A story about a grown-up: my friend Ian’s penance.

“I prayed!” Ian almost growled through clenched teeth. “I prayed that it wouldn’t happen!”

Ian had… well… pooped his pants.

*** It is summer break! There are no Kindergarteners around. So, rather than write about school, I am going to recount a story about a friend who had a complicated, hard, short, and at times nasty life. I hope that it says something about love. ***

Ian had M.S. and was paralyzed from the waste down. His upper body strength and coordination were also failing. When I met Ian, he had recently moved to “downtown” Cochrane Alberta, to a third-floor apartment in a building that housed various social service organizations on the main floor. Before this, Ian had lived in an apartment on the second floor of a house in the suburbs. Ian smoked, and he had to go outside to do it. So, in his old apartment he had kept one wheelchair upstairs and another downstairs by the door. He would lift himself up and down the stairs, one at a time, using his arms alone. He was a small, skinny, and wiry guy. But he was proud. He liked to muscle his body up and down those stairs. It made him feel like the bad-ass rebel that he was before he got sick. When I met Ian, he was using the elevator to get up and down from the third floor, and he lamented the fact that his strength was fading.

I first saw Ian when I visited the social services’ offices to meet the director of a volunteer organization called Helping Hands. Cochrane was a small, friendly town. People called Helping Hands whenever they needed help with something like moving or yard work, and the director sent email blasts to all the volunteers. Ian was a regular at the social services office. He used to roll himself in just to talk to the women. That’s what he was doing when I first saw him. He had hurt himself and was lifting his shirt to show the scrapes on his chest. My first impression of him wasn’t a good one.

“Wow, that guy is I needy” I thought. “Clingy, too, by the looks of it.” Ian lived alone and hadn’t been able to work for years. Now that I have learned a bit of psychology, I realize that he was just looking for connections. Nobody likes an attention seeker. But we should all sympathize with people who lack connections.

I didn’t want to get close to people like Ian. I was afraid of getting called all the time, asked me for money, and pressed into being someone’s butler. I have a hard time saying no to requests. So, I was afraid of getting wrapped around Ian’s finger.  

But I ended up becoming friends with Ian. The director of Helping Hands had been looking for a friend for him, and I fit the bill. She asked me to visit him once a week and I couldn’t justify saying no. I was in Cochrane to learn to be a Franciscan Friar and dedicate my life to poverty, humility, brotherhood, and service to the poor. And, Ian was about as poor as they get.

Despite my first impression of him, Ian and I became good friends quite quickly. It was a friendship forged in fire. Or, water. Brown water, as it turned out.

The first time we hung out, I went over to Ian’s apartment, and we talked for a while. Ian didn’t have a lot of human contact, so he tended to bottle things up until they exploded out at the next person he saw. He had a lot to be angry about, and a lot of time to ruminate and brood. So, he ranted, especially whenever I arrived. But I didn’t mind that. There are angry ranters among my family and friends. I don’t mind hearing someone out. After we talked a bit, I offered to get us dinner from any of the restaurants within walking distance. Ian suggested Donair, as there was a shawarma place just down the block. I asked him what he wanted, and Ian said, “A large beef donair. I’ll eat half tonight and the other half for lunch tomorrow.” I got the donairs, but Ian didn’t save any for the next day’s lunch. He ate the whole, almost foot-ball sized wrap that evening. The next afternoon I got a call from Ian. “Uh Oh,” I thought, “It begins.” I was apprehensive.

“I’m calling you because I don’t have anyone else… and it’s kind of your fault, if you think about it, because you bought me the large donair.”

Ian explained that, due to the large donair, he had plugged his toilet, and it had flooded his bathroom. What’s worse, when Ian tried to plunge it, he cracked his face off the toilet bowl and lost a tooth. Ian’s arms were weak. He had leaned over the toilet and was using his whole upper body to push down on the plunger. When he lost grip and his hand slipped off, his downward momentum continued, and his upper body went down to toilet level. His face bounced off the toilet bowl, which was wet with nasty toilet overflow. Ian was truly in the shit. (It’s summer! I’ll type what I want!)

