48: Yes. My faith has saved me.

Episode 48: Felicity shares movingly how and why she worked for decades in a job she found very stressful while also feeling it was a vocation and 'God's work'. She speaks about the death of her husband and the friends and practices that are helping her to find a way through a series of bereavements. Felicity recommends being Christ-like in the way we walk alongside each other.

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Transcript

You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro. My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of the ways we're living our faith today. I'm grateful for Pope Francis who used the image of a caravan, a diverse group of people travelling together on a sometimes chaotic journey together. And that image that Pope Francis gave us has helped to shape this podcast. I hope you'll feel encouraged and affirmed, and maybe challenged at times. I am too in these conversations. And if you're enjoying these conversations, it helps if you rate and review them on the platform where you're listening. Thank you. 

Listeners, this week I'm producing a bonus episode for the first time. This will go out on Friday. With a group of some of my previous guests, we'll be responding to the death of Pope Francis and talking about our hopes for the next pope. And actually, the guests that will be joining me in that conversation are coming from four continents around the world, so it's gonna be really interesting. Look out for that episode on Friday, wherever you usually get this podcast. Today though, there's another great conversation coming up in a moment. And I just wanted to let you know that we're talking about lots of things in this conversation but we are talking about bereavement in some detail. And if there's anyone for whom that's a really difficult topic I just wanted to prepare you. 

Listeners, I'm really delighted to be joined today by Felicity, known as Flick. Welcome, Felicity. 

Thank you.

We've got a number of things to talk about and so let's see where the Holy Spirit takes our conversation today. Felicity, I wonder if we can start with, has your faith always been important to you? Have you been a Catholic since childhood? 

I'm a cradle Catholic. I went to Catholic primary schools and first year of secondary school. I was kind of loosely brought up as a Catholic. I lapsed between the ages of 13 and 15. At 15, I returned to my faith and have never looked back. 

What brought you back at 15 then? 

Oh, goodness me. It's embarrassing. I was living in a children's home at the time because my father was dying of cancer. I liked somebody who was looking after me. So I followed this person on this person's day off. The carer lived in at the children's home. I followed this person to see where they went on their day off. And they went to Mass at Saint Peter's church. And I thought, Oh!

The Lord works in mysterious ways. 

Absolutely. Absolutely.

So that just reminded you that there's something I'm seeing in that person that I like, and it turns out it might be a faith that I recognise. 

That it was where I was being led. It was where God wanted me. 

And you accepted that invitation back?

Yeah.

You haven't looked back? 

No. 

I know that you worked in nursing for many years. Was there something about your faith that drew you into that? 

Yes. I did pray about it a lot and I did feel that it was a vocation. I did want to be doing something that helped people, working with people, and that was God's work. And somebody did once say to me, That's God's work. 

And so there you were, nursing. And how did you find nursing as a career - for anyone out there who might be thinking about it or who has been in the same situation?

Very stressful. Very hard work and very stressful. I remember doing something at home once, some manual work or decorating or something around the house. I remember saying to my husband, I didn't realise how hard my job was. It's even harder than this.

So what did you experience as hard? Was it the volume of work or, you know, absorbing people's difficult situations with their health? 

All of the above. It was stressful and it is a full-on job. It uses every part of you. It uses you physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually a bit as well. So unless you've got multiple reserves, it can drain you. And, of course, in the health service, there's never enough staff. You're always doing the job of more than one person. 

And you hung on in there for quite a long time there. How many years were you doing that very stressful work? 

Thirty four and a half years. 

Wow. 

I did thirty four and a half years full time, internal rotation. That means days as well as nights. Bedside nursing. I never went into an office. I didn't have children. 

In order to support yourself through thirty four and a half years of what you found very difficult, did your faith support you in some way? Did you draw on prayer?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Those bits in the gospel where Christ says to people, your faith has saved you. I would say, Yes, my faith has saved me. But more than that, my faith has saved me and made me whole.

That's very succinct. Try and tell us a bit more about what you mean by that. 

