Stella Maris
An imaginative composed by Isabelle (Year 12 Advanced English, MacKillop Catholic College)
5/2/1882
It was a few nights past from now that I had stepped foot onto that rural rotten deck, that wharf, soggy, forsaken, supported by little more than wooden oyster-nibbled pillars.
Knowing no more than how to etch out these words, the two coins in my pocket, and a parrying of folk tunes to ward off sea sickness, my remarkable talent for making enemies has led me to wander what appears to be ten thousand oceans away from home. It was a home murky, destitute, waning, yet in its way a home the way only one such as my own can be.
And now, it was to be a home I am leaving and a home I will never return to. From this ocean’s vessel, her steam, steering and hatches, I dwell upon the horizon only to find more sky; nothing of any land which I know and which I had loved.
And in a way most grievously, in a manner which sullies my consciousness just as much, is the somber entertainment of that womans’ own face, the very pair of green eyes I had promised not only her but myself to marry.
It is the face that scorned me that last day, the day I told her I was leaving. That very same face that refused my pleas to have her follow, that face so serene and passionate that I will not see ever again, except perhaps in the dreams I will never speak.
I am off to some other place to become one of a million foreigners; another one of the gamblers upon sand, sea, and rock who dons the face of a mourner.
The rest of the ship’s passengers have turned in for the night, but I cannot seem to tear my eyes away from that horizon.
Those were the words.
dashed,
sea sprayed,
and faded.
Words I found in Father’s drawer the week after he succumbed to cancer.
He was the now former priest of parish Stella Maris, a small church and the only one belonging to the remote seaside town. He had known everybody, Catholic or not, passerby or life-long. He had baptised so many children he used to joke that the Vatican owed him a promotion. I was not considered local, but that did not spare me from his friendship. I was just another face who was lodging with my distant relatives, helping my great aunt in return for a place to stay while I loitered unendingly in the meaningless haze that was the 1970s. It was Saturday that I had found an advertisement outside of the local post office, promising a wage in return for cleaning the church weekly, and from then on I and Father Duffy were friends.
He was the kind of person who didn't have to try to please others, a man with such a pleasant character his honest self was enough. In spite of our 72 year age difference, he was never patronising. Rarely did he demand anything at all, even when I, after another bender, dazed off on the job. Looking back now in my old age I realise the remarkability of him. It is rare, if at all, that you ever meet such a person, let alone make such a friend. And that is without mentioning the stories he told. I'm convinced nobody, not even a dozen cats, have lived as many lives as him.
“You know, once I was something of a gangster…i’ve racked up some crimes myself.”
Is what he had once declared after one of my own confessions, before chuckling to himself fondly and shaking his head.
“It doesn’t look like much now…but I had once tossed a grown man from a third story building…even hunted some bounties…don’t tell the bishop!”
Is what he had bragged after I had helped him carry some of his books up the steep and slim church stairs, his back ever hunched and audibly aching.
“Did I ever tell you about the time I schemed myself into becoming a teacher? I was so good…that cranky old mother didn't even care when she caught me…”
Another one of his reclamations, this time while he was bedridden. His eyes still held that joviality I had come so well acquainted with. It had seemed that perhaps I had become his priest during his last weeks, taking his absurd confessions.
Disregarding the strangeness of the life he mentioned, the greatest peculiarity was his refusal to utter a single word about his life before arriving here. Thus, you can imagine the amazement that overcame me as I found in those journals detailed accounts of everything he could never say. The week after he died I packed up my bags and decided to make for Europe with just my stupidity and 200 dollars. Alcoholic and selfish, I had been at a 3 day long music festival in the city that I scarcely remember, missing his death completely and returning to a casket, hungover and half-dead. In my guilt the might of which I had never before considered and so had no interest in confronting, I made clear my own escape plan. But not without just one last goodbye to sweet Stella Maris, that last dwelling of the only real friend I had ever had. T
The parishioners had already gotten to his belongings, putting his coats aside for a charity drive and his old vestments drycleaned for the next priest. I didn't like that thought, the reality that they could replace my friend. As if anybody could ever match such humble admirability. I thought over and over like a broken record.
Maybe that was another reason I was so quick to escape, selfishly not wanting to witness any cause of my own discomfort.
However, they had failed to peek through that oaken chest he kept beneath his tiny bed.
There lied every one of his unspoken truths.
For once in my life, I believed.
Perhaps I had too been ordained for some divine purpose.
