Melissa Kite has narrated this article for you to listen to.
‘Life is changed, not ended,’ said the slogan on the lectern as the priest told his flock what to think about a difficult subject, with a reassuring smile.
‘It’s quite a big change,’ I whispered to the builder boyfriend who was staring down at his feet in an attempt to stop the allergic response that was welling up. The service was commemorating those who have died this past year in our corner of West Cork, but the overoptimistic way it was being done was making us feel ever so slightly hysterical.
I leaned in to the BB: ‘Have you noticed how Mary has got a halo made of the 12 EU stars?’
I stared at the slogan on the lectern, an excerpt from the Roman Missal, embroidered on an ornamental cloth. Someone would have had to commission those words to be stitched on that cloth. I hadn’t seen it before. It was hardly festive.
I stared at the priest, who is a towering man with a big mop of white hair. Of course it doesn’t help in moments like this that he looks like Father Ted.
‘Mrs Doyle, could you ask Sister Mary Gondola to stitch us a lectern cover with a nice cheerful death theme?’
‘Yes Father! I know exactly what you mean. That lovely bit about death being a nice change of scene…’
‘That’s it exactly. More about the craic in heaven than the actual, you know, dying bit. Maybe mention the free alcohol and the roller-skating…’
I looked around the church at the icons, paintings and frescos, noting the masonic golden triangle with an eye inside it, topping a vast image of Christ on the wall behind the altar. I stared at the statue to the left of the altar and leaned in to the BB: ‘Have you noticed how Mary has got a halo made of the 12 EU stars?’
That wasn’t very fair of me. He had to plunge his face into a handkerchief and cough. Really, we should not go to church. We only notice what we’re sceptical about. But we go because we believe, and we want to check in somewhere, so we check in with the denomination of our upbringing, and then we sit stewing over what the Catholic establishment is doing to our faith.
Our Lady of the EU stars and a big all-seeing Masonic eye staring down on us, reminding us to be good citizens and do as we are told – which, according to this priest, includes not going on social media to read the latest conspiracy theories, but that is exactly what we do do, because we have come to the view in the past few years that conspiracy theory is what they used to call ‘news’…
The list of the dead was long and as the priest read out the names, most of which we recognised, because since coming to live in this small community we have got to know almost everyone, I started to feel unusual.
‘We’ve come to live here by mistake!’ is a joke the builder b and I often cry out as we’re driving around these remote hillsides, invoking our favourite line in Withnail and I, when Richard E. Grant’s character begs a local in the Lake District for help finding fuel and food.
We ran away to Cork, the rebel county. And we got here to find a landscape as beautiful as we had hoped, but a society even more determined to keep a lid on rebellion than the one we left behind.
I would have felt better about it if the priest had not started trying to explain the amount of death happening around us by comparing people to trees dying off in winter. He said it was normal and natural. I nudged the BB and he shook his head.
Twenty-odd names read out in a church may not sound a lot, but there’s only a few hundred people living here. It doesn’t feel natural. And I’m very sorry to be the death party pooper by saying that.
The priest told us there was nothing to fear, then quoted two of the most terrifying lines in Revelation, which he called the Book of Apocalypse.
What on earth, I thought, is he trying to prepare us for? This priest told us when he arrived here last year that he had just had two stents put in his heart, but if he’s feeling fatalistic that doesn’t mean we have to. Never mind the afterlife. I won’t be told that death is so insignificant it is not worthy of critical thought.
Our poor neighbour next door, a farmer in his fifties, strong as an ox, nearly 7ft tall with hands like shovels, was struck down with a brain tumour last year. A few weeks ago, his wife was told by the doctors to make a bed up downstairs, and the ambulance dropped him home because there was nothing more they could do.
Faith-wise, I can be happy that death is not the end. But I take issue with the notion that people are like trees. My neighbour is not a sycamore. He’s not growing back next spring.
Life is changed, not ended. Yes, that’s a good one. But here’s an even better one, from John 10:10, very apposite for this time of year: ‘I came that they may have life, and have it in abundance.’
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