over the road from a shared terrace house where I lived in Cathedral St in Woolloomooloo—about the time you were up the road being Dean of the actual Cathedral. Funny that I never went inside then, even for a peek. A trifle embarrassing, when I think on it. Did I have so little curiosity?

  But then, my cathedral doesn’t have a man-made roof!

  I must stop. Kangaroos are coming in to feed. The males are in spring fever and grunt at the females. Not at all fetching. The miracle is that they’ve forgotten I’m human, and graze away on the native grass oblivious to me. I could watch them for hours, but I must go and organise some human grazing.

  Gracias, compañero.

  This has been a good talk. I’ve enjoyed it.

  A x

  Ailsa,

  Jacarandas, Woolloomooloo, the Domain . . .

  You’ve conjured up a memory from a particular time, and a very particular incident. A particular woman.

  Perhaps it can add a dimension to your image of me as a costumed magician on a high altar. Indulge me, if you will, by listening to a story.

  Sunday’s midday meal at St Mary’s Cathedral was roast beef. Not to be missed. The rigours of a busy morning—celebrating masses, conducting a guided tour, dealing with dozens of people, and their questions—were all behind me. Cold beer and hot beef beckoned, perhaps even a glass of red.

  And then the telephone rang—of course.

  A ward sister at Sydney Hospital needed a priest. This was not an unusual request. Nor was the timing. A woman had died—‘She was Catholic, Father’—and her son in Melbourne had asked if it was possible for a priest to anoint her, with the ancient ritual of farewell. Not disguising my interest in the beef with any great success, I collected the oils and headed for the door and the short walk to the hospital.

  Sydney Hospital, part of the treasured heritage of this city, was conveniently no more than 500 metres away—three or four minutes walking time. It was November, the jacaranda was throwing its violet bells everywhere, a gentle, cooling nor’easter relieved a seriously sunny and warm day.

  The woman was in the middle of a room, entirely devoid of furniture or other fittings. Walls and ceiling completely white. The body lying on a gurney covered neatly with a sheet. A stark and impeccable presence.

  The nursing staff left me alone in the room.

  I pulled back the sheet covering her. The body was that of a mature woman—how old? I found it hard to tell. Later, on examining the papers, I saw the record said 85. In its utter stillness the dead body concentrated my attention, but even more powerfully triggered my imagination and fired my curiosity.

  Who was this woman?

  How did she die?

  Was she married? How many times? Was her son the only child? Were there grandchildren, perhaps? Siblings still living?

  Who knew of her death?

  Why was she alone?

  The standard procedure in a moment like this is for the priest to follow an ancient ritual. Even in the situation when a person may have died some time before, the minister traces a small cross with the oils of anointing—first the forehead, then above each eye, each ear, then the mouth, The prayer ‘with this holy anointing . . .’ is recited. The ritual goes further. The heart, the hands and the feet are all anointed. The sacredness of the human body is simply and elegantly acknowledged. The unique story of each person’s journey is celebrated. It is a moment of intense connection.

  On this occasion, I was gripped in quite a special manner by the need to know more of this particular life. The story, her story, suddenly became of the utmost importance to me.

  As a hospital chaplain in my early years of ministry, this enacting of the last rites of the Church became at times, sadly, almost routine. Other circumstances often distracted —a grieving family, nursing staff attending to the person, the details of hospital life. This day was different. I was challenging myself with the need to understand afresh just what I was doing. Here in this stark hospital room, what did my ministry really mean? What was the significance behind the simple action of anointing? It was almost as though I was performing the ritual for the first time.

  It is not unusual, living as a priest, to feel challenged by people you love and admire to explain the ministry. Why do we do what we do? What is this strange magic that shapes our minds and contains our beliefs? Why all the vestments, pomp and ceremony?—as you wrote in your last mail. The insistence, sometimes quite passionate, to justify yourself, is rarely absent—spoken or unspoken. Or, at least, that is how it appears through my eyes.

  This time I was asking the question, alone, without family present or hospital staff. This gave me the rare leisure and space to deeply reflect.

  What was I doing with this woman whose heart had stopped beating two hours ago?

  My curiosity prompted more questions.

  Where was she, say, at the age of twelve? Happy? Playful? A loved member of a caring family? Good at school? Musically inclined?

  What was her experience of human love? Was she married? Had she felt deep grief? What were her passions? Which were the questions that spurred her on? And what was I doing here with my oils and my crosses?

  Suddenly a new sense of meaning flooded in on me.

  I was saying farewell to another human being. I was acting on behalf of the community of people who had been touched by her life. In this clinically stark room I was charged with honouring the life of this woman at this moment of transition. I was given the sacred task of acknowledging who this woman had been, the journey that she had travelled, the love that she had hungered for and shared. Honouring that spirit which I believed was now experiencing the fullness of life. For those whose lives end without such a farewell, I felt a great sense of loss.

  As I left the room, to report to the ward sister, she placed a note in my hand with the telephone number of the grieving son. On telephoning him he revealed he was the son of an Australian digger. His mother and father conceived their only child on a short leave from the front in the early 1940s. The father returned and was killed soon afterwards. The son shared with me some of her story. It was a great gift—she came alive in my mind. Several years later, I stumbled on a photograph of his mother (she had been a well-known photographic model)—elegant, poised, strikingly
beautiful. It wasn’t the twelve-year-old I had searched for. She was eighteen.

  Your questions help me to recall memories which are precious. Thanks. For the November jacarandas and the Sydney Domain.

  Night night.

  Ant

  Hi Tony,

  What a wonder to discover on waking. A gift. Thanks for taking the time to tell me such a tender story. It raises so many questions, the image of that woman alone on the gurney. I can’t help wondering about her last hours, and whether a solitary departure was her choice.

  I’m sure I’ve commented before that I’m more familiar with death than birth. Some see that as a lack, but I’m not so sure. Death can have wonder, too. Like you, I think the act of farewelling a body is sacred, and I’m sorry that so many of the traditional final rituals are now carried out by funeral directors. I found solace in brushing my mother’s hair and rubbing moisturiser into her skin, just after she died. Little things, but somehow they helped me to understand that although she was gone, the love we shared was not. In those small but familiar actions, there was a promise to hold her memory, and an acknowledgement of her body’s importance to me. That body brought me into the world, and it was profoundly important for me to care for it at the end. I remember being shocked at how small she was in death—this towering force, now shrunken by cancer—but also relieved to see her face free of pain-lines. I’m grateful my last picture of her was not of struggle but of repose.

  I had one experience of death that some might find unusual or even confronting, but it remains one of the most remarkable times of my life. A year after Mum died, I was part of a ‘family’ keeping a final vigil. It was at the request of my friend Greg, a theatre and television director with a killer smile and sparkly blue eyes. I thought Mum was too young to die at 57, but Greg didn’t make 40. He was actually old compared to many others who died of HIV/AIDS back then. The wards of St Vincent’s were like field hospitals in wartime—all those young men.