An obituary: For Jacintha and my aunt

By Phlip Mudartha, Doha-Qatar
Bellevision Media Network

15 December 2012:  My grandmother wailed loud and yelled abuses at some wicked people in the neighborhood:  “They killed my darling daughter”. Even in death, my maternal aunt looked as pretty as a blushing bride. My mother was inconsolable. She hung on to the lifeless body of her younger sister-in-law till it was bundled into a leafy mat and taken away for burial. There were no priest, candles and wreaths; only sobs.

 

My aunt’s death has left such a deep emotional scar in me that at any news of unnatural death under mysterious circumstances, or a suicide, the scene plays out in the mind. It has been more than fifty years. A very protective mother of five young children, all under ten and the last a couple of weeks old, how could she kill herself? Not yet 40, she should not have died. Was she murdered? Relatives and family suspected foul play and conspiratorially accused someone in the ward. My mother enforced on us a social boycott of the accused family for as long as she lived. 

 

Some years later, there was another unnatural death in the ward. Directly from my school classroom, I joined my mother at the funeral. A handful of us, the faithful of the ward, buried the remains of a heavily pregnant young woman, in her early twenties, outside the compound wall of cemetery.  She did not deserve the hallowed grounds of parish cemetery. She was ineligible to be blessed by the priests. The Catholic Church doctrine stressed that her sin was unpardonable and that she had descended into hell. No prayers shall be wasted on this sinner. We, the laity, sprinkled holy water on the grave after the pit was filled. We had buried our dead cattle, dogs and cats in similar fashion. 

 

After this burial, my mother led me to a spot at the outer edge of the cemetery compound wall. She lit a candle; we bowed, and prayed in silence: the two of us. We paid homage to my unfortunate aunt, who waited inside the unmarked grave for forgiveness and salvation. As a sinner, I recalled, she too did not get a Catholic burial: no priest, no altar boys, no band, and no flowers at her burial. Jesus had said: let the sinners come to me. Butthose of us, bearing witness to him, buried our unfortunates as if they were stray street dogs. 

 

A fortnight ago, Jacinta Saldanha took her own life, hanging by a scarf in her hostel room. She left behind a grieving husband and two teen children, besides a couple of memos. Police and media refer to them as suicide notes. Jacinta served as a night nurse in a London hospital. The British Royal Duchess, wife of Grandson of Queen, was an inmate on a fateful night, when Jacinta put through a call to the nurse in the Royal Ward. The call came from Australia. A pair of Radio DJs impersonated Queen and her son, Prince Charles to successfully ferret details about the Royal’s medical condition and treatment from another nurse on Royal duty. This media scoop described as a prank, a joke and a comedy caused embarrassment in many quarters, including the British Royal Household, The Hospital Administration and the Staff.  Jacinta felt tormented. She was duped and fooled. In her guileless behavior, after all, she came out not as smart as she thought she should be or was. Her self-image was shattered. Her ego was bruised beyond repair. She took her own life, by careful consideration, but not trusting anyone including a husband whom she loved very much and her two adoring children.

 

 

The global media, including Bellevision, has given wide publicity to the sad incident. The radio DJS are riddled with guilt. They are being counseled to deal with remorse lest they end their own lives. They have received death threats. Abuses and hate mails are circulating in the print as well as in cyber media. A few are left wondering about this hype and public trial in and by media of a pair of young, smart, good, loving and ambitious journalists, who did not certainly imagine that their innocuous, almost childish act could embarrass so many people and torment a 46-year old nurse sufficiently to  end her life.  They are devil-incarnate and wicked like the witches of good old days. They have sinned beyond redemption. 

 

Jacinta, our tormented woman was born and raised as a devout Catholic. She was a practicing catholic at the time of her death. This is the same faith of my aunt and the pregnant woman of my ward, who were denied a Christian Burial because their unnatural deaths were declared as suicides. Suicide is a Cardinal Sin for Catholics, the ultimate sin that is not forgiven for eternity. It condemns the departed soul into hellfire without any hope of resurrection. Jacinta must know this; unless, Catholicism for her, like most devout ones today, is a set of habitual rituals learnt by rote and practiced at mandatory Sunday Masses and on special occasions. 

 

Faith fails frail humans, when it is most needed. When we are rich, happy and healthy, faith has no duty to perform. Faith we seek in our distress, agony, hunger, loneliness, and despair. Faith is what offloads the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back from us and gives hope. With true faith, no torment and shame is worth more than one’s life. Alas, it was not to be, for Jacinta.

 

Jacinta is lucky in her death, as in life. In life, she was blessed with responsible parents, who gave her a good vocational education. She was blessed with overseas jobs and immigration into UK, a pipe dream for many nurses and professionals. She was blessed with a handsome and decent husband. She was blessed with good-looking, healthy and obviously talented children, a son and a daughter. In life, what more should she crave for? In return she loved her family and parents; we are told after her death, she was very caring and loving person as daughter-in-law, wife, mother and nurse.  Then, what snapped? Why did she do what she did? 

 

Love fails frail humans again when it is most needed. When we are young, pretty, healthy, happy, prosperous, and desirable, love is just a four letter word; it is easy to give and receive.  Love is tested in our ugliest moments, when we are jobless, powerless, ill, desperate, angry, frustrated, hungry and naked, ugly and aged, in pain and penury. Love is needed when we are not needed by anyone or at least we feel we are not loved by anyone. This love is not of the self. But of those whom we profess love for; a love that can endure any torment and shame. Alas, such love was not to be, for Jacinta.

 

So, Jacinta makes her final journey to her resting place in Shirva, her husband’s ancestral home. Thousands of mourners, including strangers and local politicians and village celebrities, who may not even have heard of her or cared if she existed, will throng her funeral rituals and burial. Candles and flowers will be laid, not only in Shirva, but in hundreds of cities and villages across the globe, not only by Catholics but people of any faith and even faithless. She will receive an unforgettable Christian Burial, including details written down by her in now famous suicide notes. Not only parish priest, but higher ranking clergy may bless her remains and pray for her. In death, she will receive honors that she might never have dreamt possible in her life. Would an unnatural death of an unknown nurse attract so much sympathy and cause outpourings of emotions, if the stranger was not linked to British Royals, however remote and macabre that connection was? 

 

I am happy for Jacinta; for in her death, she is not condemned. She has not sinned but sinned against, almost a martyr. She is not ridiculed in death, but her tormenters are. Unlike in suicide cases, where the tormenters, both within home and the family or from outside the home, go scot-free leaving the dead to be shamed and punished with hellfire. I wish my aunt and that pregnant woman in my ward were as lucky as Jacinta.  But, that was in another age and era: an era of dogma.

 

Yet, we say the world cannot change? We despair that it is not changing. Lo, it has changed. It is changing. We have changed. The Catholic Church has changed. Though every future unnatural death may not receive similar media attention, the dead will not be punished for their choice made in despair and duress. The Church, as in this case, shall put behind its dogma and embrace the Christian ideal of forgiveness of sins, especially of those who are week in faith and human love.

 

I fervently hope that the Church will opt to bless of its fallen followers lying neglected in their unmarked graves outside the cemetery grounds in every parish. I hope that my aunt will finally find eternal peace. And, I can be freed from the torment of that image of her lifeless body wrapped unceremoniously in a mat and lowered into a hole without honor and due respect. Here, salvation is on your horizon, my unlucky aunt!