Poor Jackie

"You look far to young to have a broken heart!"  Said a voice from behind Jackie as she sat in the pew.  Father Pat helped himself to the seat next to Jackie. "You look familiar...but I've never seen you in church..."

Jackie had seen Father Pat before. He volunteered at the soup kitchen on the west side where the brothel was.  "Where do you live?" He pressed.

"On the East side." Jackie replied quickly, not wanting him to make the vile connection to who she was.

"Hmmm...It will come to me.  Is there something I can do for you?"

Jackie shook her head. "Just a little quiet is all."

 It was odd sitting next to a stranger in silence but it seemed natural to father Pat.  He looked at the cross in adoration.

"I was an army chaplain, that is to say, I offered prayers for those who went to battle and never came back."  Had they not been in church, and Jackie not been in a dire situation nor Father Pat been completely sincere, it would have been a off color thing to say.  But given the circumstances, she suddenly had the strongest urge to tell him everything

"I have learned there are different kinds of death.  Some men are inflicted with mortal wounds, their insides come out, lose all their blood.  Their last breath comes quickly and they are delivered into the hereafter before I can hardly even administer last rights." Jackie shifted in her seat, uncomfortable, still Father Pat pressed. "But it's the other kind of death that troubles  me...keeps me awake at night.  It is the slow death.  There is no indication of injury, no blood.  It is the injury of the forgotten man. The one who lived life never doing what he or she longed to do.   She attends duty for the sake of survival without any true purpose. She sees that her truest hearts desire brings the possibility of pain so she abandons it. 

Her blood is time wasted, her entrails are passions left to fallow and whither.  Her bones are her hopes sacrificed and broken...left unamended

In her eulogy, they call her all kinds of this and that. Some may weep for her but not one person took time to tell her what I am going to tell you..."  Father Pat turned his body toward her and his blue eyes found hers for a moment before she looked away from him, but still he went on. "Life is filled with pain and loss my dear.  One day a choice comes to us all; a difficult choice and we will chose to live with it, or we will chose to die with it. Do you understand me?"

Jackie eyes welled with tears and shame poured from her eyes as she covered her face.

"There we are...now isn't that beautiful, how tender your lovely heart is.  Perfectly intact!  Come now."  He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and they sat like that for a long time.

" I think I have some friends who should very much like to make your acquaintance."

Father Pat and Jackie walked out of the church and down the street to the large estate with a garden, 8 rooms which housed a colored family, a fancy man, 9 children and their mother whose husband had left and a strange young woman with whom she bickered endlessly and called best friend who never gave up.