Life’s Not a Sprint or a Marathon, It’s a Relay Race.
How ready are you for the hand-off?
Irish people are said to be comfortable with death. It’s one of the stereotypes people hold about us. Along with red hair and freckles and a fondness for Guinness, we’re supposedly good at calling out the Grim Reaper. And when the robed guy finally gets the better of us, we’re known to throw a good funeral.
Not that I remember any rollicking funerals from my childhood in Ireland but I do remember my first encounter with death.
I was about 4 years-of-age when my devout Catholic mother gave me a bedtime book. To clarify: the book was not a gift for us to share as part of a cozy bedtime ritual. Harried Irish women of my mother’s generation didn’t have the time, the energy, or the inclination to read bedtime stories to their broods of children.
I was handed the book and expected to glean from it what I might.
And, oh boy, did I glean some things. The book was mostly illustrations — at least that part was age-appropriate. However, what those pictures revealed, in horrifying detail, was the story of Father Damien, a Belgian priest, who, in the nineteenth century ministered on the Hawaiian island of Moloka’i. Unfortunately for them, the majority of Fr. Damien’s charges were afflicted with leprosy.
