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said to her: "Rose and I will slay up tonight and we'll stay in hospital
with you." " 0, finn no," and by twelve o'clock in the night, afler we
went to bed she died. Nobody there saw her. The nurses, when they
made their rounds at bedtime, she was OK, and when she went again,
she was dead.
IP: You think she knew?
RB: She knew; and I forgot my bag, left my bag of course, and went Olll to
the elevator and had to run back, and I came back. I said: "I forgot my
bag as usual." She laughed and she said, "good-nigh!." That is the lasl
I spoke to her. Fifty-eight, I think she was. I
I gOI this other account from Father 0., a retired Catholic priest, who for most of his active
life travelled all over the island as a mission father:
FO: I found with people who afe very sick that they would believe the priest
sooner than they'd believe Ihe dOCIOf, "am I going to die?" and if the
priesl was honesI enough with them, he'd say: "yes, Mary·-or whrllever
your name is·-you know, you're dying, you're not going to gel over
Ihis." They'd accept that. ow I buried a first cousin of mine about a
month ago and she was diagnosed as having cancer, and in Ihe
beginning she took that preuy well, then they lold her it had travelled to
her liver, and they couldn't do anything for her. They told her it was
tenllinal, and she accepted Ihat, and I couldn't believe my ears. She
said to me: "Father John," she said that, "I'm going to die," she s,lid,
"the doctor said in another six months." I said, "Margaret, arc you
accepting that?" She said, "yes," she said, and she would talk 10 her
husband and said, "now, Charlie, when I'm gone, don't forget (0 do
this, to do that, just the same as she said, "I'm going downtown," and
she got worse and worse. Some days she would be fine, and then she
would have a bad period about a week as she was taking
chemiOlherapy. She losl her hair, she put on a wig, but then she got
thinner and thinner. Finally, she got so weak that she couldn't get Ollt
of bcd, but she never complained and she wasn't afraid. That's
amazing, isn't it? She was a fairly young woman. She wasn't sixty·
five. In facl, she laughed about that. She said, "you know," she said,
"I won't be able to collect my first pension cheque." She said that as if
lIaughingl she was mad at the government not putting it on sixty-four!
IP: Was your cousin Iypical in her attitude, do you think, Of was it inspired
by her faith?
FO: Well, it could be her faith; it was her outlook on life. Ipause) lOW, I
don't know whether thaI would be typical but I have met other people,
who the doctor told that they had six months to live, and they weren't
biller. I can't say they were bitter, but they were falling baek on their
faith, see?
IMUNFLA 87-1591CI2035 and 12036.