I got over there as soon as I could and, together, we surveyed the damage. I couldn’t be mad at him. I could see the blood from his face. He was humiliated. He said again that it was “kinda” my fault. But he was just being awkward out of embarrassment.

Slowly but surely, I got it all cleaned up. Ian’s plunger wasn’t doing the job, so we left the apartment, and I pushed him over to a nearby hardware store to buy a new one. I remember us laughing and having fun on that excursion. He said again that it was kinda my fault. “What a guy” I thought to myself. I didn’t argue. What was the point of rubbing his nose in it worse than it already was?

Oddly enough, Ian and I bonded through that experience. He never got clingy with me, and he never made an unreasonable request. We hung out once a week until I went to Ireland for my next stage in Friar formation. Then, when I got back, we picked up our friendship by phone while I was in Quebec. (French Friar formation) We stayed friends until the day he died. Like my friend Gary, Ian, too, took medical assistance in dying.

I was asked to befriend Ian, but we were real friends. I liked Ian. His hands were dirty as hell because A) he couldn’t easily reach the sink and B) he didn’t care. And he went on a lot of  angry rants. But he was real. He was down to earth. He was sincere. And, like me, he was a dreamer. He wanted to be more, and to do more. He had dreams of running for city council. He wanted to start a program where he would help people get their G.E.D. He wanted to revolutionize the public transit system in Cochrane and make it a haven for people with disabilities. He wanted to mentor youths, so that they wouldn’t make the same mistakes he did. I knew none of this would happen. But I too had ambitions that would never be realized.

Ian had been a wild young man. As his death approached, he became repentant. He told me that he was afraid of going to hell. So, he asked for help arranging a baptism and a confession. (I didn’t say anything about heaven or hell, BTW) Ian said that he was afraid to tell a priest everything right away, so he asked if he could tell me first, to practice saying it out loud. By then, Ian was in long term care. His health had deteriorated, and he had open sores that needed constant care. One day, while visiting him on a trip back to Alberta, he asked me to push him into town to buy a few things. On the way, he slowly recounted stories from his youth. It was his confession. I won’t retell his stories, but he had hurt or wronged a lot of people. He had a lot to regret. For my part, I just listened. After a while Ian asked me if his illness was penance. “Wow”, I thought. Ian had come a long way. He was an atheist when I met him. Now he was open to the idea of God, AND curious if he deserved everything that was happening to him. This was a Holy moment, and I knew that I had to tread carefully.

Instead of addressing the question of whether he deserved anything, I talked about what I understood the word penance to mean. In Ireland, someone told me that it came from the French and latin word pend, which means to hang, like in the word pendulum. Penance, I was told, meant hanging things to make them straight. Penance, therefore, was about straightening things out. It brings us back into alignment, and right relationship with God.

I pointed out the fact that Ian was thinking more about God than he used to. He also said he wanted reconciliation, through the sacrament of confession. He wanted peace. He wanted a clear conscious. And, he wanted to do better in the future. Was his illness punishment? Who can say? Lots of people get sick. And, I don’t know everything God does and does not do. But his illness was bringing him into a better relationship with God and his fellow man. It was straightening him out.

When I left Cochrane, God sent someone else to look after Ian. I’ll call him Mitch. (not his real name) Mitch met Ian through an MS patient support service. His wife had M.S., and a mutual acquaintance put them in contact with Ian so that they could give him a bed. Mitch told me that, when he first met Ian, he felt the same way I did: “Stay clear of that guy.” He felt repulsed by Ian. But he also felt compelled to help him. Like me, Mitch is a prayerful man. So, he prayed to God: “If you are going to put Ian in my life, and you want me to help him, please help me to love him.” After that, felt love for Ian rise up in his heart. “I don’t know why I love him,” Mitch said. “God put love for him in my heart.”

I think I loved Ian because I sympathized with his unfilled ambitions, and his raw desire for connection and belonging. Mitch loved him out of spiritual love. The loved welled up in his heart from a source unknown. It was from God’s heart, I suppose. That was the proof, for Mitch, that God loved Ian no matter what he had done in the past.  

