“I’m doing what I can.”
“If you had it your way, you’d grease me up and slip me through the bars of the Pearly Gates.” Benjamin grinned. “Got news for you, son. I’m gonna be dead soon. I don’t mind waiting for my invitation on the inside.”
The vials and books clanked in the case. While away from their desk, most men carried their laptop and files from work. I did too, but I also secured holy water and oils, wine and wafers with Velcro to the interior of my briefcase. Mobile Mass, the parish called it. Efficiency in times of need.
“Don’t you do it.” Benjamin pointed at me. “Put the stole down.”
I held the silk vestment with a frown. “You don’t want to be blessed?”
“Not for the third time since I came to the hospice.”
“It’s a comfort.”
“For whom?” He let the question hang and then offered a wave. “All right, all right. Come on then. Let’s do it.”
I’d faked a smile, and he indulged the blessing. It was the only kindness we could offer each other now, no matter how ineffective it felt.
I bowed at his bedside, beginning the prayers. Benjamin crossed himself with me, murmuring the words.
“In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit…”
Benjamin knew the process, but he listened intently, smiling as I spoke.
Proud.
My chest tightened. He was always so proud of everything I’d done, and I hoped he realized it was all because of him. Though the words of the Anointing asked for the Lord to save the sick one’s soul, it was Benjamin who had saved mine.
I sprinkled holy water and bowed my head. “Do you have anything you wish to confess?”
“Not since the last time you asked me,” Ben said. “Not much cause to sin now. It’s not even good entertainment.”
I knew he took the sacrament seriously—when I was a teenager, he had forced me to scrub the steps outside the church with a toothbrush for a similarly flippant answer. He appreciated and welcomed the anointing, but he tried so hard to keep my spirits up.
I wished that one day, I’d be as great a man as he was. It’d never happen, but I could wish.
We prayed, and I anointed him with the oil. Even that extra prayer taxed him. He took communion though his hand trembled to cross himself. The nurses waited as long as they could before they interrupted to place the oxygen at his nose.
Death was ugly and terrible, but my friend, mentor, brother, father met it with every grace a man of God could hope to achieve.
“Thank you,” he said. The nurses left us again, and he patted my hand. “Rafe, why are you here at my bedside? You have better, more important work at the parish. I know for a fact you owe a day at the diocese’s office too.”
“Part of my duties are to attend the sick. I’m attending.”
“You are not. You’re looking for guidance.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Depends if you’re receptive to the words of a dying man.”
“I’ve always listened to you, Fath—Ben.”
He laughed. Not the scratchy, joyful laugh I remembered, but one only a man facing his mortality could gloat over his closest friend and surrogate son.
“Hardly. You know we have different paths to righteousness. Yours is…” Ben shook his head. “A self-inflicted difficulty.”
“Not to me,” I said, sinking into the chair after I replaced my oils and stole in the case.
“Especially to you. You make it so hard on yourself, and you’ve made it harder every day of your life. Save some room on the cross, Rafe. He died to make this easier for you.”
“You sure you’re getting enough pain-killers?” I asked.
“You sure you don’t want to anoint me again?” He snickered. “Tell me, son. What is it you wish to confess?”
I didn’t react. “Who says I’m here to confess?”
“Right. I’ve only been a priest for fifty years. What do I know?”
I didn’t answer. Benjamin learned his patience during his years at the parish, and most of it was my fault. His temper had cooled as he endured my foolishness, stubbornness, and reckless interpretation of right, wrong, good, evil, and the failures of man.
I was not one who willingly sinned, nor was I a man who harbored it. I strived to confront that darkness and expose it in every aspect of my soul, no matter the earthly consequences. But now?
I never hid from temptation. I’d always sought it out. Studied it. Learned from it. The only way I could face the light of Heaven was to burn myself on the flames of Hell.
I never met a temptation I couldn’t defy.
Until last night.