Session 6

To Love and Be Loved: Relationships in the Streets - Holy Space

 

Room in the Inn

Like the flowers that grow in the sidewalk cracks in Old Town, some extraordinary loves have come into being and have thrived in the world of the streets and the SROs. If it is the real deal, then it has moved past environment and backgrounds and age and has arrived at selflessness. Like the torrid romances of celebrities, which often burn out like meteors, the love affairs down here often fizzle, because the lovers have self‑centered agendas. But I have seen love flourish among the people I serve, where the happiness of the beloved was all that mattered. Such love is not easy, but it exists and reminds me constantly of that divine spark in all of us that invites us to love and be loved. Page 82

 

John and Judy

One afternoon John informed me that Judy had been diagnosed with a virulent form of bone cancer, and it appeared to be metastasizing quickly. Chemo and radiation had commenced, but the prognosis was not good. Eventually, the doctors told her that she had only a few months to live. Because she was deteriorating so rapidly and because she needed constant care, she was moved to a hospice foster home. It was a long haul for John, those months. And a longer one for Judy.

Each day, John would hop on a city bus and make the hour trip out to see her. I began to get a sense of the depth of his devotion: he was focused, aware, his entire self directed toward the woman he loved, who was dying on the other side of town. In the crisis that lasted several months, he never drank a drop.

He asked me one morning if I could come out and pray with them and anoint her with oil, the sacrament of the sick. With a hitch in his voice, his gaunt face looking directly at me, he told me that he thought the end was near.

We entered the hospice, a foster home that contained four extra rooms for the sick. As we stepped into her room, I thought we had taken a wrong turn, because we were clearly in the room of a withering-away senior who looked to be a hundred. It was Judy.

Her eyes and her weak voice greeted me. Her frail body was barely detectable beneath the covers. She was bald, toothless, thin, withered. I couldn't take my eyes off her translucent eyes. There was no hesitation, no guile, nothing but appreciative and attentive awareness of our presence.

John went to her, leaned over her, and kissed her and stroked her forehead. As he held her hands, I offered a prayer and then anointed her forehead, neck, and hands. I read the Twenty-third Psalm.

John never took his eyes off her, his face simultaneously reflect­ing a look of unspeakable love and the weariness of a long and ex­hausting journey. Judy was very ill, so I did not linger long. Before I left, I prayed once again and then kissed her on her chilled fore­head. I felt she would die that night. As John was preparing to walk me to the door, he bent over and took her into his arms, as she did him, reaching her emaciated arms up and around this man with whom she had spent so much of her life and who was walking with her, being with her, supporting her, relentlessly loving her to the very end. It was an embrace as tender and gentle as I have ever seen.

Judy died the next morning, in the arms of her beloved. Page 83

 

I think it was my first real lesson in what beauty consists of.

The reasons we love, really love, a person have nothing to do with appearance. They have everything to do with our heart and the heart of the beloved. Nurses know this, as do mothers and fa­thers and spouses who are in it for the long haul. God sends people like Cora and Wiley into my life to remind me of this, allows me to witness John and Judy's version of the same truth. As the Little Prince said, “What is essential is invisible to the eye.” The heart of God sees what is essential. Page 85

 

Charlene and James

There are two faces of grief worn by the partners of those who die: one is the face of emptiness that comes with the loss of the beloved, and the other is the face of fear precipitated by the reality of going it alone. I saw both looks today at the memorial service for Carlene, who had gotten clean at last from drugs but then died suddenly. Heart attack.

She was fifty. The grief of her man, James, showed how absolutely nuts he was about her. She died in his arms. In his arms. What would it be like to lose your beloved so suddenly? And what if it was someone to whom you had committed yourself, who had shared what is best and most human about you? Page 88

 

All that really matters...

Desire. Isn't that all that really matters? The desire to love and be loved and the desire to know and love God, who is the author of such all‑encompassing desire. And emerging from this truth are all these other desires that drive my life: the desire to understand life, the desire to be faithful to the love I have for those I most cherish, the desire to be a Jesuit who has interior knowledge of his vocation, the desire to find my life with the poor, and the desire to passionately live and preach the gospel.

I thank the One who fills me with desire ... and who desires me. Page 89