My faith is an important part of me. It's interwoven with every other part of me. It's not something I can just cut out of my life. It's not something I can live without. 

Okay. And is daily prayer part of that? Do you have kind of times of the day when you pray, or is it more a sense of being in the presence of God all the time?

Obviously because of having worked shifts... When I worked shifts, I never had a routine or what normal people would call a routine. So there was no set time ever for prayer, things like that. I was hopeless at doing things like novenas and stuff like that because it would always get broken up by work. I did realise at one point that the only routine in my life was prayer. But I pray as much as I can and when I can. My minimum aim is, if I don't get any other prayers done at all in the day, my minimum is to read through the Mass readings of the day. Then other times I'll manage the rosary or the chaplet of divine mercy. They're prayers that I'm quite attached to. I've often prayed whilst walking. I don't pray sitting still quietly. 

That's really interesting, actually. I was thinking about the shift work and sometimes working nights and sleeping during the day. To do that for all those decades. I'm someone who is a bit of a creature of habit. Actually I like my routine. It's astounding to think of you for thirty-four years not being able to have a pattern around your days because you're working those shifts. That really is a vocation. 

Yep.

We were going to talk today about your experience of bereavement. So we were talking before, and you said that it's been over the last three years. You've experienced a number of people close to you dying. There's a cumulative effect of that, I'm guessing. So tell us a bit about what that's been like. 

It has been difficult but I think I think my nursing career has made me tough. I very rarely cry. The bereavements I've had, it started just under three years ago. One of my old knitting friends committed suicide. That was the first one so that was sudden. A few months later, one of my other knitting friends, her husband died suddenly. He was only 57 and we were all at school together. I don't have very many happy memories of my adolescence but they were part of my happy memory. They were two of the best people I could have been at school with. If you could say my adolescence was like a beautiful painting, it was as if somebody had took a knife and put it through it. My mother died suddenly, April 2023. Somewhere in that time, both my aunt and uncle in Australia have died. So I went to Australia in my summer holidays between my A-level years when I was 17, and I'd stayed with them for two months. There was certainly more attachment than if it was just any relative overseas. Another friend's husband died. These were friends that I'd known since my early/mid-twenties and they'd been very kind to me when I was having a very horrible time. It wasn't a shock when he died because he deteriorated, but it was a shock when he became ill because he became ill with cancer. These two were a pair of gym bunnies. They lived a completely healthy life. They had a vegetarian diet. They exercised. They didn't drink excessively. They didn't smoke. Even my own husband kept saying, I can't believe he's got cancer. So obviously he got worse and passed away. And at the time when he passed away, my husband was critically ill, so I wasn't able to go to the funeral. I'd have loved to have gone to the funeral, but I wasn't able to because I had to be there for my husband because he was in hospital critically ill at the time. I think then that just brings me to my husband. My husband passed away last June. He'd been disabled since 1999, so we'd kind of swapped roles. And there was no possibility of me stopping work or going part time or anything like that because I became the breadwinner. And then about eighteen months before he died, he became unwell with liver disease. And that was already at stage three when he was diagnosed, so he didn't make it. 

And did you both know that he was dying for a while? 

Yes. I'd worked in that area. I knew what was happening. I could tell. I could see the way it was affecting all his other body systems. On the 18th or 19th May, after nagging for a week, I managed to persuade him that really he needed to be back at hospital. I got him to A &E and the consultant on call said to us, We're now looking at the last few months of your life. When the doctor had left the room, he said, Felicity, Felicity, I don't want to die here. So I said, I will do everything within my power to get you home, but if you should suddenly deteriorate, which you could, that might become unrealistic. It was like talking to a patient. I flipped between being nurse and wife all the time. I had to be both. He needed me to be both. And we did get him home. So he died peacefully at home as was his wish. That was less than a month. That was June 4th. He didn't have months. 

And although you shared that, you know, he was disabled many years before that, and you were working full time therefore, and then he had this period of ill health before he died - I'm guessing there's so much more to your being married together all those years. I'm guessing there are some things you can look back on and feel some joy about. 

