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)
