Reacquaintance

We are able, with cautions, restrictions and risk assessments, to take communion to people at home now, and so I made an appointment to go to see Harriet who, once upon a time, we could be sure would be at church every week. Harriet is a priest's widow whose Parkinson's has galloped away over the last year, reducing her mobility hugely and making every conversation hard work: it's that which she finds worst, she says, trying to make herself understood. Funny or intelligent interventions in conversations are now a thing of the past as both speaking and listening have to be deliberate and determined. 

Harriet wanted to make a confession so we had to ask her home help to go into another room, without actually saying she wanted to make a confession. I then found that despite all my COVID-specific precautions including washing the pyx in hot soapy water and carrying it in a sealable plastic bag, I'd basically forgotten how to take communion to someone at home. I had to look up the collect on my phone (slightly less awkward than making one up) and it was only by chance that I had my Bible in my bag and was able to pick two readings at random. 

In Monsignor Quixote Graham Greene's protagonist priest goes through a phantom mass in his final delirium, gabbling the Latin rooted in his memory and which the Church around him had abandoned. I will never be Monsignor Quixote.