Last Rites

Sometimes I wake up with a start in the middle of the night and feel like a man facing into the stereophonic depths of a double-barreled shotgun. It seems as though the grim Reaper is standing at the foot of the bed, a deadly weapon’s stock firmly placed against his shoulder, a boney finger on the trigger. We can argue about Death’s form all we like, a skeletal figure carrying a scythe is comfortingly familiar, candles in eye sockets can be added as an optional extra, if you find that reassuring. For others, Death may be a raven-haired beauty with pale skin, blood red lips and a cold, cold touch; why not, if a date with this heart stopping femme fatale appeals. I’ve also heard talk of golden-haired children reaching out to take your hand and guide you to the promised land as your last breath leaves your body, evidently this figure has special meaning for those who summon him, but in this day and age I would be arrested for taking the hand of any child who was not mine, no matter how lost it was. As for me, my grim reaper is currently more of a modern-day brigand than anything else. I imagine him as being overweight, a tracksuit wearing thug with 125 previous convictions; a man who gets a Christmas card every year from a barrister whose kids are slowly working their way through college, paid for by the state’s free legal aid fund. My Death reeks of criminality, and I have no intention of going anywhere with him just yet. As nightmares go, he is just scary enough to wake me up at the witching hour in a deep state of funk, but not so frightening that he can still my beating heart.

I have woken up, sweat pumping, heart pounding a frantic tattoo in the middle of the night, for as long as I can remember. But oddly enough my memory only goes back to a time when I was seven, a time when preparations for my first holy communion began in earnest, a time when the concept of heaven and hell were introduced, a time when being bold became committing a sin. Being bold is one thing, and not a terribly bad thing at that. But committing a sin, spray painting a black mark on the soul with each venial thought, this is when the rubber hits the road, because suddenly I had a soul, one rapidly turning grey by the sounds of it, if not already turning into a Farrow & Ball off-black, possibly called Satan’s Stamp. Suddenly, my soul, something I had only recently acquired, was in mortal danger, bound for eternal damnation. Is it any wonder that I was suddenly waking up covered in sweat in the middle of the night, frozen in panic, ready to confess to every mortal sin under the sun, including that of coveting my neighbour’s wife. I was vague about what that might be, but I was ready to confess to it, so long as my confessor played his part, absolved me, and threw my soul into a hot wash which would restore its pristine-white glory once more. So, by seven, a joyous, free-flying soul had become grounded by the leaden weight of guilt; and my nights had become a torture chamber of sorts. Thankfully, I had the concentration span of a newt, so my soul and I had manys-a-good-time, despite my newfound sense of moral austerity.  

What nobody explained back then, nuns can be very lax about the proper education of their charges, was, that with a little bribery and corruption, a cleric could guarantee a soul-cleansing service that reset the soul to a post-baptism font level of purity. One, it seems, does not have to return to the Middle Ages to buy one’s way into heaven, as my mother demonstrated recently.

Her generation was not one which believed in sharing their secrets, or demons, with anybody except their most intimate friends. Personal tragedies were locked away, buried deep from strangers. Joys were suppressed, in case the fairies got to hear about them and decided to put a stop to them, or some gossip embellished the details of your life until they bore no semblance to the truth, while simultaneously destroying your reputation. Gossips and trolls have always existed, always will. It’s part of what makes us human, this envy of those who walk their own path, this urge to punish those not of their tribe.

My parents’ generation grew up cautious as a way of protecting themselves from their most tribal of neighbours. Their adage, ‘Never talk politics or religion with strangers,’ was partly good manners and partly self-protection. Not that it took a genius to know your least guarded secrets. Anyone could tell your politics by the newspaper you read; your beliefs, by the church you attended; your secret life, by the books you borrowed from the library; and your moral laxity, by the clothes you wore.

As for religion, there was a ninety percent chance that you were a Roman Catholic; part of the majority; and it is always safer to hang with the majority. However, public opinion is a fickle thing. Today’s mainstream religion is tomorrow’s myth, or new age hankering back to Druidic idyll, without the human sacrifice of course. While many people are dismissive of the Roman Catholic church, over two million Irish people attend mass on a regular basis. For me, the church’s dwelling on suffering and sin is a mite heavy-handed, and the modern translation of the bible lacks poetry. However, to others, it offers direction and solace; something I would never deny to anybody.

