August 2011

This is Part Two. In case you missed it, Part One is here.

I get the feeling this one might be a disappointment and an anti-climax for some people. I apoligise. But this is truth, and truth is fluid. I’ll keep you updated.

To be honest, I’m really not sure about God anymore. And I’m unsure about being unsure.

If that makes no sense, go back and read this post. I firmly believed in a Something, but not in any organised religion.

I’m not even sure if I believe in a Something anymore.

While Tony was in the ICU, I prayed. I had hundreds, thousands of people praying for me and for Tony, through my blog and Twitter. I visited the hospital chapel every day, gave myself to God and Jesus, sobbed and begged and thought I felt some divine strength within me.

As I said, I’m far too angry to give any higher power credit for that strength. That was me. I was alone. If God exists, I shouldn’t have had to look so hard for him. If I was prepared to give up, give in to him…. why couldn’t he do the same for me?

It’s difficult, when you have little faith to begin with, to maintain it, when such desperate prayers go unanswered.

I remember, the day after Tony died, there was a hashtag trending on Twitter- #Godmakesnomistakes- in hindsight, it was probably something Gaga. But I can’t describe how angry I felt, how cheated I felt, glancing at thousands of Tweets, proclaiming that sentiment. God had just made a fucking huge mistake. And I was the one paying for it.

These days, God and I… we’re not on very good terms. If he exists at all-which is, in my mind, very, very much in doubt- he is laughing at me. Fucking with me.

I asked for strength, if that was all he could give me. And I got it. But that still feels like a cheat, when he could have given me so much more.

I always believed God was inherently kind.

Now, I’m not nearly so sure.

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I’ve had quite a few people ask me how I feel about religion, now, in the After. I wrote about it in the Before.

I’ll publish the where-I’m-at-with-God bit in the next post. I just thought we needed some background first.

In the Before, I believed in… Something.

In the immediate After… I was willing to believe in anything.

one of the first things I did, the morning After, while Tony was unconscious in the ICU, was to visit our local catholic church, to arrange for a priest to come and perform Last Rites. Why…? Well, Tony was Catholic. Not practicing Catholic, but Catholic enough that our son was baptised. And I remembered, when Tony’s nan was in her last hours, he held her hand and recited the Lord’s Prayer, over and over, to bring her comfort.

I think I wanted to bring the same comfort to him.

The priest attended the hospital, only after checking that it was ‘OK’- I was not Catholic, and while our son was baptised at this church, we weren’t technically part of the parish.

That stung, and still does.. that we had to meet some official requirement,s for prayer to be given.

Despite me asking him to, the priest didn’t wait for me to perform Last Rites. Tony’s mum, and a friend of ours, where there, both baptised Catholics…. I guess that was enough.

That stings too.

I visited the hospital chapel every day while Tony was in the ICU. I have myself to God, to Jesus, to whoever. I cried and sobbed and bargained and prayed and pleaded for my husband’s life.

And, failing that… I prayed for strength, the strength to do this, the strength to walk away, if that was what I had to do.

I guess my prayers were answered, to a point. I had the strength to walk away. But I’m too angry with a higher power to give them credit for that. That was all me.

In contrast to the Catholic priest, the pastor from the church where my children and I attended play group could not have been more comforting. He spoke to me on the phone every day while Tony was in hospital. The last night of Tony’s life, he came and sat with me. Prayed with me, prayed with Tony. He was compassion and love personified when I needed it most and the feeling of that comfort, that soft but strength that emanated from him… I don’t think that will ever leave me.

In the days that followed my husband’s death, the faith I had felt in the hospital flickered and dehydrated and died. The idea of attending church lingered for a while, right until we moved to Paradise, but more for the purpose of teaching my children about the concept of Heaven, of giving them a framework to understand where there father is now.

That idea, along with any lingering scraps of faith, has been washed away by now.

And that’s that. More in the next post….

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