Yes. Well, I've not got a lot of happy memories of my early life. So I'm not one for looking through photographs because I find it a bit emotional. I knew I was going to have to look through photographs to get this Order of Service sorted out and I thought, Oh. So in my usual way, I said, Come on. It's got to be done. And actually I found it quite nice looking through the photographs. In the end, it was quite a nice experience because I looked at photographs of when we were young and when we were first together and stuff like that. And I thought, Oh, look at us there. We did have some good times together. That was quite nice. 

And how did you meet Felicity? 

How did we meet? Well, when I was young, free and single, I had a flat in the tower block next to the railway station. My husband, John, did the security there. He was working as a security guard five nights a week. So for about the first year or eighteen months of seeing each other, it was just like one of these American movies with the janitor. I just used to walk in and say Hello. Goodbye. Walk in through the door. But he really liked me and he was too nervous to say anything to me. But eventually, he did. Plucked up courage and said Do I want to go out? And I said, Oh, no. I'm far too busy. But then we did go out. On our first date we went to see a film called The Commitments. 

Oh, yes. 

But I think from our second date, I knew there was something there and that we were probably going to end up married. And we got married a year after we started dating.

And was John a person of faith? 

Well, that was one of our early conversations. He was brought up a Catholic. He'd served on the altar as a boy but unlike me, he was lapsed and didn't practise the faith. But when he was dying at home, in a way it was nice that we knew he was dying. We had that bit of time that we could talk about things at home. And there was this one day when he said, About my funeral, I want a Mass. Which was a change. He'd changed his mind from what we'd discussed years previously. I said, What, Father John? And he said, Yeah. I said, You like him, don't you? He said, He's alright. And I said to him, But you wanted secular music at your funeral. Father John won't let you have secular music. He says, Oh, no. It doesn't matter about that. And I asked him whether he, when he was an altar boy, I said, When you served on the altar, did you have any hymns that you liked? He says, No. Not really. 

So did you choose the hymns for the funeral?

We didn't have any hymns. We just had some music. Just a bit of Faure.

Listening to you, you're someone of few words in some ways. You're very succinct in the way you speak about your experience. But of course, there's a wealth of feeling behind suffering a bereavement, especially a series of bereavements.

Yeah. Absolutely. 

How are you getting through the days now? I'm wondering whether the community is helping you, but I don't want to put words in your mouth. 

I started off coping very well because John didn't like that I missed out on things. You know, when I was looking after him at home towards the end, he used to say, Are you not going to scripture sharing or you're not going to seven steps? You're not going to swimming or knitting? And I'd say, No, I'm staying here with you. He said, Oh, no. That's because of me. Then there was another day when he was dying, when he said, Felicity, Felicity, I need to say something to you. He said, After I've gone, still move to Skegness like we were planning to. Go to Australia and visit your sister. Go and see all your friends that you haven't seen for ages. Because he hated me missing out. The first two days after he died were a bit of a blur. By the second or third day, I thought, I need to go out and get some groceries. When my mother was alive, we used to go to Lidl and then we'd go for breakfast in Sainsbury's and finish the shopping off in Sainsbury's. After my mother passed away, I used to go to Lidl, come home and have coffee with John, and then go to Sainsbury's. I thought, I don't really know how I'm gonna do this. I don't know if I'm gonna go home or go to Sainsbury's and have a coffee, or shall I just try and get this shopping over and done within one trip? So I decided I was gonna get it done in one trip. I got to Sainsbury's and I thought, Damn it, I'm gonna go up to the cafe. I got up there and my friend phoned me and she said, I wanted to see how you were, make sure you're alright. And I said, Oh, I'm absolutely fine. I'm upstairs in Sainsbury's. I'm going to have a coffee. It's okay, I said, because John didn't like me missing out. Some people feel guilty if they enjoy something after somebody's died, but I don't because I know John felt bad for the times that  I missed out and would have wanted me to treat myself and enjoy myself. I knew from what he said. He told my eldest sister to tell Felicity to live her dreams. So I was fine to start off with. I booked to go on Crafty Sewing Camp in the August because I was looking forward and I was thinking I could be getting a little bit morose by then. Well, it's not happening. So I went on Crafty Sewing Camp. I'm a lifelong depression sufferer since childhood. One of my triggers is the autumn and the lack of daylight. I knew that things were going to get worse, and they did in the autumn leading up to the first Christmas without John. I couldn't bring myself to write Christmas cards. My sixtieth birthday was in the September, beginning of the September. John's 60th would have been at the end of September, so that was difficult. Christmas, I got through it. 

