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Mama!
Why Did You Kill Us?
By Domenico Mondrone
Truth? Telepathy? Hallucination? Psychic reaction from remorse? One of the many avenues of Divine Grace? Perhaps a little of each. At all events, what we are about to narrate touches on a present and agonizing problem. D. M.
Exactly ten years later, the time set by the person who entrusted me with her last will, I undertake to fulfill an obligation with the same trepidation with which I accepted it one icy evening in December, 1945. For obvious reasons, due to the delicacy of the matter, I am forced to withhold the exact location and any hint that might identify the people involved in the events narrated. D. M. Rome, 1955
December, 1945
Returning earlier than usual from a short walk, I received a phone call from
someone who would not give his name. To identify himself, the caller
mentioned meeting me some years before. “Mother is critically ill,”
he said. “Someone spoke to her about you. She says she would appreciate
it very much if you could come to see her.”
I couldn’t figure out the reason for the caution and secrecy, but twenty
minutes later I was at the bedside of the sick woman. She made a dreadful impression
on me. She was very pale and worn. Her eyes were large, still charming but heavy
with suffering. She wore a white woolen cap on her head. Her movements were
slow and tired. She greeted me in a low but grateful voice. Then the family
withdrew and I was left alone with her. “Father, do you recognize me?”
“Of course. Why do you ask?”
“I think I have changed a great deal.”
“Not as much as you think, so as to be unrecognizable. Now tell me, what’s
on your mind? I am here to help you.”
“Can you give me all the time I need?”
“My one wish is to help you in any way I can.”
“I know, but you are a priest and have a schedule.”
“My schedule is the least of my worries.”
“Thank you, Father. As you see, I am approaching the end. I would like
to go to Confession.”
“I shall be glad to hear you. Don’t tire yourself, however. I’ll
do my best to help you.”
I drew closer, murmured a brief prayer from the Ritual, made the Sign of the
Cross over her and listened attentively. Her mind was perfectly clear and orderly
. . .
After a short time she paused. “Father, may I interrupt for a moment?”
“Surely. Do you need something?”
She nodded and touched a small pear-shaped electric bell close to her hand.
A nun who was a nurse came immediately with a hypodermic needle prepared for
a necessary injection.
I waited for a few minutes in an adjoining sitting room and then returned. My
task would soon be completed. After the Confession the patient asked: “And
now, what else should be done?”
“I am glad you ask. I would suggest that you be anointed and receive Holy
Viaticum tomorrow. If you prefer your Pastor for this, I can stop and see him
on my way home.”
“No, I would rather have you. But why should we wait until tomorrow morning?
Couldn’t it be done this evening?”
“Certainly.”
Again she touched the bell, and this time, with the Sister came a young woman
carrying a baby girl. Then her husband and a boy of five or six entered the
room.
“Sister, I have told Father to do everything this evening. What do you
say; and what do you all say?”
The daughter and her husband looked at each other. Their eyes filled with tears
and they could not speak. But the Sister spoke up: “I think this is God’s
inspiration. Do so by all means. Besides, it will help you to have a quiet night.”
“So, Father, I am in your hands.”
I went to the nearby church which the pastor was preparing to close for the
night. There I procured a surplice, a two-sided stole, the holy oils, holy water,
a Ritual and a burse with the Blessed Sacrament. Again I put on my overcoat
and in a few minutes I was back at the bedside. Meanwhile the Sister had converted
the chest near the bed into a little altar, neat and devotional, and even with
flowers, which looked to me like a miracle of beauty. Before receiving the Last
Sacraments, the sick woman expressed a desire to speak to me again in private.
When all had withdrawn, from a small plastic bag she drew a stiff, bulky envelope,
handed it to me and said:
“This is the last favor I am asking of you. Will you promise me to do what
I am going to ask you?”
“What is it?”
“My last wishes are here.”
“But we are not supposed to be executors of wills.”
“It is not that,” she assured me with a slight smile. “It is
the story of my wretched life, from the time I was a bride up to the present.
I want you to publish it ten years from now. Only be as careful as possible
that no one may recognize the people mentioned in it.”
“Did you write it?”
“Of course.”
“Someone may recognize your style.”
“Then make it unrecognizable.”
“How?”
“Re-write it yourself. Perhaps I am asking too much; but it will be a work
of charity. Will you promise me? I have great confidence in you.”
She could see the strange hesitation on my face.
“I assure you,” she continued, “there is nothing compromising.
I have been thinking of doing this for years; and the more I thought of it,
the more peaceful I felt. Please don’t say no. You may read it tonight
if you wish. And let me repeat: there is nothing compromising in it for anyone.
It is
something seen in the light of God, after passing through experiences and expiations
which I wouldn’t wish on any mother. It is something that has shortened
my life. I wouldn’t want the like to befall any other mother.”
“Well, I’ll do my best.”
“Thank you!”
A slight touch of the bell brought everyone back except the two children, who
had meanwhile been put to bed by their mother. The Last Rites were administered
in an atmosphere of perfect peace and serenity. It was nearly eight o’clock.
A furtive glance at my watch made the sick woman realize that I
wished to leave.
“You may go, Father. I have no words sufficient to thank you. I won’t
keep you any longer; I feel that I am at peace with God.”
“You may be sure of that,” I said as I arose.
“Now I’ll give you my blessing and wish you good night. Should you
need me tomorrow morning, don’t hesitate to have me called.”
“Tomorrow morning? Shall I be able to see you . . .?” She took my
hands, held them for a moment in her fevered grasp with her eyes fixed on me
in wordless gratitude, kissed them and let them go with an expressive nod of
good-bye. Down in the street, I stood at the car-stop waiting for the streetcar
and thanking God for having made me a priest, a link between Him and souls.
