Rite of passage

What began with giving a doll the sacrament of the sick ended up as a real-life lesson.

At the end of each school day, my first-grade students loved to play a game called “Dead Fish.” They’d all lie down on the rug, our imaginary pond, and play dead. If they moved, it was all over. They would be reeled in and proceed to get their backpacks and coats. The game was a fantastic way to settle down before dismissal. Many of the children ended up laughing or moving, but some won the game by staying motionless for 10 minutes.

When I was in first grade myself, I lived in a high tenement in the Bronx. Those days I played not with fish, but with dolls, my favorite being Sandy. At that time I was preparing for the sacraments of penance and first communion. Sister Trinitas, a Dominican nun, explained all of the sacraments in great detail with large colored posters to illustrate each one.

After school I went home, picked up Sandy, and solemnly baptized her with tap water. Then, since she was an official member of the church, I gave her holy communion in the form of Necco wafers. Soon after, I told her my preposterous sins. Three sacraments on one bright afternoon!

From there I moved to the sacrament called extreme unction. This one really captured my imagination. I found cotton balls in the medicine cabinet and olive oil in the cupboard, and proceeded to anoint Sandy. Not a muscle did she move. When my mother returned from work, I told her about the excitement. Duly impressed, she directed my attention to the crucifix on our dining room wall. “Not your ordinary crucifix,” she said.

With that she took it down, slid the cross from the base, and what do you know, there were small candles, cotton balls, and a bottle of oil hidden in the recess of the base. She said I could use this sick call set, except I could not light the candles.

I stood the cross up on its base and repeated Sandy’s anointing, this time officially. I started with her wide-opened blue eyes, then her tiny bow mouth, her ears, her hands and feet. She seemed grateful, so I proceeded to my sleeping twin baby brothers, giving them the extreme unction, touching each tiny fingertip and all 20 toes with olive oil.

The next move was to my best friend, Kissy. She came over and we took turns playing dead. One lay like the motionless fish in the pond while the other played priest. With long strips of toilet paper draped for a stole around her shoulders, she proceeded with the anointing, the ex-treme unction, which was how we pronounced it. Extreme meant something dangerous and exciting. We had no idea what unction meant.

Of course, my mother wanted to be included in this latest “sacrament.” First, I played dead, to show her how. After a long day’s work as a secretary, she was quite content to lie on the floor herself and play dead. She was very convincing. Not a move as I anointed her eyes and ears, her nose and closed lips. She was too convincing. I took a stunned look at my mother and sobbed. Gasping for breath, I cried, “Mommy, Mommy.” When there was no response, I said, “I love you so much, Mommy.”

With that, she mischievously popped up and hugged me. That was the end of extreme unction. It wasn’t a game anymore. We closed the sick call set and hung it back where it belonged, on the wall.

Many years later, my mother received the true anointing of the sick, a gentler name for what was still an extreme situation. I wept again, this time profoundly, and set about preparing her funeral. I prayed that God in great mercy was reeling her in. And I believed this was so.

The sick call set had been passed from my grandmother to my mother to me. I keep it not as a remembrance of my mother’s death, but as a remembrance of my childhood faith. I keep it as a tribute to the sisters who shared their faith and encouraged me to treat mine with great imagination and creativity. Not a bad thing for today’s church.

This article appeared in the October 2014 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 79, No. 10, page 11).