Conversations with a Priest (Part 1): Carrying my Cross
Many times, I have mentioned the priest who has been with me through the death of Lizzy and the birth of Cecilia. He is the priest who came to the hospital to administer Anointing of the Sick to Lizzy and who came to the house five hours after Cecilia was born to baptize her, both at my request. He also gave the homily at Lizzy’s funeral: a homily that was so filled with light that I return to it again and again in order to give myself hope when it seems I have none.
This priest, this man who is three years younger than me (he actually went to grade school with my younger sister), has an extraordinary charism in his vocation. He has the ability to enter into the pain of the person to whom he is ministering and somehow make that person feel not so alone. He has the ability to acknowledge what you are feeling, regardless of how dark or wrong or sinful it is and help turn its trajectory to the light. But mostly, he has a gift of knowing exactly what to say to engender hope in a place where hope has all but disappeared.
I first met Father Wyble sometime in March, before Lizzy’s birthday, when I went to him for a face-to-face confession. I told him how I had no home, no money, and no husband. I told him how the only things I had were the baby in my arms (Lizzy) and the baby in my womb (Cecilia.) I cried to him, confessing how ashamed I was of myself and of what I had allowed my life to become.
He responded with so much compassion that it only made me cry more. Lizzy, tired and cold, was silent and loving in my arms, understanding that I was upset and wishing to comfort me. She held me, laid her little head against my chest, and let my tears slip into her golden hair as I kissed the top of her head over and over in fixated compulsion.
Father Wyble asked me for my name and Lizzy’s name so that he could pray for us. I told him, then told him I hadn’t yet decided on Cecilia’s name. He gave me absolution, and we left. I didn’t see him again until he came to the hospital to give the sacrament of healing to my dying baby.
On the day before I went into labor with Cecilia, I was caught in a frozen wasteland of horror and despair. A walking ghost, empty but for the living baby still inside of me, I was wholly unprepared for the birth I was about to give. My older sister asked Father Wyble to come over to speak with me and hear my confession if I wanted to give it.
He came, and I all but verbally vomited forth the torrent of fear, trauma, and despair that was slithering inside of me. Listening with infinite patience, he stood still against my tide of refuse, responding to each sobbed torment that I expressed. It had only been a month since losing Lizzy, and the weight of grief was indescribable. But he was the first person who did not try to give me empty promises of how much better everything would theoretically become one day. Instead, he gave me the grace of acknowledging that this suffering was so real, so true, and so profound, that it would stay with me until my own death. And instead of telling me to let time pass so that Lizzy’s death would hurt less, he encouraged me to use this deep and constant suffering as an opportunity to grow in my own holiness.
As Catholics, we believe that before Christ, suffering and death were inescapable realities of a fallen world that served little ultimate purpose or value. But the center of all Christian faith is that Christ transformed death into life through his own suffering and death, and in the process, made suffering redemptive. Now, suffering has the power to do profound good, and our willingness to offer up our own suffering carries with it the ability to cause good to ripple forth in unseen waves. As Catholics, we believe that our saints are saints because during their lives, they chose to use their suffering (in some cases, extreme suffering) to proliferate a wealth of life, love, and beauty.
Father Wyble suggested that if I have to walk through the rest of my life carrying the cross of Lizzy’s death, I should use that time and that pain to do as much good as possible while I am here. Of course, it is the job of all priests to encourage their people to work towards heaven in every way possible. But he argued that I am now in a unique position to be close to Christ in his passion and death and close to Our Lady in her infinite sorrow as a mother. I am now able to feel aspects of the “darkness of soul” that were felt by St. John of the Cross, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, patron saint of grief. And although my pain is a burden that now feels suffocating, I have the opportunity to use it to transform myself and others, rather than allowing it to silently and slowly stagnate me to death.
It has been an inexpressible source of help to have the weight and immutability of my grief acknowledged by this priest. And it is not just because he is a priest that I so respect him; it is because of the kind of priest that he is. I knew him not at all before I met him in the confessional that cold, dark, and wet day in March. And I do not pretend to know him now, but I do know intimately the effect that his words and his presence have had during this, the darkest period of my life, when barely anyone has been able to offer me comfort. I cannot say this about the vast majority of people I have encountered (including many religious officials), but I can say this about him: he is holy.
And he speaks the truth. After confession that day, I was able to come to a place of something approaching acceptance. Not acceptance regarding Lizzy’s death, but rather acceptance about what the gravity of her loss would do to me for the remainder of my life. I could accept the fact that Lizzy’s death and consequent absence from my life is a cross that I will carry until I die. I could accept that the suffering that I feel is so deep and so profound that has become a living, throbbing part of who I now am and who I will continue to be. And I could accept that the quickest path to Lizzy is to try to become a saint myself, so that when I die, I can join her in heaven.
And that acceptance brought me to a level of peace in which Cecilia, who had been causing start-and-stop labor for nearly a week, decided to finally join me the next day.
You need to be mentally and emotionally prepared for labor, otherwise it will not start. Or, if it does start against mental and emotional odds, things are likely to go wrong. My confession with Father Wyble cleared a festering darkness in me that day. Knowing that Lizzy’s life and death would always be with me, but that I choose for them to breed life and light, since Lizzy herself was so much of life and light, rather than death and despair, was a path forward for me.
I gave birth to Cecilia in Lizzy’s and my room at my sister’s house, without medication or pain relief. It was the most physically painful thing I have ever experienced, and yet it was nothing to the pain of losing Lizzy. But I did it. I gave Cecilia the best start on life that I could, and I felt Lizzy’s presence, like a hovering angel, over us all the while. I do not deny that it was me and Cecilia who did the work of this, with Lizzy’s loving presence, and the constant support and help of my sisters, my mother, and my midwives. But it was also Father Wyble who helped bring Cecilia safely into this world. It was he who gave me the mental release I needed to bring Cecilia into life outside the womb. And it was he who came back, a few brief hours later, to baptize her in my arms, as we lay in bed, to ease the subsequent terror I had of losing Cecilia too.
As Catholics, we believe that God brings good out of evil and darkness, and uses all things to work his will through us. I know that if there is a God, and if he has a plan for me, then he brought me to Father Wyble to help me survive the worst month of my life. On April 5, I lay down next to Lizzy and held her and loved her as they turned off the life support machine. On May 5, I lay down, nursing a five-hour old Cecilia, as Father Wells poured the same holy water from Lourdes over Cecilia’s head that had anointed Lizzy’s head and hands in the hospital. They are connected, you see–my two girls, in ways that I am only beginning to understand. And Lizzy’s death can no more sever that connection than Cecilia’s life can stop sustaining it. For they are two faces of the same dream, a dream which has been given to me, and through which, I become myself.