A question of life fading into the light?

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column.

Michael Commane

When I learned of the death of a close friend of mine I was reminded of Emily Dickinson’s poem ‘I felt a Funeral, in my Brain’, and particularly the last verse which reads: ‘And then a Plank in Reason, broke,/And I dropped down, and down–/And hit a World, at every plunge,/And Finished knowing – then –’

Dickinson was born in Amherst Massachusetts in 1830. It is said that after a failed love affair in her early 20s she spent the rest of her life as a recluse, writing poetry. 

The central themes running through her poems are about the human condition, death, life and love.  Dickinson died at 56, 43 years younger than Fr Ned Foley was, when in died in Dublin on Saturday, December 18. He was exactly six months off making it to a 100. He was born on June 18, 1922.

Ned was a close friend of mine for over 30 years. 

No one lives for ever. There are times when it is excruciatingly difficult to get our heads around death. One might say it is almost selfish to get so upset about the death of a nonagenarian, indeed, almost a centenarian. 

But the finality of death sends most normal people into a spin. In this case, for me it is the loss of a close friend, who was my mentor and indeed an important adviser to me. I always had that sense that he liked and appreciated me. And that is a sensational experience.

He had been bedridden for approximately six months and during that time I tried to visit him every week. I was with him the two days before he died and then on the day of his death I arrived at his bedside within an hour of his dying.

I stood there and looked at an old man, life gone from him. I could never again ask for his opinion, laugh with him, tell him that I disagreed with him.

Ned was ordained a Dominican priest in 1953. He lived the fullest of lives.

I’d often joke with him about ‘selling his soul to the institutional church’. He was a man of great faith, a style of faith that appealed to me.

Some months ago I sat beside his bed and asked him did he believe in God and resurrection. He looked at me with his characteristic impish smile and said: “Michael, if there is no God, we’ll never find out.’

Since his death I’ve been quoting that to people.

And every time I quote it I’m reminded of those lines from Emily Dickinson.

As I looked closely into Ned’s dead face on that Saturday I asked myself, is Ned no more or is the story of the resurrection a true story. 

Two days before he died I read lines from Psalm 129: ‘Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord,/Lord hear my voice!/O let your ears be attentive/ to the voice of my pleading.’

Ned looked at me and said: ‘Thank you, Michael’.

I know Ned believed in God and resurrection. He was a shining light and an inspiration for me.

What did Emily Dickinson think?