I'm guessing you'd have to spend Christmas so differently without John.

I had no idea what I was going to do at Christmas. I got invited to my younger brother's girlfriend's sons. My elder brother invited me to his home in Northamptonshire. I was tempted to book a hotel in Skegness and just spend Christmas there by myself. I was tempted to just stay in bed at home by myself. So all these things were going round in my head then. My friend phoned me and said, Would I like to come and spend Christmas with her and her family? And I just got back from Mass and I was hitting a bit of a meltdown. And I just said the first thing that came into my head, I said, I couldn't possibly do that. But she was very nice and I was glad she phoned because we were able to talk. She said, Well, you know, just think about it. But really, I just didn't want Christmas at all. In the end I went down to my brother's in Northamptonshire. The day I came back, my car broke down, and I had to replace my car by myself since then. I couldn't rely on John for everything, obviously, because of his disability. But one thing I could rely on him was choosing a car. February would have been our wedding anniversary. Somebody wished me a Happy Anniversary. 

And I guess that's the wrong thing to say, but people struggle, don't they, with what to say? 

Yeah. That's right. They do. So as soon as I've got a car on the road, I started going to the, bereavement support cafe on Saturday mornings. 

So that is helping you, is it? 

Oh, gosh. Yeah. That is a great help. One way that I'm very lucky that God has blessed me is with my friends. I'm very blessed with good friends. Yeah. Good supportive friends. My groups are my support. I'm in two scripture sharing groups. I'm in a knitting group. I meet up with a group of people at swimming.

You mentioned scripture sharing. And so that'll be the readings of the coming Sunday, is it, that you share? 

In my Zoom group we've done the whole three year cycle of gospels. So we're looking at second readings now. 

And where does your faith fit in, having had this long experience now of bereavement, plural? Do you feel cared for by God? Do you feel angry with God? 

All of the above. Yes. All of the above. Especially if I plan to be good and it doesn't work out. And I think, I'm trying my best. Why aren't you helping me? I was thinking about this earlier. And at the end of the day, there's no way around it. The only way is through. You can't skirt around it. And you have to do things like do a list, whether you do it actually physically on paper or whether you just do it in your head. You have to list what are your positives and negatives in your life. Sometimes there's a lot of positives and that's good, but sometimes there's a lot of negatives and not very many positives. Now you might think that's bad, but what that's telling you is that you've got to really make the most of those positives. You've got to really utilise them, really draw them out. One of my salvations is my sewing. Swimming is a fantastic stress buster as well for me. But sewing, there's a very spiritual part about sewing because both my parents were bespoke tailors, but my parents divorced when I was about six. I lived with my father. My earliest bereavement was my father died when I was 15. My father was my mother and my father for most of my childhood. He didn't have time to pass anything on to me sewing wise. In fact, he let me come into the sewing room once and I went on the overlockers a couple of times - because he worked from home. He ran his business from home. And he looked at my work and he said, Oh, that's better than most of my outworkers. Then at one stage in in my early twenties, I was reading some Christian literature about the 10 Commandments and how we practice the 10 Commandments in the modern world. And it raised certain issues like, Honour thy mother and father. It said, what about children whose parents abandon them? I've thought about that a lot after that because at some stage, I decided I was going to have this separate life for myself making things. But I thought, No, Felicity, that's a stupid idea. You've got rent to pay and bills to pay and stuff like that. So I soldiered on with nursing and put that idea out of my head. Even though I can't give up my nursing for monetary and responsibility reasons. In a way, that's how I live out that commandment, Honour thy father and mother, with my needlework. Somebody did say to me once, Is there something spiritual about your needlework? I said, oh, yeah. Definitely.

