Final Confession

Father O’Reilly made the sign of the cross over the bed. He had given the last rights a hundred times, but every time felt like the first. There is a strange emotional tension around those who know they are dying and are at peace with it. The priest had found a good gulp of whiskey before entering helped him get through. For medicinal purposes of course, or at least that’s what he told himself.

Sister Olga had lived a good life, more than 60 years of it as a nun. He had always liked her feisty spirit, although it got her into trouble with her superiors more than once. She had taught him when he was just a wee boy and all the children knew better than to try to pull the wool over her eyes. She had the magical power some nuns are blessed with to look into your soul and know the truth, and it scared the willies out of everyone.

As he stood over her deathbed, anointing her with the oils, he though fondly of an incident when he was seven. Father O’Reilly – no, just Thomas O’Reilly back then – and his friends Pat and Matthew had spotted Sticky Saunders pocketing sandwiches and fruit from the lunch table. His real name was Mickey, but everyone called him Sticky because he was stick thin and, well, small boys are cruel. Thomas, Pat and Matthew had rushed to breathlessly report the crime to Sister Olga. She had listened intently, asked probing questions, and thanked the boys for their honesty and integrity.

When class resumed after lunch, she called Sticky to the front of the room. She met his eyes and stared into his soul for a minute.

“Do you think you are better than your classmates?” she asked.

“No Sister,” he replied.

“Do you think you deserve more than your classmates?” she asked.

“No Sister,” he replied, a tear forming in the corner of his eye.

“Return the stolen food,” she demanded, holding out her hands out in front of her.

“Yes Sister,” he replied as the tear ran down alongside his nose and he pulled the squished sandwiches and bruised apples from his coat pockets.

“For penance, and to show to God how remorseful you are, you will spend this afternoon and every afternoon this week working in the kitchen. You will help Sister Margaret wash the dishes and clean the tables and mop the floors. Take your port and go there now,” she said in a stern voice that convinced the whole class this would be a torturous punishment.

It was only several years later that Sticky – the name stuck even after he had filled out – told Thomas the rest of the story. He didn’t know how Sister Olga knew, because he hadn’t told any of the nuns, that his father had taken ill with a fever. He hadn’t been able to work, and with no money coming in the family was fast running out of food. He swore Sister Olga had looked into his eyes and just known. Every afternoon that week he would work in the kitchen with Sister Margaret and just before school finished for the day she would sigh and say, “now look at all this left over food. It seems such a waste to throw it out. Do you think your good mother could make some use of it, boy?” and would fill his school port with as much food as it would carry.

On the Friday afternoon, the last day of his punishment, Sister Olga had pulled him aside and quietly asked if he had learnt his lesson or if he thought he should continue with his punishment the next week. Sticky said it was only in that moment he realised what she had done – he was only seven after all – and had impulsively hugged her.

“Careful now, you’ll make the other nuns think I’m soft,” she had said, pulling him away.

Father O’Reilly smiled at the memory as he started chanting the prayers for the last rights. At the sound of his voice, Sister Olga stirred from her sleep.

“I’m sorry to wake you, dear Sister,” he said quietly. Talking to the dying always made this job harder, it was so much easier if they were unconscious.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re here,” the frail old nun replied in a quavering voice. “I’m glad it’s you, Thomas.”

There were very few people who called him Thomas instead of Father these days, but he let her get away with it. This was Sister Olga, after all.

“I’m sorry to have to be here in these circumstances, but I’m happy if I can help ease your soul any,” he replied.

“Any is a determiner. It goes before a noun, not at the end of a sentence,” she scolded in her weak voice as she struggled to roll over.

“Yes Sister. Sorry Sister,” he said, reverting instinctively to schoolboy responses. They both laughed.

“Someone help me sit up a bit,” she said, beckoning to the other nuns in the room.

Father O’Reilly stood back as two of the younger nuns propped Sister Olga up with some pillows. Her body, which had once been so strong and muscular, was now thin and bony. Crepe-like skin clung to her frame, giving her the look of a skeleton even in the last days of her life. Thin wisps of white hair stuck to her head as though glued in place there by decades hidden under a wimple. She was no longer the Sister Olga little Thomas O’Reilly had grown up with.

“Now, everyone out,” she said. “I need to make my final confession to the priest.”

The rest of the convent silently filed out of the room, closing the door behind them. Once she was sure they were alone, Sister Olga held out her bony arm to Father O’Reilly, palm up.

“Flask,” she said.

He was a little taken aback. He didn’t think anyone else knew about his medicinal whiskey.

She beckoned with her outstretched fingers. “Come on, I don’t have all day you know,” she said impatiently.

