Joseph Furolo | Journeyman

I have my personal anthology of death stories, collected along my journey through life as son, friend, cleric, colleague, carer, husband.

A young 16-year-old volunteer at a geriatric psychiatric hospital. In the morning, I dress and feed Leslie. In the afternoon, my mentor teaches me respectful care for the body. We gaze together at his breathlessly restful face.

I feel connected and privileged.

A young cleric attends the home of Brigid as she lay dying. Her young adult children embrace on the bed, speak love, shed tears at her last breath. The husband reaches out to touch his children. All connected, all full of faith and love.

I feel alone and alienated.

Students in outback Australia. A large, overturned semitrailer on the dirt road. A boy, stock-still, stands near the crushed cabin. I hear the driver’s stifled voice. I reach in, touch him, feel his warm flesh. With dying breath, Joe implores us to make sure his nephew is OK. His voice weakens and is silent.

I stand in the desert unable to breathe.

A tragic honeymoon accident. On Saturday, we celebrate a joyful parish wedding, Phoebe and James joined in love! Their funerals are in the same church the following Saturday. Families as still as stone.

I hide in a grieving community.

“What is heaven like?” the son asks intensely. A familiar couple, arriving noisily at eucharist every day. Close at her side, Jacob struggles to support his hobbling mother, distressed and smelling of urine. From a ferry he surrenders himself to the river. The church is overflowing at Jacob’s funeral, a community mugged by the reality of the lives of others.

I anguish over my earnest answers to his question…

I share house with Alexander and Ralph, a young indigenous dancer and an artist-philosopher with leukaemia. Ralph expires, Alexander no longer dances. Alone, he lives in fear in a world not safe for him, feels terror whenever he sees police. I identify his body at the station, the marks clear around his neck.

I sigh, a drafted accomplice.

We can be rational and scientific about the process of fertilisation, propagation, senescence and death.

When I imagine death, I imagine a seed and a giant tree. These could not be more different, but yet, they are the same thing! From a seed to a tree, through death.

When I reflect on death, I reflect on cycles of beginnings and endings. Every breath draws in, then flows out. With our first breath, we are born. After our last breath, we die.

Perhaps our last breath is our first breath into a breakthrough reality. Like a chick breaking through its shell because there is nothing left for it inside. Like a tree emerging from a buried seed. Mystery!

Even when brutal, death is the inside of life. The circumstances vary, like plot twists in a never-ending story, a story about the mysterious goodness at the heart of life. And about the rhythm of pain, relief, shackles, freedom, hurt, forgiveness, holding and surrendering.

Whatever exciting or humdrum part of the story I am in, my life is entwined with family and friends with that goodness at the heart of the mystery of life. And entwined also with Les, Joe, Brigid, Phoebe, James, Jacob, Ralph and dear Alexander.

— Joseph Furolo (2024)

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