A Resurrection story

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A Resurrection story

  By Sister Phyllis Wharfe, SJC

Reading the story of Lazarus in the approach to Easter, I remembered a painting I’d seen of the dinner which Martha and Mary gave for Jesus after he had raised Lazarus.

In the painting, as I remember it, Lazarus is sitting staring straight ahead looking beyond the convivial scene, and I recall a commentator remarking that Lazarus’ introspective appearance was no doubt because he was thinking that he would have to go through the whole business of dying all over again. I then wondered at the fact that not a word of Lazarus is reported before or after this signal experience of resurrection, and thought that perhaps, he hadn’t wanted to be brought back from the tomb, “once around is time enough” I would have thought myself…

 
Bad news, good news

 

That is until 2006, when I was handed a diagnosis of end stage renal disease, which I refused to accept. Like most people when faced with such staggering bad news, I went through the phases connected with imminent death well documented by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. “Oh no, this is not happening to me, it was clearly a mistake, lab error.” This became my mantra for the next three years as I waffled in and out of reality, as represented by the relentless testing of various specialists. Sometimes I accepted the fact of life-threatening illness and badgered God for a miracle, “I can’t deal with this, I want a miracle. I cannot put up with this!” Then in July 2007, while still hoping that I could lick this thing, after all, I had come back from the edge of the grave several times since 1980, I got a phone call from a woman whose daughter had been a student at SJC, San Fernando while I was there. She had had a dream, she had come to see me in hospital, “If you see how you are looking, you will not make it. Tell me what is happening.” Well, that’s pretty direct for someone who’s not an intimate, but I was alone and desperate, so I confessed to the frightening diagnosis. “Well, there are eight of you, so you can get a kidney”, was her response. I laughed it off, determined in my mind not to accept anything from anybody, after all it had always been my role to give, not to take, and I was not about to change that. “Pray for a miracle, I told her, I cannot take this thing.” And she rang off. Only to ring back the following day, saying, “I want to do something for you.” “Pray I told you, I want a miracle.” “You have that. I want to give you a kidney.” As calmly as if it were an arrangement of flowers or a box of tea things! Fortunately, I was near the chapel, so I rang off and fell into my place in the chapel, dumbstruck! That people, not related to me should make such an offer! It had been disconcerting enough when one of my sisters and one of my nieces came forward with offers, which of course I would not entertain, after all, I was the “big sister”, but to have this from a relative stranger, acting on inspiration from God in a dream! This was too much, so I rationalised it away, a match would be impossible, she would come to her senses when she had to confront the enormity of what she was offering, her family obligations would bring the cold light of reason to bear on this offer. It was just too much!

 
A death wish and a call to life

 

Relentlessly the disease worked its way through my body – fatigue, tremors, wasting, but I would not give in. “Lab error” was the straw at which I clutched to avoid reality, until I could no longer walk and ended up hospitalised, out of control, and very sick, having to undergo dialysis just to keep surviving. I coped by humour, I laughed at the installation on my body necessary to gain access to my vascular system, laughed at the evasions and denials of my partners in distress who like good Trinis talked endlessly about food and drinks, and of their defiance of the so-called wisdom of our medical caretakers, “I have one life to live, and I not spenning it studying blood pressure and eating taseless food, yuh hear. Dey alright!” I laughed at the twelve hours each week spent looking at the ceiling of the Dialysis Unit, and it was not the Sistine Chapel! But inside, I was dead with depression, this was living death, and I did not want any part of it.

Piercing the tomb-like darkness were the numerous unsolicited offers of assistance from members of the Southern community of which I had been a part for twenty-odd years, and former students from the Port-of-Spain period of some 35+ years before. They all felt compelled to do something as an expression of their appreciation of what I had contributed to making them the persons and families they had become – I was awestruck.  I had done my duty as I perceived it at the time, competently, yes, and enthusiastically, after all, I was a Sister of St Joseph of Cluny and we see the Will of God in the circumstances of everyday life, so I had served as to God and not to human beings. And I firmly believe that virtue is its own reward, so to be the recipient of such a sustained outpouring of gratitude and goodwill was truly heartwarming. I had not lived in vain.

But I had reached a point where I no longer wanted to live. Too much pain, too much dependence, too much indignity.  Death began to be inviting and I moved towards it.

 
Lazarus icon
 

All shall be well

 

Like the sisters of Lazarus, my sisters at Providence community continued to make every effort to keep me alive for the year and two months I lay around in their convent. And the director of the National Organ Transplant Unit at Mount Hope cut through my reticences about receiving an organ donation with her characteristic directness, “Accept the donation, say thank you and let’s move on.” So we did, my donor, the lady of the dream, since my sibling and niece had been ruled out. Off to Building 8 we went one day in the middle of August 2008 to a most gracious social worker, who took our particulars and referred us to the nurse coordinator, who began the well-oiled process of iterative testing that would continue right up to the day of transplant.

Sometimes, I was at ease with the process, carried along by the determination of my donor, who was convinced that “all manner of things would be well”. Other times, I baulked at accepting something as enormous as this. And suppose something happened, she was a wife and mother, after all? Her response? “I would have done something that would give my life meaning. And furthermore, this is happening to teach you how to accept.” What have we that we have not received? This is a constant refrain in the Scriptures, and as she said, I of all people should know that.

So the fatal day arrived, October 16, 2008, the day after the feast of St Teresa of Avila, one of our patronesses. Strict quarantine was the order of the day and the weeks ahead, “buried alive” again, but of course, two past pupils joined the two sisters who escorted me to theatre to amuse me before the process and to remain in prayer during the day as the double operation progressed – there’s always a way around the rules! There too I discovered with awe the far-reaching impact of Catholic education in this country and elsewhere. Many who attended me were either Catholics, and products of Catholic education, or members of other faiths who had been educated in Catholic schools, and they were proud of that legacy and of the persons whom they had encountered during that phase of their development.

