Two years earlier, when I was 11 years old, my sister Grace died, but not as the result of an accident. She’d had appendicitis and had been operated on, successfully so we all thought. But a few months later, she died after much pain and illness which she tried to keep from everyone. I have since learnt that this is a ‘million to one’ occurrence caused by ‘abdominal adhesion’. So rare in fact, that most doctors rule it out when presented with abdominal pain occurring months, or even years, after an appendectomy. This event took all the family by storm. She was a bright, vivacious and loving teenager, loved by all, especially her brother.
Where was God in all this you might ask. To the best of my knowledge our family was not a very religious one. We were indeed practising Catholics and we shared in the collective faith of an island that survived on prayers and faith during the war years. However I do not remember sharing this in any meaningful way with my parents. The death of Grace changed this. There was a new awareness of the need of His presence in our lives and dad and mum started going to mass more often. However, it was a quiet, personal affair and not overly demonstrative. My Aunt Connie Fiteni, who would discuss religion openly at home was considered a bit too religious by our more reserved family but some of her ideas may have stayed somewhere in my mind. My grandfather, Joe Gat Rutter, on the other-hand, was deeply spiritual and it was he who took me for my confirmation ceremony. It was also his name, Joseph, that I took as my confirmation name; a name, as it happened, that would have significance to my future bride to be.
I was eleven when Grace died and the years that followed were lived with a blind sense of survival of whatever fate threw at me. Despite attending the most academically renowned school on the island, the Lyceum, I managed again to get sent home for three days. When I turned up, non-the-less, my parents decided to remove me permanently and sent me to be a full-time boarder at St.Edward’s college in Cottonera. This was part of the British Public school system and was founded by Lord Strickland.
It was during my time at the college that I discovered that, the man with whom I enjoyed going hunting, who used to join my mother and I for lunch at home while my father was at work and with whom my mother and I would spend many evenings at his home, was, in fact, her lover. The revulsion that I felt is still painful to remember. I felt totally betrayed and also felt guilty and ashamed, since I had actually been fond of that other man.
From that time on, I was at war with mum and, for that matter, myself and God. The conversations between my mother and I became fraught with anger and bitterness and my trust had left, it would seem, forever.
I took to reading the new Testament over and over again and decided that Jesus was a good man but that I did not believe any of this religious stuff. Nonetheless, I repeatedly came first in Religious Studies but felt it necessary to add a comment at the end of the GCE exam paper saying “I don’t really believe any of this.”
It was during this time that I went to confession to one of the college priests. I had no respect for the sacrament and in fact, was not taking it at all seriously, even treating it with disregard. But somehow, something got through the false mask I had got into the habit of wearing. I blurted out, “Everyone lies. I HATE lies! One day I will come face to face with the truth.” Little did I realise what I was saying.