Oh! Mother! Mother!

This story is based on a true event that happened when I lived in Longridge. I'd returned from school one day when I heard the sound of someone running past our door and into next door, then the sudden, sad crying of one of the girls who lived there, calling out, “Oh Mother, Mother come quick our Elsie's been killed!” A few minutes’ later two sets of feet ran back down the street and I was left in silence with those terribly sad words ringing in my ears, knowing that I was the first to hear of the tragedy, I was about eight or nine at the time.

There was nothing out of the ordinary as far as the funeral of young Patrick O'Dowd was concerned. On the outside anyway. The usual kind of people turned up at the church, where flowers, brought and arranged by Mrs Kelly and Miss O'Leary, did their best to brighten up the quiet deadness of the building, but failed. And the candlelight flickering here and there, uplifting usually, had lost all semblance of cheeriness this time, while the daylight, filtered as it was through the grime on the windows, did nothing to lighten the darkness within, stained glass or not.

The physical gloom added to the mental gloom the congregation felt, which was to be expected at a funeral, naturally. Still, there was rarely much of the joy of life exhibited by those who came regularly to worship here. They reserved that for before and after attendance, as if the God they worshipped would be offended had they shown any light-heartedness in His house. Not that I am one to judge. Sure I'd never had to live as they had. It's merely an observation you understand.

The altar boy, Rory O'Flynn, with the gap in his front teeth which proved irresistible to everyone who saw him outside the church, making them smile when he smiled, was not in a smiling mood right now. His face had taken on the appearance of one of the so-called saints depicted on the leaflets for sale in the rack by the church door. A shame for one so young. While Liam Grady, the other altar boy with the limp, caused by being dropped by his drunken father at age three, was as white-faced and as close to tears as his friend Rory. Both were sad. I mean really sad, more than they'd ever been before. Now the two of them were wondering how they'd cope when the coffin of their school friend, from the third form of St. Mary's Catholic School was brought in and set on the gurney where they could see it. Funerals they'd attended before and coffins they'd seen before but not one containing the body of their friend, Pat. And if the Hail Mary's ascending to God from both their young innocent lips and hearts with such intensity could have brought young Patrick back from the dead, sure he'd have been standing there with them in the church before they'd opened their brimming eyes.

The priest, Father James Boland, as genuine and sincere a man of the cloth as one could hope to meet, believed he had everything in order as he knelt in prayer in the room behind the altar. He'd always felt a special closeness to God in these moments and believed that his ministry at these times would be blessed, despite his failings of which he had many. This time it was different. This time he knew he could not conduct the service in the usual way. This time something was tearing at his heart forcing him to struggle with his beliefs.

Most of the funerals he'd conducted in the past had been for those who'd lived their lives. They'd had their choices and chances. Run the gamut of life's experiences as much as they'd been able in their small town, never extending themselves beyond the norm of the working class. They'd seen and heard nothing that one might term special, or recognised some latent God-given ability within themselves and then dared to do something about it. Isn't it a fact now that such folk need a voice outside them prompting, urging, suggesting they launch out into the deeps like those early fishermen on Lake Galilee? Get out beyond their depth sometimes and test themselves and their faith? Father Boland owned such a voice. And God knows he'd tried to get his flock to think on such things.

He felt so sorrowful right now. Ah, dear God! Hadn't young Patrick O'Dowd been one loaded with possibilities? Sure enough, he had. He'd talked about it with Patrick, and glory be, had seen the light dawn in his sparkling clear eyes just a few days back. Laughed with him at the breathless excitement that had seized hold of the lad as he'd begun to grasp the secrets and the principles of mathematics and physics he'd shown to him. Bless his heart, here, in this very church. What could he have done for himself and others had he but lived?

And the dear man put his head in his hands and wept as he had never wept before. In his mind the voice of the O'Dowd's next door neighbour telling him how Patrick's mother heard the news of her son's death. He'd been home that day when he'd heard the clatter of feet on the footpath outside. They'd stopped and he'd heard the brief sound of a youthful whimpering to be followed by such a frantic knocking until the door opened, and before Mrs O'Dowd could open her mouth, the youth was crying, “Oh! come quick, Mrs O'Dowd. Your Patrick's been killed!”

And then the awful silence. How long must it have been for the poor woman, he thought, before the realisation hit home. And he knelt there and heeded not the hot tears running unchecked down his cheeks. How utterly useless he'd felt as he'd hurried to their home, to pause outside as he considered what he could offer the family at such a dreadful time. Offer them what? Prayers? Words of comfort? Advice? For the love of God, wasn't it Mrs O'Dowd herself who'd comforted him? No wonder Father Boland wrestled with his soul and his beliefs.

Later, when everything had been done that could be done this side of the grave, Father Boland sat with his superior, Father Michael Poole, and while the older man listened, unburdened his soul in the matter of why the innocent die young. And if the truth were known, wasn't that a question Father Poole still asked himself, even after all the years he'd been a priest?

The answer came a few weeks later, as Father Boland sat hearing confessions. A man had entered, not of the Catholic faith, who told of the comfort he'd received sitting at the back of the church. “I don't know what you fellows go on about down there at the altar. I'm sure you all mean well. But there's something about a dedicated place like this being set apart from all other buildings. Something about shutting everything else out, being quiet and letting God speak for a change. We may not know all the answers to the questions that fill our minds, so I just think of the colour purple and of our Saviour, and leave everything with Him.”

And that's what he'd said to Mrs O'Dowd as he'd gone round to see her after the man had left. He was renewed in his faith, and from that time on, where he could he awakened folk to the possibilities that lay within themselves.

Dennis Crompton © 1997
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)