Life and Death Situations

Yesterday was a surreal day.

At 9:30am, the secretary came into my office and asked if I had seen one of our older parishioners the previous day. I admitted I had not because I had attended a school Mass instead that day; the secretary explained that the parishioner's executor had left us a message twelve hours earlier asking if she had been at Mass since she was unable to get in touch with her. This lady was always at daily Mass and played the role of sacristan; no one else, including the celebrants, were allowed to touch the lectionary, chalice, etc. before Mass. That was her territory. I could only confirm that I had seen her on Monday.

The secretary then moved to the associate pastor's office and posed the same question. He hadn't seen her. The secretary asked, "Was she supposed to be there?" He said more abruptly than I'm sure he intended, "She's never 'supposed to' be there!"

The secretary returned the executor's call. Within an hour, we had our answer: she had been found deceased in her apartment moments ago after an ambulance was called to check on her.

The pastor and I handled the news with quiet acceptance, and perhaps a dash of disbelief. Although she had been getting noticeably less energetic in the past few months, she was still so spunky everyone was sure she would continue at the parish longer than us. Just last week she was on the phone to me asking me to juggle one of the volunteer schedules around because she refused to serve with a particular someone and said she would walk right off the altar to avoid slapping this person. I solved her problem.

Over the summer, I had to invade her territory somewhat. We had a priest helping us out who had difficulty walking. Hence, he could not distribute Communion. I agreed to take his place over the summer and would appear beside her on the altar at the opportune time. She always seemed thrown off, week after week, and would instruct me loudly and tensely, "You go to the middle" to distribute. I would nod and played by her rules. The very last day I was to serve alongside her, she looked surprised once again that I had appeared. She cocked her head towards me, and I leaned down to hear the directions I knew would inevitably follow. Instead, she thought better of it and snapped her head back. I leaned in closer, waiting for what I thought the inevitable would be. She noticed and I had to suppress a giggle when snapped loudly, "You know where to go!"

A few weeks earlier she decided she couldn't keep up her storeroom in the hall anymore, and she turned over her ring of keys to the pastor. He gifted them to me, leaving me in charge of the room. I teased that we should have a ceremony and install a plaque on the door officially dubbing the room what everyone in the church knew it as anyway: "Her Room."

Others handled their grief differently. The secretary and cook cried. Another staffer, ignoring the pastor's request that we keep things quiet until details were finalized, was on the phone for the rest of the day being the harbinger of bad news to the extended family of the parish.

News is yet to be finalized about the funeral. Already Mass card requests and donations for pink roses are being collected. And there is no doubt in my mind she's up in heaven telling Jesus that setting up for Mass is her domain -- hands off, Son of God.

Later in the day, just to make things more surreal, one of my many, many expectant friends gave birth to a little baby boy.

A life ends, a life begins. And for the rest of us, life goes on.