When I left Alberta, Mitch started visiting Ian and helping him with his affairs. He helped Ian more than I ever could. Eventually Ian signed the papers to get medical assistance in dying. (not Mitch’s idea. Mitch was against it) But as the date got close, Ian started to get antsy, and started thinking about escape plans. He became fixated on an implausible plan to go back to his hometown in B.C. and get an apartment with his estranged son. To do this, Ian would time his move to B.C. in such was way that he could receive benefit cheques from both the Alberta and B.C. governments in the same month. If his plan worked, he could get an apartment and live there with his son.

Ian asked Mitch to drive him to B.C. Mitch was not sold on the idea, so he called me for advice. I told him that the plan was hopeless, but Ian was unlikely to let go of the idea. So, why not let him learn the hard way? And, that brings us back to the beginning of our story.

The day of the trip, Ian prayed to God that he could hold his bowels until they arrived at a rest stop. He didn’t make it. He had a big time accident about an hour into the trip and Mitch had to clean it up. Ian was mortified. He was angry at God. Very angry. This is where our story gets philosophical.

Why didn’t God answer Ian’s prayer? God answers all of my prayers. He always has. And I HAVE prayed for things equally as trivial as Ian’s request for help to not shit his pants. Did God not love Ian? Actually, it was quite the opposite. God did love Ian and was trying to take care of him. The problem was that Ian was running away from God’s love and care.

Let’s look at Ian’s plan. In Alberta, he had friends who cared about him and cared for him. He had everything he needed. In B.C. Ian had only old friends who had not been there when he was sick, and an estranged son who was not ready for what Ian was going to ask of him. By leaving Alberta for B.C., Ian was actually running away from the love and care that God arranged for him. Ian was likely to end up in a hospital again at some point. Calgary has a massive hospital, where Ian had previously spent a few months and had made lots of friends. He used to wheel himself around and talk to everyone. A friend on the pastoral care team told me that Ian brightened up everyone’s day. But Ian’s hometown in B.C. was small, with a very small hospital. If he ever had to be hospitalized there, he wouldn’t be able to make many friends. In every way, Ian would make his life worse by going to B.C. It was a shitty plan, and maybe God was trying to help him understand that.

Sometimes the hardest thing to accept in life is help. It is hard to admit when we need it. Ian was proud. He had always been proud. He didn’t like being dependent on others. He wanted to be somebody important. None of his big hopes and dreams had come to fruition. The B.C. plan was his last hope to be somebody. They key to his plan, it turns out, was furniture. When telling me about his plan, he talked often about how he would furnish the apartment. He hoped to somehow get enough money out of the Alberta and B.C. governments to buy a bunch of furniture for his apartment, furniture that he could leave for his son. He had nothing else to leave him. This was his desperate hope of doing something good for his son before he died.  

But… nothing in B.C. went according to Ian’s plan. Nobody wanted rent to him. He stayed with friends for a few days, but they couldn’t take care of him. He ended up in the local hospital and, once there, they shipped Ian back to Alberta.

Ian didn’t stay around much longer. His condition was only going to get worse. Within six months of his B.C. fiasco, Ian took medical assistance in dying. Mitch was right there with him. Mitch told me that Ian was in a good mood that day. He wasn’t bitter about the B.C. disappointment. Mitch said they talked all day and joked around with all the staff. The appointment had been scheduled for the morning, but Ian asked to postpone it till the afternoon so that he and Mitch could hang out longer in the hospital. They called me before it happened, and we said our goodbyes.

What do I take away from Ian’s story? Pride often drives us away from those we need. God sends us challenges to humble us and open us up to love. The prodigal son faced challenges. Nothing worked for him. So, he came home and was happy. Sometimes we can’t see how much we need to change our current course. Ian’s life was just a more obvious example than most.

This isn’t a story about punishment. It isn’t about the consequences of bad actions. It is a story about love and penance. God loved Ian. He sent loving people into his life. God wanted Ian to let go of his anger and make peace with his life and everyone in it. God wanted Ian to be happy. I think that God’s plan worked for Ian, as ugly as it might have looked from the outside. Ian’s big dreams never came to fruition. Maybe mine won’t either. But Ian made peace with God. He processed his guilt. He got over his shame of not living up to his dreams. And, he died knowing that he was loved.  

If you learned anything else from Ian’s story that I didn’t mention, please email me.