That is really interesting Felicity. There's something very powerful about John saying that he wanted you to live out your dreams. 

Oh, definitely. 

All that time, you know, you had a dream, but life meant you had to do something different for your main work. Very powerful to reflect on. I was feeling overawed, really, by you going to two scripture sharing classes. You must know your scripture very, very well. Is there a piece of scripture that that stands out for you that you come back to? I mean, you mentioned one of the 10 Commandments there. Maybe there's something less directive.

There's lots of different bits of scripture that you just remember them at different points in your life if somebody says something. And I mean, even in a bit of a funny way sometimes. Somebody said to me about eating things that are bad for you. And I said, Yes, but it's not what you put into your body that really –

Oh, good comeback. 

That's somehow how scripture works for me. I've relied on Saint Paul a lot in my youth for guidance and on the Catholic church for moral guidance. 

And what does the practice of your faith look like if - people who obviously don't know about prayers you may be saying in your own heart while you're walking along? What do people see? Do they see you going to church a lot? Do they see you singing hymns with gusto? Or 

Well, you know, that's the thing because I used to be able to sing, but when I developed a thyroid problem, that messed up my singing voice. I go to Mass every weekend. I sometimes go to Mass in between. I'd like to think that people see me as living out my faith. From an early age, I've been of the mind that faith and religion is something that should be studied a little but practised a lot. So I don't know how I've ended up in two scripture sharing groups because I did a little bit of bible study earlier in my life, but I thought to myself, I'm not going to do too much of this academic stuff. Maybe God just had a different idea for me. 

You know, along the way, you meet people, don't you? Then, who become a little community? And that's helpful in tough times.

Yes. That's right. As I say, I'm very lucky to have some very wonderful, supportive friends. 

And for people out there listening, Felicity, who might be friends with someone who has been bereaved… What have you found helpful in friends? What's the thing that friends can do where they might be worrying about whether to say anything or not say anything, or do anything or not do anything? What do you think you would say?

Well, that's interesting because that is actually, it’s only Christ like. Because it is difficult to know what to say and what to do for people who are bereaved. But part of the difficulty is that everybody is different. The same thing isn't right for every person. They need to do what Christ did and he met people where they were. Even though he was criticised for eating with sinners, but he met people where they were in their suffering. That's the best thing anyone can do for somebody who's bereaved. Find out where they are and meet them where they are. 

Felicity, those are really good words. 

The best thing that somebody said to me once was advice because I was talking about decluttering. And she suggested that I start off with things like my in-laws things because that wasn't as close emotionally. She didn't say, Oh, I'll come and help you. I'll come and take over. And people haven't sort of tried to take over my life, the people who've helped me the best. That's really important. 

I think there's something in us sometimes, isn't there? That like you said, one thing doesn't work for everyone. Because it's hard, isn't it? Walking alongside someone going through difficult times. And so there's something in us that seeks a kind of, Oh, it's A B C.  I'll do A with that person. I'll do B with that person, then I'm alright. But actually, we do need to be there with the person, walk alongside people in all sorts of circumstances. I think you've expressed that very well. It is more nuanced. We'd have to do a bit more work to really encounter the person.

That's it. Bereavement is one of those where you have to walk with the person as they are. Where they are.

Listen. Thank you, Felicity. It's been very, very interesting talking to you today and very moving. You've shared so much of yourself, although not always in lots of words. But there's a whole life there that you've shared in well-chosen words. So thank you very much for that. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and your faith. 

You're welcome. 

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time. I hope today's conversation has resonated with you. A new episode is released each Wednesday. Follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms. Rate and review to help others find it. And follow our X, Twitter, and Facebook accounts @kindsofcatholic. You can comment on episodes and be part of the dialogue there. You can also text me if you're listening to the podcast on your phone, although I won't be able to reply to those texts. Until the next time.