Grief at the Roadside: Being with people in their worst times

As a priest I’ve been with hundreds of dying people. It’s a privilege that I never take for granted. Helping people to leave this world behind, in exchange for the beauty of eternal life with God, brings faith into focus in a way that nothing else can.

Sadly, too many of those I prayed with as they died, were young people on the side of the road, killed in road traffic accidents. My very first experience of that was ten days after ordination.

In early January, the monastery got an urgent call to send a priest to an accident on a dark country road. I had just returned from my ordination holidays that evening, full of joy that I had achieved the only goal I ever wanted. I was asked to go on the call because I was the only priest available who could drive.

The police were already there, and in the lights of their car I could see the body lying on the road. I was ill-prepared for such a tragic scene, yet I knew automatically what to do.

I asked the police if I could touch the man, who seemed to my inexperienced eyes to be dead.

They nodded. I knelt beside him. I held his hand as I whispered an act of contrition into his ear. I anointed him and spoke consoling words to him. I remember his hand was cold, but then it was a winter’s night and he was coming from milking in an old-style, primitive byre.

The ambulance arrived just as I finished the prayers. The ambulance crew made a quick examination and concluded the man was dead.

“He got a bad knock,” the ambulance man said. “He has injuries all over.”

Then they all turned to me. His elderly parents were sitting on either side of a turf fire in their thatched cottage across the road. Somebody had to tell them. I was unanimously volunteered to break the news. I hadn’t a clue how to approach them, but I prayed for inspiration before knocking on their door. I walked slowly up to them and in the light of the blazing fire introduced myself.

“You’re a very young priest, Father, what has you in these parts on a night like this?” the mother asked.

I wasn’t brave enough or foolish enough to tell them. I could feel tears on my cheek, so I explained who I was, and asked them had they any relatives nearby. The father said their son was feeding cattle across the road.

Were there any others? A daughter lived about a mile away. I went out to the crew and asked if the police would collect the daughter. In January 1970 there weren’t many phones in rural Ireland.

I went back inside and by now the couple knew something was wrong. Bit by bit I explained how their son had been knocked down crossing the road from the byre to their home. It was a dark night, and he was carrying a meal bag. The ambulance was there and had taken him away. I consoled them by assuring them everyone did all they could, that I had anointed him and he didn’t suffer.

It took the lovely old couple nearly half an hour to get the story into their sad hearts. I offered to pray with them if it would help. The mother got her rosary beads and we went into a peaceful mantra praying the Sorrowful Mysteries.

The daughter arrived, breathless and hyper with grief. She already knew the worst. They all consoled one another with words of comfort handed down through the generations.

“He didn’t deserve that”; “He was a great worker”; “He’ll not be able to go to the cards tomorrow night now”. “We better let the neighbours know.” “He was in great form this evening.” 

On and on they went, sipping tea, crying, putting turf on the fire, sweeping the floor to have it clean for the wake.

By the time I left, the house was full, their son was on his way to the morgue and his cousin, the driver of the car that killed him, was being taken away in a police car. He was, the neighbours told me, very drunk, and didn’t know what he had done.

I drove slowly and carefully back to the monastery where I found the monks gathered for supper. Everyone wanted to know what kept me so late. “You’re only back from ordination today and you missed evening prayer already,” the rector said sternly.

I went to the bathroom. I washed my hands over and over. I splashed cold water on my face to hide the puffing beneath my eyes.

It was morning before I could tell them that I shared the most poignant evening prayer ever with the grieving parents of a dead son.

The journey had begun.

Journeys of self-awareness are harder than physical journeys. Scott Peck’s famous bestseller, The Road Less Travelled, begins with one short sentence of three words: “Life is difficult”. (The book, of course, is named after a poem by Robert Frost).

Life is difficult; so it is. No matter what road we travel, we discover life is difficult, but with God’s help, not impossible.

Journeys are necessary. There is no map for life. There is no sat-nav to keep us out of danger. Life is a constant search and, as Robert Louis Stevenson said so truly, ‘To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.’

Often in the Gospels, Jesus learned about life and about himself on his daily journeys. We, too, may need to climb to the rugged mountaintops if we are to trust God enough to discover there is something beyond the clouds. 

In the Gospels, St Peter was  often so anxious to do the right thing, that he missed the most important thing.

The disciples were often paralysed by fear. It took Jesus to touch them, as he did every sick person, to heal them.

Today we are afraid to risk or to change. The Second Vatican Council told us the Church is in need of constant reform. Yet we are silent when we should be speaking. We defend the indefensible. We cling to what was, and deny ourselves the future God wants. 

How come we are afraid of too much mercy, when God says mercy is the centre of his heart? Why is it that we judge more than we reconcile? Why is it that we don’t embrace the sinner, as Jesus does? Jesus was put to death with the accusation that he was a ‘friend of sinners’. That certainly could never be said of today’s Church across the board.

I remember Archbishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa putting it brilliantly. He was speaking to thousands upon thousands of very poor black people. He urged them to become transfiguration people. I thought he was mad when I heard him preach it. But then he explained, “We should transfigure injustice into justice. We should transfigure condemnation into compassion. We should transfigure harshness into care. We should transfigure sorrow into laughter, and despair into joy and hope.”

That’s our vocation.

Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk who recognised that his Church was in need of reform. (It’s often said that if the Second Vatican Council had been held when Luther called for reform, there might never have been a Reformation).

However, it seems that Luther was a man with little joy in his life. When he left the Augustinians, he married. His wife had a tough time communicating with him, perhaps because he suffered from depression. One day, the story goes, she went upstairs and came down dressed in black from head to toe. Luther was shocked, and asked her why she was doing this.

“Because God is dead,” she answered.

He flew into a rage, insisting it was blasphemous to say such things. She told him it was no different from him leading a joyless life as if God were dead.

She was right: it’s good for us to remember that joyless religion is the most damning form of atheism.

It reminds me of this Sufi story. Once, there was a man who sincerely searched for a healthy spiritual life. All his life, he sought to find a community where he could touch the presence of God. He found a learned guru who had a reputation for being wise. He was impressed by the guru but, like many searchers, always had to ask one more question.

“In this community does God listen to your prayers and work miracles?” he asked.

The guru proved his wisdom with his answer. He said, “There are two ways of praying. One is when we pray so that God changes his mind. Many consider it a miracle when we change God’s mind and get what we want.

“However, in this community we consider it a miracle when the community, through their prayers, learns to listen to God.”

That’s what journeys are for.

Reprinted with permission from Brian D’Arcy’s It Has to Be Said— available through all major book stores via Sliabh Ban Productions. Fr Brian is a Passionist priest, a writer, newspaper columnist, and broadcaster. He hosts a weekly radio programme every Sunday on BBC Radio Ulster.