 
Everything is grace

 

I have been familiar with hospitals and surgical procedures for many years. I know the pain and the weakness of the post-surgical period, and of course the dependence etc. Nothing prepared me for the sense of new life that I experienced on coming out of anaesthesia. I was alive in a way I had not been for years! I wanted to get out of the bed, the room, the hospital, I was no longer sick! But like Lazarus, I was bound by many tubes and had to await the order to be unbound and let free. Then I walked, I sprang out of bed, I sat out in a chair. I was alive! My brains were back, I could discuss the possibilities opening before people of faith and religious in this time of economic uncertainty, I was once again interested in the world, in the affairs of people, I was alive! And my donor was radiant! The Lord Jesus had said it was a “more blessed thing to give than to receive” – both of us were truly blessed by this exchange. So in short order we were both out of hospital and chafing to resume our old activities. But we could not return to our old places, not in the same way.

Now I think I understand the look on Lazarus’ face in that painting. It was not lack of interest in the dinner guests, nor in life, nor apprehension of another death. Released from the grave, Lazarus was seeing beyond the surface of reality to the heart of matter, to the necessity of suffering and death, and the reality and potency of resurrection. Jesus was the guest of honour, but he was truly the host, the life force, the grain of wheat and the bread to be broken and shared for the life of every person. He could see that in a way the other dinner guests could not, he had glimpsed eternity and his eyes would never again be able to linger on the surfaces of things. I too have had the privilege of a resurrection experience, I too have the option to look beyond the surface to the heart of life where God is, active and powerfully intervening in our universe. I begin by looking in gratitude to the Marthas and Marys who interceded with Jesus to save me from death, may you too have the blessings of this season of resurrection. I look too in compassion at those who like the Jews find this resurrection an inconvenience to their plans, may you too know the blessings of this season of resurrection. I look with reverence at the gift of every day, and I pray that I may handle it and myself as truly God’s ongoing “work of art”, so that I may fill it with the elements of the “good life” as God intended it for me from the beginning.

May this experience be an occasion of grace for the Church in this country.

http://www.catholicnews-tt.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=392:fea120409&catid=43:feature&Itemid=64

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Nun ‘reborn’ with kidney

By MELISSA DASSRATH Sunday, April 12 2009

On the occasion of Easter which marks the resurrection of Jesus after being crucified on the cross, a beloved nun who has served at the various St Joseph’s Convents, has recounted to Sunday Newsday her own experience with death, a miraculous gift and being reborn.

Sister Phyllis Wharfe, 64, of St Joseph’s Convent, Tobago compares her second chance at life to the story of Lazarus of Bethany who was raised from the dead after lying in a tomb for four days.

In 2006, Sister Phyllis, who recounts her story in this week’s edition of the Catholic News, went to her doctor for a routine screening and was stunned by a diagnosis of being in the end stages of renal disease. “It was quite a shock. Although I was tired, I had never had any kind of medical complaint like this.”

Sister Phyllis, never interpreted her illness as a test of faith or a punishment to endure: “As a Catholic, we know that it is out of suffering that we are shaped and tested. But it was never my understanding that my faith was being tested. I never felt I was being singled out by God.”

Her strong faith in God did not allow her to accept this final diagnosis. Her comfort came from her connection with the Lord and her conviction in the power of prayer. Sister Phyllis frantically and fervently prayed for nothing less than a miracle.

One year later, a miracle would come in the mostly unlikely way. In July of 2007, Sister Phyllis who was from the St Joseph area, received a telephone call from Jennifer Rochard, someone with whom the sister was only acquainted with while her daughter was a student of St Joseph’s Convent in San Fernando years ago.

“She had an intuition that I was ill. So she got in touch with me to find out what was happening,” Sister Phyllis said.

Rochard offered to donate a kidney to her, as easily as if it was a bouquet of flowers or a basket of fruit. This gift, though, was too much for the pious sister to accept. She balked at the idea, after all she had built her life on being someone who would give and not take. So she kindly refused.

“It was too much to take from anyone. Also, I am not naive. I knew that risks were involved, not just for me, but her as well. She is a wife and mother. I had to take these things into consideration. But she kept coming back to let me know that she was serious.”

While hospitalised, the disease wore away at her body leaving her painfully weakened and frail. A dialysis machine was what doctors relied on to keep her alive, and Sister Phyllis scoffed at the irony of it all. In the tomb-like hospital room at night, she dismissed any intrusive thoughts about death; instead, she was determined to focus on living.

“I felt unburdened. I used the time to reflect. But it was not about death. It was about life,” she said.

In May 2008, she decided to accept the donation that would give her a new lease on life: “There were no other options left for me. And I thought that if I was being offered this chance, I could not very well refuse it out of pride.”

Sister Phyllis explained that everything just fell into place easily after that and the surgery was completed with no complications in October 2008 at the National Organ Transplant Unit in the Mount Hope Hospital.

The surgery has helped the two women to become quite close. They still chat regularly on the phone and visit each other from time to time. “We have grown through this experience together. We are good friends.”

Sister Phyllis said that there is an Easter message from the experience: “In these times, people always describe the world in negative terms. We have grown hard and too materialistic. But there is good too. This is a marvelous opportunity to rediscover the value of life when we experience loss. It is a chance to authentically reconnect with our own existence and cherish our relationship with God. I hope people learn to value every day.”

http://www.newsday.co.tt/news/0,98355.html