As I said, my mother’s generation was all about subtext. Conversations with my mother are sometimes twisted and torturous, and the point so far below the surface that it might as well be hidden under the wreck of the Titanic. When she began talking about a church visit, to light a candle, and possibly save American democracy, my curiosity was piqued, but not overly so. St. Teresa gets my mother’s penny, and it was to her shrine on a side aisle that we traipsed, coins in hand, laden down with good intentions. Children were being baptised at the main alter, diversity very much on show at the water font. While a senior cleric was busy renouncing Satan on behalf of these harmless looking infants, various minor clerics roamed the church.

With three candles ablaze, and good intentions prayed for, my mother’s real intention became clear. She was here to nab a priest, one who featured regularly in her conversations at home, a young man who ruined his good looks by growing a beard without her permission. Nabbed and unable to escape, the cleric agreed to meet her at the community centre a few days later. The penny was beginning to drop.

Armed with backup from my sister we turned up for the appointment. The priest was busy, busy, busy. My mother, grimly determined. He did not have a chance. It was too late to feign another engagement, he was trapped and my mother finally revealed what she wanted from him. Extreme Unction. We can argue all we like about language, about the rebranding of this sacrament as the anointing of the sick, but there is no hiding from the fact that as sacraments go, this one is a kicker. There is no disguising what it is about. It is the last rites; the last chance to bleach the soul clean of its sinful past, to polish off minor scratches and pass it off as a one-lady-owner soul to the great car dealer in the sky. As kids we equated it with emergency first aid for the soul. Along with a perfect act of contrition, we were told, that it was like baptism for the old, a sure way of getting through the pearly gates. I suppose it was the equivalent of a Vaseline-smeared rich man being pushed through the eye of a needle. The sacrament was properly ghoulish, associated in our minds with death rattles and priests whispering code words in the ear of the dying; for although anybody could administer an emergency baptism, only priests carried the sacred oil required for this sacrament.

We removed ourselves from the community center to the church to get our hands on these restricted items. The priest looked as though he would prefer to be anywhere but where he was. Still, he muttered his words, absolved all my mother’s sins and wrapped the sacrament up with unnecessary efficiency. The cleric was about to beat a hasty retreat from this ninety-four-year-old, no doubt wondering how she had got him to a secondary scene of the crime in the first place; wondering how she had so out-manoeuvred him. Not old enough to know yet that planning, willpower, and a surprise attack always has the advantage over the unprepared. And now his hand had been gripped, and very old, blue eyes were focused on him. Her lips were moving, his mind was elsewhere.

“What?” He asked.

“You will remember me?” she repeated. “You will remember me father?”

“Well…” he stammered, “I’m… There… There are so many…”

“You will remember me,” she persisted, “Won’t you father?”

He looked down to see a fifty euro note in his hands.

“You will remember me?” she asked again.

“Of course I will Mary.”

Moments later, we emerged from the church, into the light.

“Now I can commit any sins I want,” declared my mother, “They have already been washed away.”

She knows this is not how general absolution works but fondly remembers a man who rebuked a priest who once tried to persuade him to take confession.

“I was given general absolution before going over the top of the trenches in the first world war. A man doesn’t need any more absolution than that.”

“No, no,” insisted the priest, “That’s not how it works.”

“What would you know about it father?” came the quick reply, “Was you ever at Mons?”

I wondered, as my mother was being loaded into the car ,what sins she was planning to commit? Driving? (A vanity at 94.) Or maybe lampooning politicians, though that hardly counts as a sin. After all, they don’t have a good name to begin with, so they don’t have a reputation to ruin.

There is her gambling habit, I suppose, at least according to my aunt. Others may think she is a wanton woman, the way she flirts with the fish man, but that is more about securing fresh hake and a good racing tip, than any improper intentions. As for the scratch cards my mother can occasionally be seen buying at a local newsagent, they are merely a cover for what she is really buying, cigars. Not that she has ever admitted to a doctor that she smokes. But then, what is one cigar a day? Hardly a habit, more of a hobby, a thinking aid when she’s standing up to her crossword outside at the bin, a fresh coffee off to one side.

Yet, as she stands at the doorstep, blowing smoke out the back door, I wonder how she really feels about death. There is no point in expecting her to tell me. Her generation were not built to share their darkest secrets. But if my nightmares are anything to go by, hers must be scarier still, but hopefully, not heart stopping. At least not yet. There are still plenty of cigars hidden in a drawer, waiting to be smoked. And the neighbour’s have been summoned for a little get together. Remember too that, judging by one man’s experience, Last Rites can proceed death by over forty years. There’s a thought, no wonder my mother sent me down for a Euro Dreams ticket today. That draw pays out over a thirty-year period. What does she know that I’m not aware of yet?