Farewell To The East End

invited to attend her funeral at the Mother House. The service was the Requiem Mass for the dead as ordained by the Book of Common Prayer. The funeral of a nun is very quiet and reverent. Her Sisters do not mourn and grieve; they are more likely to express joy that a life given in the service of God is fulfilled. For them death is not an enemy. Death is seen as a friend.
    At the end of the service, while plainsong was being chanted, one of the Sisters took up a pile of folded garments that had been lying on the altar throughout. The Reverend Mother came towards her with hands outstretched, palms facing upwards. The Sister placed the garments on the hands of the Reverend Mother, who turned and walked slowly towards the coffin. She placed the small burden on the centre of the coffin and turned and bowed to the altar. It was the folded habit, surmounted by the gold cross and rosary that Sister Julienne had worn all her professed life, and they went with her to her grave in the Sisters’ cemetery in the convent garden.
    Rest eternal, rest in peace, beloved Sister Julienne.

    Sister Evangelina died some years ago. At her own request she was buried in Poplar, and not in the Sisters’ cemetery at the convent. She had always been one of the people, and that is how she wished to be remembered.
    Novice Ruth took her final vows and practised her calling for about twenty years. But in the mid-1970s she encountered a spiritual crisis, which in religious language is called ‘the black night of the soul’. It is a most terrible experience, probably more shattering than the worst kind of divorce. It is well known and documented in monastic literature, and is a spiritual phenomenon to be dreaded, yet in some ways welcomed, as it is a testing of the soul and suffering can lead to an enriched spiritual experience. Sister Ruth was tormented for years with no respite and eventually renounced her life vows and left the order.
    Sister Bernadette, an inspired midwife from whom I learned all the practical skills of the profession, also left the Order but for a very different reason. She worked faithfully all through the 1960s and ’70s as a midwife. In the 1980s, when the HIV virus infected the Western world and when medical and nursing staff were vulnerable to being infected, she nursed AIDS patients at a time when the mortality rate was close on 100 per cent. Throughout the 1980s there had been debate in the Church of England about the ordination of women, and in 1993 the General Synod voted that women could be admitted to the priesthood. Sister Bernadette could not take this. Deep religious conviction based on theology and history told her that it was wrong. She was in her seventies and crippled with arthritis, but she had the courage of her convictions to leave the Anglican Church. This meant that she would have to leave the Sisters with whom she had shared her life. She was accepted into a Roman Catholic order, where she lived the strict life of a solitary contemplative, devoting her time to prayer and meditation.

    Ambition is a double-edged sword. One side will cut through stagnation and lead to a new life; without ambition, mankind would still be living in caves. But the other side can be destructive, leading to feelings of loss and regret. I was ambitious, and my sights were set high. I was planning to be a hospital matron or at the very least a sister tutor, and I would have to climb the ladder of the nursing hierarchy. A district nurse and midwife was only a lower rung on that ladder. I did not really want to leave the Sisters, but I knew that, if I stayed with them, I would stagnate. I loved the Sisters and their devotional life, and I loved the fun and freedom of district work in the docklands, but to continue would have rendered me unsuitable for the discipline of hospital work, which was very strict indeed in those days. I left the Sisters in 1959 to become a staff midwife at the London Hospital, Mile End Road, where I enjoyed seeing more of Cockney characters. But it took a long time to settle down to the rigours and discipline of hospital routine. Eventually the move paid off, and after a couple of years I obtained my first junior sister’s post at the famous women’s hospital, the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson in the Euston Road (now sadly closed). Later I became night sister there, which in those days meant being in overall charge of the hospital throughout the night. Then I became ward sister of the Marie Curie