The Infection

Paul spent the next few days thinking about what Reverend Brown said. By the end, he not only began to accept the loss of his mother, he decided to become a minister. He loved superheroes, could not get enough of them on TV and in comic books. But here was a real superhero, somebody who fought the evil of death every day and helped other people conquer it.

He turned out to be good at being a minister. He spent hundreds of hours in grief counseling with dying people and their families. He offered whatever comfort he could. When they had nobody else, he spent more time with them and even helped with chores and bills. As a minister, this was his mission, to help wherever he could, and he felt he made a real difference in people’s lives. He helped the dying accept what was happening to them, and to Paul, there was simply no greater gift than some degree of confidence that they were not dying, but crossing over, not into oblivion, but to a better place, to wait for loved ones they left behind.

And yet a part of him always felt like a sham because he, himself, remained terrified of dying.

Rita Greene was not a regular churchgoer, but when she was diagnosed with bone cancer and rushed into a painful treatment regime including chemotherapy and surgery removing part of her pelvis, her family asked if Paul would visit with her, and he agreed.

He came to her home and sat by her bed while she shook with a fever that was not a fever but instead a side effect of her treatment. The drugs she was taking killed growing cells in her body, both the fast-growing cancer cells and the normal, healthy cells in her mouth, stomach, intestines, hair follicles. Some days, he was told, she felt so well she would be out in her garden working on her daffodils. Today was a bad day. The fact was she was declining fast.

They exchanged small talk while he tried to put her at ease. He gave her a compilation CD of jazz, which her son said she liked to listen to while tending her flowers. He explained to her the reason he was there and that she should consider him another form of support.

Rita said the hardest part for her was the weight loss, her hair falling out, the general sickliness. She hated looking in the mirror and seeing what the cancer and its treatment had done to her. Plus she was a woman who liked to get up and do things. She hated being inside, trapped in bed.

“Are you afraid of what comes next for all of us?”

“No,” Rita said. “We all got to go sometime. It’s my time, is all.”

“How are you feeling about leaving Jim behind?”

“He’s a good boy. He’ll find his way.”

“You’re a very strong person,” Paul said.

Rita coughed. “I got no choice about it.”

“And do you feel you are right with Jesus?”

“I don’t believe in Jesus, Reverend,” said Rita.

Paul stared at her, stunned. “But of course you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You’ve been worshipping at my church for years.”

“That’s right. But I never really believed any of it.”

“Oh,” he said.

“No offense, Reverend.”

“You don’t believe you’re going anywhere special, and yet you’re not afraid?”

“Why should I be? Like I said, I got no choice.”

Paul regarded her for several moments, unsure of what to say. Based on his experience ministering to the dying as well as the living, he had always agreed with the sentiment that there are no atheists in foxholes. Rita Greene was proving a rare exception.

“Reverend,” she said. “Read me that passage from Ecclesiastes. The one about the seasons.”

“Um,” Paul said. “Of course.” He cleared his throat and recited from memory, “‘For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.’”

“Mmmm,” Rita said, smiling and closing her eyes.

“‘A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to grieve and a time to dance…’”

He stopped. Rita had fallen asleep.

Her son Jim met him in the kitchen. He was a large man who worked in construction. He told Paul that he was taking it hard. They sat at the kitchen table to talk.

“Chondrosarcoma,” Jim said with revulsion. “I never heard that word before a week ago. And here it comes, the thing that’s going to kill my mom. Goddamn cancer.”

Paul nodded.

“Hey, Reverend,” Jim added, “what do you say to people when you do grief counseling? What technique works the best?”

“Well, the hardest part is giving our loved ones permission to die,” Paul told him. “Some people go on trying to interact with their loved one even after they’re gone. They’ll go on talking to them because they don’t know how to move on.”

“So what do you say to these people to help them?”

Paul took out a pen, pulled a napkin from a neat stack on the other end of the table, and drew a thick black line on it.

“It’s a line,” Jim said.