He silently pulled the flask from his pocket and place it in her hands. Maybe it was the same Sister Olga after all. He panicked a little when she opened the lid and took a swig.

“Sister, do you think that’s a good idea?” he asked in a hushed voice.

“What, it’s going to shorten my life?” she responded through coughs. “I could use some Dutch Courage for this. You might need some too,” she said passing the flask back to him.

“Sister, I’ve known you more than 40 years. I can’t imagine you have anything terrible to confess. You’ve always been a good woman,” he replied, patting her hand reassuringly.

“Maybe I’ve only been a good woman for the last 40 years,” she said. “Father, do you think God judges us for our actions or for our reasons?”

Father O’Reilly sat on the chair beside the bed. She had called him Father, not Thomas, so this must be a serious philosophical question. It was common enough for people facing the end to question their own morals and look for reassurance.

“God knows our hearts and forgives the sins of the faithful. Make your confession and you will be absolved and welcomed into heaven with open arms,” he said, repeating the same line he always used in these circumstances.

Sister Olga brushed the platitude aside with one hand and took the flask back with the other. She took a deeper swill than he would have thought possible and passed it back to him.

“Father, you and I both know that sometimes doing what is right means breaking the rules,” she gave him a knowing look. As a priest, he had followed in her tradition of helping people in ways he technically wasn’t supposed to.

“I mean more than that. What if you prayed to God for a solution to a problem, and He in his wisdom presented you with an opportunity, but it required a sin from you? If you sin to achieve a righteous and good outcome, is it still a sin?”

He thought back on all the times he knew about – and he was very certain there were more times he didn’t know about – that Sister Olga had broken or at least bent the rules to do what she felt in her heart was right.

“What kind of sins are we talking about?” he asked hesitantly.

“Drink,” she said.

This time he took her advice and drank deeply, savouring the warm feeling spreading through his body. He had a feeling this might be a bit more than rule breaking.

She looked at him, her dark eyes still as sharp as they had always been even if they were now surrounded by deep wrinkles. “Father, I need to save my mortal soul before I meet my maker. I confess before Almighty God that I have twice borne false witness to the police to have men jailed, stolen church property more times than I can remember, and broke my vow of chastity on four occasions.”

Father O’Reilly smiled. The last one was a bit of a surprise, but not that uncommon among members of church orders. The first two were so in character for Sister Olga they were almost funny. He was about to absolve her when she added, “and I killed a man.”

He almost choked on the words on the tip of his tongue. He took another swig from the flask and passed it back to her.

“Ok. I think I might need more information,” he said.

“My father was killed in a disagreement with a neighbour. The magistrate decided it was an accident. There was no punishment for the neighbour,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice that belied the seriousness of the conversation. She took another swig from the flask before continuing in a soft voice.

“I prayed for justice for my father, for help for my widowed mother, for some sign that God even cared. Every day for two weeks I would go to the church and pray until my knees were bruised.”

“Then one day I saw smoke rising near my home. I believe it was the sign I had prayed for. God was showing me the way,” she said as she met Father O’Reily’s eyes.

“Wait,” he said. “Is this before you entered the convent or after?”

“Before,” she said. “I was nine.”

He took the flask from her and gripped it tightly in his hand, trying his hardest not to show his nerves as she continued.

“I followed the smoke and found the neighbour beside a pit of burning rubbish. I knelt down again, right where I was, and prayed one more time for a sign. I promised Him that I would devote my life to the church if He would answer my prayers. And He did.”

Father O’Reilly had gone pale. His voice was shaking, and not just from the whiskey. “You were just a child,” he said. “You were not responsible for anything that happened to that man. It didn’t happen because you prayed for it to happen.”

“No, it happened because I pushed him into that burning pit with the rake,” she replied in her shaking voice, staring him fully in the eyes. “I asked God for a sign and He gave me the rake. I had to push him a few times because he fought me, called me all kinds of horrible names. He was a very nasty man. But I knew that God was on my side, so I kept pushing and fighting until he fell in the pit.”

The room was silent. Father O’Reilly sat frozen, staring.

“It was very unpleasant. I remember the smell and the screaming. And then I went home and washed myself and my clothes, because they smelt of smoke.”

Father O’Reilly swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure if he’d had too much whiskey or not enough to deal with this.

“Father,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Do you think it was a sin?”

“God knows our hearts,” he said, falling back on the rote answers that always made him feel safe on unsteady ground. “And he forgives the faithful. It doesn’t matter what I think.”

Her breathing was becoming laboured, but her eyes still held his. He could feel her looking into his soul. At last she nodded, and closed her eyes for the final time.

He finished his work and left her with her Sisters. When the time came, he knew she would be welcomed home.