Welcome to Someone Else's Life

sorry for the recent string of Tears for Fears misappropriations. They just keep springing to mind.

Also apologies for the stream of personal-related posts. The making of resolutions is often just a temporary method of holding back floods of other things. so it is.

Anyhow, odd morning. Mass, as usual. Late on, a well-known local woman keels over, ever so gently, ever so slowly, supported by friends. Some people to go her aid, by now she is laid out over 4 or 5 seats while the blessings and hymns go on as usual. My normal job is the second collection so I hold out the bowl, just inside the door, because it is raining. Right before my eyes is someone I would swear was dead: no movement, no colour, no nothing. The same expressionless face I have seen only once before. Terror beginning to grip me, and winding its cloak around the remaining congregation (most of it). The priest gives the sacrament of the sick and slowly, imperceptibly at first, parishioners join in his prayers until by the end of the Lord's Prayer a group of people are standing around praying. An ambulance arrives, and she opens her eyes and sits up. She talks. I had felt about to give way and collapse myself, partly out of fear, out of shame, out of sheer dislocation - in trying to do normal things while this is going on.

I don't know how things are with her now - I can just hope, and pray.