The Spiritual Lives of Dying People. Paul A. Scaglione
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during the retreat. The first came when I quoted Pope John XXIII: “The greatest challenge of the spiritual life is not to love but to receive love.” That disturbed her because she felt that this had never been part of her life. The idea of receiving love really hit her.
The second was when she picked up a card in the monastery’s retreat center on which was printed this famous prayer by Thomas Merton:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.1
I had no conversations with Sarah until the last day of the retreat when she asked to meet with me. At that meeting, she told me about Merton’s prayer and especially the quotation from Pope John XXIII. She declared, “I don’t know if God can love me. A lot in my life is unlovable.”
In my typical, somewhat no-holds-barred style, I replied, “It’s not your choice; it’s God’s. It’s God’s will to love you as you are.”
Sarah replied, “I’ve struggled with that all my life.”
Then she began to tell her story. The burden of caring for her mother had left her “stretched out.” She had been a caregiver while at the same time having to care for herself. She was never sure whether she was meeting her mother’s needs, and now was plagued by the fact that the first anniversary of her mother’s death was approaching.
I asked her, “How is your disease for you?”
“When I was diagnosed,” she said, “I decided I was going to fight it with everything I had. I was going to take control of this and go full blast to beat it.”
She reported that she went three times a year to M. D. Anderson, the famous cancer center in Houston. In between visits, she was treated by Louisville doctors. The M. D. Anderson physicians recommended chemotherapy, but the Louisville specialists urged an experimental treatment. This conflict wore her down. “I feel like I’m batting myself back and forth,” she said. The disagreement persisted until her death.
Every time she visited Houston, her three sisters accompanied her. In my experience, that was very unusual. They became her support system. She told me that one sister was a critical care nurse, and she was particularly helpful. For another sister, who was the least emotionally stable, these visits to Texas were very difficult, but she made them as a commitment to her sister.
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