Six or seven years ago I spotted Jack sitting against the windowsill by the back door of my house. He was dressed in his signature black tracksuit, and he looked at me sideways with a very shy kind of a smile. He didn’t ask for anything, but something in me said that he would at some point. That he would make his way into my life and that is exactly what he did. He became part of our life here, mostly looking for help in whatever way he could get it.
Over the years, I came to like him. Came to love him. A bond of friendship developed between us, and I must confess that my helping him was not always the best. He knew how to get out of me what I shouldn’t have given him, but we were connected. We did come in some way to belong to each other, and he saw me as a father.
It was surprising a couple of years ago as we stood in the centre aisle of the church he said to me, “I want my funeral to take place here and I want you to do it”, and of course, I said that would not be for a long, long time. That I would most likely be dead before him. As it turned out, Jack at the age of 38 was found dead in the park just before the end of last year.
My last meeting with him took place a couple of days before Christmas and at the end of our conversation, he said, “Will you give me a hug?” I said, of course, and all of his 6-foot 6 height, his great bulk came down upon me in a big, tight hug. It was not unusual for him to give me a hug or to ask for a hug, but in that particular moment, it seemed to me that we fitted each other even though our physical size was so different. It seemed to me that we fitted together like hand and glove, that somehow strangely we belonged in each other. There are some embraces that do that; there are some embraces where you are hugged by somebody, and you just fit together.
It’s very strange kind of feeling and it’s not predictable. It cannot be planned and so in that embrace, Jack said to me, I love you and I said, I love you too and he went off out into the cold wet day and something within me said that he would die in cold, wet weather. Something in me knew.
The Synod document that came out of Rome towards the end of last year, speaking about the way of being Church in the modern world, it speaks about how the poor are central to the heart of God, and that the poor are central to the Mission of the Church and not just as recipients of our charity, but as participants.
In the mission of the church, they are central, and this is something that I experienced with Jack. He wasn’t a Catholic. He was maybe a nominal Christian who was baptized as a baby in the Fisherman’s Museum. And I would have thought I suppose, over the years, that I was the one helping him, however well or however badly, but that I was the one helping and that he was the one in need of help.
But on that day, in that embrace before Christmas, I realised that he was helping me, that he was in some way ministering to me, that he was revealing something of the reality of God to me. It’s as if what I experienced was that God himself bore down upon me in the big frame of Jack; that God himself held me, that God Himself said, I love you and somehow it taught me that God and I fit together we fit each other. Not proportionately, but we fit each other, and Jack taught me that. It was one of the ways in which he ministered to me.
There are two things in terms of his faith in Christ, one was the day that I discovered he had died in early January. I was walking down the High Street and who do I meet coming up the street, driving a car, but Samuel. Samuel, who pitched tent outside the church here a few years ago in early December. Samuel never asked for anything, but he just wanted to pitch tent there beside the church. But in the meantime, Samuel got himself a place to live in at some point, he got a job and on this day, he was driving a car with great delight, and I asked him about Jack, and he said yes, that he had heard Jack was dead. And he said the last time that he spoke to Jack, he said to Jack, he asked Jack, “Jack, who is Lord?” and Jack replied, “Jesus!” And as St. Paul tells us, no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.
There was a moment a few years back when Jack was going for a really difficult time. He was going through a really, really difficult time mentally. And I had allowed him to take shelter in the hall downstairs.
And at one point I went down to chat with him and he had taken the big crucifix off the wall, and I asked him why and he told me that he could see Jesus moving on the cross in great pain, that Jesus needed to rest and so he took the crucifix dough off the wall and laid it on the ground so that the suffering Jesus could rest. And whatever you might think about that objectively, it was as if the suffering within Jack himself recognised the sufferings of Jesus and that impulse within him wanted to alleviate the sufferings of Jesus.
And that is one of the most keen, profound, and beautiful spiritual instincts that there is, and you see it in saints throughout centuries – the desire to relieve the sufferings of Jesus. I felt in that moment, the Jack was very, very close to Jesus, even though he could drive you crazy, even though he could say terrible things to you at times when he didn’t get his way. But suffering encountered suffering and they recognised each other, and they also fitted together in the way that’s Jack and I fitted together
He was only 38 and people’s immediate reaction to his death was to say, he’s in a better place, he’s with the Lord, he’s free of his sufferings. I get all of that and I am pleased for him that he’s free of all of that, even though you know I think he was well enough the last couple of years mentally. He wasn’t tormented like before, and I think he was actually just satisfied with his life as it was. He didn’t mind sitting on the footpath or whatever.
We presume that people need certain things. One time I allowed him to stay downstairs and I set up a bed for him and the next day he told me he’d slept on the floor because the bed was too soft. He preferred sleeping on the ground because that was what he was used to. Like somebody offered him a place to stay over the Christmas period at least he didn’t want to, he chose to stay in his tent, so I’m not sure that he suffered as much in the last times as it seemed. But anyway, that’s what people are saying when I say that Jack has died, that he’s in a better place and that kind of frustrates me a little bit because I actually miss him. I miss seeing him down the street down the town I miss hearing him calling my name. I miss that physical encounter with him.
And it strikes me how awful it would be, what a tragedy it would be, if somebody were to die, to leave this world and that the only reaction to it is, he’s better off. That there would be nobody to miss him. I think that would be a terrible tragedy.
I miss him and sometimes I have to confess that I’m relieved that I don’t have to deal with him, and I don’t have to deal with my own guilt and the conflicts in my own head regarding him, but I miss him, and I have been somehow the better for knowing him and in some way, I am less because he is missing.
And so in fulfilment of his wishes, we had his funeral service here last week. Yes, he was a Catholic, but we had a Christian serve as for him with his family present and a fine number of parishioners and other friends of his from the present and from the past came together to pray and it was really lovely, really dignified. It was loving and we have fulfilled something very precious in that.
His father said to me after to service, he said “I don’t cry, but you made me cry today!” And I just give him a hug, maybe I was hugging him on behalf of Jack. I didn’t think that at the time, but maybe, maybe!
And then when everybody had left and we had finished singing ‘Make me a Channel of Your Peace’ and the church was empty, but the coffin was still there waiting to be brought for cremation. A big coffin for a big man. Duncan and I stood at the head of the coffin, and I said to him would we sing the Salve Regina. It’s something we sing at all of our Pallottine funerals. We sang it at Maura’s, and it’s sung at religious and priests funerals, and we were joined in that by Judy, who is in near perpetual prayer here.
There was something very heavenly about that moment, the sound of the Salve Regina in the empty church and the afterglow of incense, and there was peace.
The above piece I recorded on my phone. I’ve been keen to write something about Jack but, for some reason, hadn’t the energy to sit at my computer. So, stretched out on my bed I spoke my thoughts. It’s somewhat slow and hesitating but there’s also something honest about it because it hasn’t been edited or corrected in the way that the typed word has been. This is the link to it – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B_fmDT6JKns0J86Ue2wvPHP-ZxikMJlE/view?usp=drivesdk