We would all like a life that is always joyful, cheerful and fulfilled. Ignatius of Loyola as feelings of unquiet, temptation, sadness - can also help bring us closer to God.
Pope Francis explained on Wednesday how times of spiritual desolation - described by St. Pope Francis arriving for the general audience on St. Indeed, she didn’t call me back until Mark had been wheeled away into the hateful elevator whose doors divided us. Finally I called her cellphone, and she didn’t pick up. Mark and I spent the morning together - he in his bed, I sitting with my feet tucked in his bed - chatting about past holidays, extolling the prayer book Mark had borrowed from Father, joking about his tumour and arguing over whether or not I should call his mother in Dundee. In front of Mark I would not cry, so instead my poor father had to listen to my weeping.īy 8 a.m., I was my falsely smiling self, fortified by instant coffee.
#The son of man will come like a thief in the night cracked#
I cracked and called my parents on my mobile I think it cost a pound a minute.
The nurse and I put Mark to bed, and I went upstairs to find whatever sleep I could. Mark’s fluid-draining operation was scheduled for tomorrow. A young, English surgeon arrived and explained that he had called Mark in at once because at any minute his brain might collapse in on itself and Mark would slip into an irreversible coma. We sat, talked about holiday plans, made jokes. “Would you like the television on?” asked the nurse now. When I made it clear I wasn’t leaving, they reserved me the “Relative’s Room.” The nurses had known all about us and prepared Mark a bed. “What a good thing I went to confession on Saturday,” he had said.Īt Western General, we sat in a cold room waiting for the neurosurgeon. I just went along to his morning appointment at the eye specialist and then to his evening summons to Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary and now I was receiving the Blessed Sacrament while across the aisle Mark prepared for death. I had not - like so many fed-up wives - called the doctor myself. Mark had had a sore neck and an ache behind his eye, so I had encouraged him to call the doctor. All I could think was, “He’s only 44.”ĭeath comes like a thief in the night, but only then did I truly understand that. Suddenly my mind couldn’t grasp the Latin.
Cuthbert’s Chapel in the FSSP house, kneeling on either side of the aisle as Father began what I grew up calling “the Sacrament of the Sick” but in 1962 was still unabashedly called Last Rites. Within 20 minutes the McLeans were in St. She suggested that I go home to pack, but Mark had to go to Western General at once. When the doctor returned, we explained our plan: our neighbour would drive us home so we could pack overnight bags, then we would visit our priest, and then we would check into Edinburgh’s Western General. We marvelled at Mark having an actual brain tumour and made phone calls in cheerful voices, I to a neighbour with a car and Mark to our priest. Stunned, we personified Stiff Upper Lip, rather like pilots (I imagine) before they climbed into Spitfires to fight the Battle of Britain. She left us behind the papery blue curtain in the emergency ward. The doctor didn’t know if it was malignant, but as it had caused a blockage of fluid, Mark would have to have an operation ASAP. On March 7, at about 9 p.m., my husband was diagnosed with a brain tumour.
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