Last rites

Helen Rose Pauls

The first time, he accompanied a neighbour we had hired for a few weeks. The neighbour didn't last, but big Dan stayed on until the construction job was done, hauling lumber, wheeling cement and stripping forms.

Dan came back over and over in the next ten years, sometimes at our request, and sometimes because he was strapped for cash, between jobs and with time on his hands. He looked, not for hand-outs, but for a few days' work. Afterward, he would disappear again.

We learned he had a wife, but we weren't aware of any children to support. We also learned that he was very generous. He would spend days fishing and bring us salmon fresh from the Vedder River. Once he knew how much we like it smoked, he built a smoker with my husband and would wake every two hours at night to fuel it with cherry wood chips. How we enjoyed that salmon!

He would also bring by his gleanings: corn from around the edges of machine-picked fields, boxes of apples from neglected orchards, and lots of plums. He loved to give. He had all the time in the world to teach our children to fish with his Native friends, and his bottomless well of colourful expletives seemed to dry up when he was around them. His heart was as soft as a child's.

There were the hunting stories of shooting caribou up north and about being chased by a grizzly in the Kootenays and bagging it. He brought all the gory photographs to prove it. Our son was delighted.

There was the time he nailed his thumb to the floor joist on the second storey of the chicken house with the air hammer while nailing in bridging. He had to wiggle it loose while he hung on tiptoe, because we had left for the afternoon and there was no one to call for help.

Dan brought our sons fishing lures and hooks for Christmas, and sent flowers that he couldn't afford when I had pneumonia. He had so little and shared so much.

Dan continued to drift in and out of our lives even though he got a more permanent job at the government forestry nursery, caring for tiny seedlings, fertilizing them and spraying them with insecticides. He blamed this job for causing the lymph cancer, which was discovered in a fairly rampant condition when he was being treated for another work-related injury.

He was bitter the first time we and the children visited him at the cancer clinic in Vancouver, his huge head shorn, his face ashen, his eyes dull as the stones in his beloved Vedder River. He suffered, he went into a short remission, and then the cancer returned with a vengeance.

One day, he drove onto the yard on his way home to Chilliwack from Vancouver. "They sent me home to die," he said. His wife Martha would administer the morphine. We listened. We wiped a few tears. There was nothing to say.

Dan's neighbour was also taking an interest in his spiritual life, and urged him to accept Jesus, but Dan, who was raised a Catholic, could not understand that he could make peace with God without the priest. And the priest would not come because he had married a Protestant.

As it came close to the end, Dan kept repeating that he needed the last rites.

"What are the last rites?" we finally asked.

"Well, the priest pours a little oil, and you get forgiveness for your sins," Dan replied. His breathing was laboured, and we were shocked to see that Dan's time was running out quickly.

"May we call our pastor to come, Dan?" we asked, realizing that his training demanded a "man of the cloth".

"Will he come?" Dan asked. "I'm a Catholic, you know."

"He'll come," we answered.

We called our pastor and described Dan's turmoil. Our pastor understood what was needed. He came quickly and stood over Dan with a flask of oil and asked him, "Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who has died for your sins?"

"I believe," Dan answered with conviction and relief, and our pastor anointed him with a little oil. A deep peace seemed to pervade the room. It was as if Dan had been released to speak what had been in his heart for a long time. His spirit was at rest.

Days later, Dan was hospitalized for the pain. We happened to be in the room visiting when his breathing became more and more laboured. He breathed in and out, and then he didn't draw breath again. He died peacefully with his wife, his brother and ourselves keeping vigil.

Helen Rose Pauls is a member of Sardis Community Church in Chilliwack, B.C.

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