Dear Heart, How Like You This Read Online Free PDF Page B

that while we are all bound to this earthly existence, ’tis necessary—no, no, more than that, Tom. My boy, ’tis essential we seek out ways to be creative, for creativity keeps alive our souls and keeps us in constant touch with God and the marvellous creation that we have all around us.”
    Whenever Father Stephen said something like this, I always knew to take three swift steps away from him. Our dear Priest tended, without warning, to fling out his arms as if he was attempting to embrace all the world around him, but what really would happen is the good Father tended to knock over anyone or anything standing in his way.
    *
    It struck me many times during my growing years that Father Stephen’s talents were such that he was capable of being many different things. Not long after reaching my eighth year, during a pause in one of our outside lessons when curiosity outweighed caution, I asked why he had become a priest. For a long time after my question, he just sat there, resting against one of his cherished oak trees, with his eyes half-shut, seemingly lost amongst almost forgotten memories. I thought my question would go unanswered, which was very unsettling—our priest was always one for answers. But at length, he began to speak.
    “Why am I a priest? Why, Tom… I remember my mother… Yea, Tom, I remember my mother…”
    “Your mother?” I felt confused, unsure how this could be in any way an explanation.
    “Aye, my mother. Upon her, God bestowed so many, wonderful gifts. I was her firstborn. For the first years of my life, she and I were the only people in our world. My father was a merchant and had left us for the Continent shortly after my birth, so for the first years of my childhood there was no other child, no other person to intrude upon our idyll. Yea, my mother and I were very close and I was immensely proud to have this beautiful, poetic, and artistic human being as the woman who had bore me into the world. During those first years, she took such joy to be able to include me in the world she created through her imagination. A private world that only she and I shared; a truly ethereal world full of enriched sights and sounds.”
    Father Stephen became silent for a moment, and then looked at me with eyes that told me clearly that the memories haunted and tormented him still.
    “But at the end of the third year, my father returned. By the fourth year there was another child. And another at the end of the fifth. And another at the end of the sixth; after the birth of that baby, my mother lay dead. Gone forever from this world—all the beauty of my childhood buried deep, deep beneath the cold earth. I watched my mother during those last three years of her life, Tom.”
    Father Stephen paused and breathed deeply, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand, as if his head ached. He looked at me with his old, blue eyes, bleary and bloodshot. Yet it seemed to me that I could easily see within this elderly man a small boy—almost the same age as I was now—heartbroken, made suddenly alone, so full of sorrow. And the memory of having lost my own, dear mother made my eyes fill with tears—tears I now brushed away. Father Stephen looked abruptly away from me, and rubbed his hands together.
    “I saw my mother’s light grow dim through sickness and childbirth, Tom, until it was at last doused forever. I was close to eight when she died. My father placed me in an Order. I suppose I could not hide the fact that I blamed him and wished he had never returned from his long journey. By the Blessed Virgin, I swore at eight that I would never cause the death of any woman, especially a woman I loved. I suppose becoming a priest was a way of keeping that vow. Perhaps, lad, I am too selfish a person to live completely in the world. Being a priest is a good life. It gives you the choice of thinking only of yourself and God. I do not think I would have made a good husband and father. I like too much sitting underneath