Page 29 of Midnight Mass (Priest 1.50)
“You know,” Sean said slowly, looking at me over the hood of the car, “if you need anything or—like—to talk, I’m here.”
Gratitude and affection for my asshole brother flooded me. I knew those words didn’t come naturally or easily to him. “Thanks, Sean. I’ll let you know if I need anything.”
He nodded and then got in the Audi. The matter was settled, and it was time to hit the road. Millie had wanted her last rites at St. Margaret’s, the parish she’d given so much of her life to, and that meant a drive to Weston from Kansas City, which was about an hour long.
When we got to St. Margaret’s, we parked the car and Sean went inside to find Mom. I made the excuse that I wanted to walk around and see the new rectory, but really I just needed a moment alone. I poked and prodded at the empty hole in my chest, the place where my wife had lived and then slid out of, like a snake sliding out of its old skin. And I also prodded the thick cloud of grief hovering in my mind, the cloud made of homemade casseroles and long phone calls and hours of working the soup kitchen together.
I’ve heard people say that losing someone as old as Millie is easier. That all the time they lived and the time you’ve shared makes the loss not such a burden, not so weighted with what ifs. But I didn’t feel like that today. Five hundred years wouldn’t be enough to contain all the potential of a woman like Millie Gustaferson, much less ninety-two. And without her, I was without one of my strongest links to the man I used to be.
The worst thing was that I knew something was off when I talked to her last Tuesday. I should have done more—called the Pinewoods Village director or found the number for one of her children. Mom and Jordan had both visited, and while Jordan told me that she’d been listless and obviously depressed, neither felt like she was in any real danger.
Pneumonia was the official cause of death. But unofficially, her kids told me, there was another element. She’d hidden how severe the illness was from her nurses and her visitors, and by the time Thursday morning dawned, she was gasping and blue and it was too late for the antibiotics to have any real effect.
Sometimes I think it’s not worth it to be here, she’d said. Had she indirectly tried to kill herself by hiding how sick she was?
And how depressed was I that I completely understood how she felt?
I rubbed my cheeks with my hands and took a deep breath. I was too familiar with death from my days as a priest to succumb to the need for explanations and narratives about the deceased’s last days. Death has no narrative.
It just is.
With that cheerful thought, I finally got out of the car and walked into the church that I’d walked into a thousand times before. Everywhere there were signs of change. The new priest’s picture in the foyer next to a list of office hours.
Christmas lights and trees a week earlier than I would have put them up. The smell of bread wafting from the kitchen downstairs, when I’d always preferred the evocative smell of incense, and kept some burning almost at all times.
And then there was the building itself. When I’d worked here, the walls had been paneled with fake wood and the carpet had been a dull red—holdovers from a gruesome mid-century renovation. But now the building was exactly what I’d always hoped it would become—modern and light and clean. The walls had been stripped to their original 19th Century brick and stone and the carpet had vanished, replaced by wide planks of blond wood. Pendant lamps of brushed aluminum hung from the ceiling, accented by the old stained glass that had been restored to its original glory. And in the far corner, a glass and concrete baptismal font sat shimmering in the dim December light, water spilling over the inside edges like an infinity pool, filling the church with the gentle music of running water.
St. Margaret’s finally had a building to match her beautiful, passionate congregation. A building a world apart from the scandal that had rocked the town the year before I came, apart from the old, closed-in mindset of the 20th Century church. Light and modernity and openness—Pope Francis’s church. Father Bell’s church.
Except it wasn’t Father Bell’s. It was Father McCoy’s now.
But that was the beauty of the church, really. The priests may change, the congregants may pass away, but the church was still there. The church endured, a steadfast house of solace and refuge for all that come seeking.
The church kept its doors open. Even when its priests left. Knock and the door shall be opened to you, Jesus had promised. Although it felt like I’d been knocking all week and the door to Poppy’s heart had remained as tightly shut and intransigent as ever.
I bit down my urge to criticize Father McCoy during the service. Of course, I would always feel like I could do better, like St. Margaret’s was mine and mine alone, and so I didn’t need to inwardly groan every time he stumbled over a word or lost pitch while chanting the call and response songs. It was fine. Even if it was the funeral of one of the smartest and best women in the world, it was still fine that he was mediocre.
Fine, fine, fine.
By the time the Mass had almost finished and it was time for me to deliver my eulogy, I’d torn my funeral program into tiny, frustrated pieces. I craved Poppy, Millie was dead, and the priest was terrible. What else could a man endure? When I stood to go to the front, Mom cleared her throat quietly and held out her cupped hands for me to dump my piles of shredded program into.
Good old Mom.
The walk to the front felt strange. I’d come down this center aisle so many times, robed and collared and processing behind a cross, and now I was in a civilian’s suit, walking on unfamiliar floors while unfamiliar lights dangled above me.
It should have been me performing her Mass, a petulant part of me thought. What good were you to Millie if you couldn’t even perform her last Mass? Was it worth it? Leaving the church?
Was it?
Well, was it?
I didn’t have an answer to that any more. Plus one degree, minus one wife. Net profit: zero.
I climbed up to the lectern and got behind it, looking out over the crowd as I pulled up my notes on my phone. “So…this feels familiar.”
Several people in the pews laughed despite their tears. Most of the people here had been my flock, and while I knew there was no ill will over my leaving or the way I had left, I still wished I could know what they were thinking as they looked up at me now, standing behind my old lectern.
“We all knew Millie well,” I started, gazing out at the mourners. “And I think no one was surprised to walk in and find a bright purple casket with the Kansas State Wildcat painted on the side. Millie, I know you can hear me from heaven right now, and rock chalk, Jayhawk.”