The streetcar was already coming when the janitress rushed out to me. “Father,
the people upstairs want you in a hurry; they beg you to come back.”
As soon as I arrived in the hall of the apartment, I saw that everything had
changed. The sick woman was screaming like a maniac. The children in the next
room had been awakened and were crying with terror. Their mother was trying
to quiet them, but she herself was weeping and seemed inconsolable. The Sister
and the sick woman’s son-in-law were doing their best to hold her in bed.
She was struggling and crying to get up, for she was burning in a dreadful way.
My appearance did not calm her; on the contrary, it made her more furious. Those
eyes which shortly before had been so kind and peaceful were now fixed on me
with some kind of inexplicable hate.
“There he is. He has been talking to me about mercy. What a liar! He told
me not to think of my past; and now he does not see that my past is coming to
meet me. They are there; they look at me one by one. They look at me with hatred.
Nobody sees them; but I do. I do see those faces, those eyes, those looks as
cold and hard as always. On a night as dark as Hell they knocked at the door
of my house. I rushed to open it, but as soon as I saw them I shut the door
and wouldn’t let them in. I know the way they were looking at me . . .
!”
“Calm yourself, Madam. You have done everything to merit the good Lord’s
mercy. Be at peace. Trust my word as a priest. Come, make just one act of trust
and commit yourself to Him.” Saying this, I sprinkled the bed and the room
with holy water and started to sit down by the poor sick woman.
“Oh, what have you done? Did you think they were devils? They are not devils;
they are not at all afraid of your water. They are standing over there, steady,
mocking and as stern as ever.”
“The hallucinations she used to have,” her sonin-law whispered to
me; but the sick woman heard him.
“You are the one who has hallucinations! This is no hallucination; they
never were hallucinations—but you could never understand. Oh, my!”
At this she collapsed. Her pulse seemed to stop and she remained for some time
motionless, her eyes staring at the opposite wall. She seemed without senses
or mind except for her eyes, which were bright and wide open as she gazed in
that direction. I took my Ritual and began to pray. Then something no one could
have foreseen happened. With a sudden movement she snatched the small book from
my hands and threw it on the floor.
“What’s the use? All this won’t help. Don’t you see that there is nothing more that you can do? Don’t you see that I’ve already been damned?” She turned to the other side. But immediately afterwards she turned back towards me as if compelled by some vision which had filled her with horror. At length she stared at me without recognition. Then it seemed as if her lips assumed an expression of contempt, or perhaps of scorn. She instinctively grabbed my arm like a drowning person trying to clutch something to keep afloat. She remained like that, staring absently. I didn’t know what to think. The son-in-law and Sister were on the other side of the bed; he was holding the wrist of the sick woman’s free hand while the Sister, rosary in hand, was praying. I was watching her carefully, my eyes were on hers as life seemed to reappear in them. I leaned forward and said: “My Jesus, mercy!” She seemed to understand. Her eyes first wandered uncertainly towards the ceiling as if following—who knows?—some thread of her memory. Then somewhat mechanically, with neither understanding nor feeling, she repeated: “My Jesus, mercy!” “My Mother, my trust.” Encouraged, I pronounced once more the most holy invocation to Jesus, and she echoed it after me automatically as before. “Perhaps she is in a coma,” whispered her sonin-law to the Sister.
The Sister handed me the crucifix of her rosary, which I put to the woman’s
lips. At its touch she was slightly startled. A movement of her head gave me
the impression that she was refusing it, and I trembled with fear. “It
is Jesus, who wants to save you. Kiss it!” I said, and I kissed it myself
to show her how to do it. As I did so the dying woman opened her eyes wide.
She extended her lips towards the holy symbol of our Saviour as if to kiss it
with evident fervor. But suddenly she compressed her lips again and I couldn’t
understand whether the gesture was that of a kiss or an expression of contempt.
She remained motionless. Then with a scarcely perceptible voice she seemed to
murmur: “Pray . . . have faith . . . leave it . . .” Again her lips
contracted. Once more I brought the crucifix to her lips. The reaction was a
sob. A few moments later when I saw her son-inlaw drop her lifeless wrist, fall
to his knees and weep, burying his face in the side of the bed, I realized that
she was dead. What took place when his wife came in is easy to imagine. I saw
how much they had loved her. But I was thinking of something else. “My
God, what did that last gesture mean? Was it a kiss or a refusal?” That
question kept coming to my mind all the way home like the rhythm of a pendulum.
I had to walk, for at that late hour there was no public transportation.
The next morning at the “Memento” of the dead in Holy Mass, I felt as if a sudden voice had spoken to me—not in my ear but in the very depths of my soul, which was still severely shaken—“Modicae fidei, quare dubitasti?” (O you of little faith, why did you doubt?). This seemed to me a sign of such certainty that it would have been rash to ignore it.
A few days later I held the mysterious envelope in my hands: “Should I
open it, or not?” I thought it over. “It is a will,” I said to
myself, “that I must make public only after ten years. Why open it now?”
I was about to hide it in the bottom of a drawer when the question came: “What
if I should die before that?” And so I took a larger envelope in which
to enclose the sealed one and wrote across it: “This is the will of a person
at whose death I assisted. This person wants it to be made known exactly ten
years after her death. It is to be opened and publicized in December, 1955.
Please carry this out with scrupulous exactitude and conceal the name of the
person.”
Taken from Mama! Why did you kill us? by TAN Books & Publishers, Inc.
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