Being mugged must be a terrible experience. To think that this happened to our own gracious Sister Loreto can make us shudder. However, she has come through it all very well as can be seen in the photograph below. In the short video clip at the end of this piece, we can feel with her the effects, both difficult and inspiring.
Loreto published her autobiography Down the Arches of the Years last year, so is no stranger to writing. Her account of the mugging incident was published in the Connaught Tribune and Reality magazine. Entitled, A Shattering Experience, it is here in full, for our perusal also. May Loreto continue to be an inspiration.
Loreto, viewed above, looks beyond her experience after four months
Shattering Experience
Saturday was a bright, cold, sunny day. I took the afternoon train from Ballinasloe, where I live, to my sister who lives in Newbridge, in Co Kildare. I had planned to spend two nights with her and move to Dublin on the Monday. The train arrived on schedule at 6.01. It was getting dusk as I walked off the Station Road and into College Park, a well-lighted area. In a totally unprovoked, unexpected and shattering assault I was mugged, robbed and left unconscious, within striking distance of my sister’s home. Briefly opening my eyes I saw a car, with its lights on, bearing down on me: “This car could run over me,” I thought. Suddenly self-preservation kicked in. Swiftly I pulled off a glove and shook my hand in panic. The car stopped and a Good Samaritan dialled 999 while I drifted back into unconsciousness. Soon, my sister, her family, the gardaí and a kind cyclist were hovering over me with a duvet, water and comforting talk. I was rushed to Naas hospital for an X-ray and was transferred to Tallaght Hospital where surgery for a broken femur took place.
During the ensuing week, blood transfusions, catheters, pains, aches, allergies to the dressings and the cot sides on the narrow bed, left me bemused, though painkillers, and a few tranquilizers, blotted out some of the memories. However I did have nightmares. One night I felt scared and too fearful to move. I clenched my hands, felt the burning heat of my body and waited. I had just undergone a leg amputation in my nightmare. A nurse appeared: “You had surgery a few nights ago for a broken femur. You still have both legs and you’ll soon walk again.” She said gently.
I felt relief but certainty came slowly. In the twinkling of an eye I was pushed from mobility to immobility, from strength and courage to weakness and fear. Suffering, in the ordinary course, is part of the warp and woof of life, but this injury and assault was unjust, needless and with long term effects. Knocked unconscious I did not experience the actual assault. But the negative impact was significant. I felt useless. Daily Mass used be the start of my day, now I was unable to even attend Sunday Mass. I was unable to pick up my mobile phone if I dropped it, unable to take a shower, unable to put on my bed socks, unable …. In January I had signed up to walk the Connemara half marathon on 7th April, because I felt like a healthy sixty year old. Now, my enthusiasm for life was crushed. As the days passed, my surgeon, Mr Sulliman, expressed relief that my wound was healing. He arranged a transfer for me to an orthopaedic hospital.
On the following Monday the ambulance made its way to Clontarf Hospital and I felt hopeful. I knew that the hospital had a very good reputation. Here, though frightened, insecure and vulnerable I tried to call on God. Until this crisis came along, I had enjoyed long periods of good health and fitness. This bitter sweet memory helped me count my blessings. That I had not suffered any head injuries and I had not been run over by the car; that in fact I was alive and in a helpful environment helped me be grateful. I was simultaneously encouraged by the outpouring of love, prayer, goodness and kindness from a great number of people. The constant visits, texts and calls from family, friends and colleagues boosted my morale, while my Surgeon, Nurses, Doctors, occupational therapist and physiotherapists, planted seeds of hope in my mind. I could and would walk again they promised. Increasingly I gained some independence, thanks especially to the Physiotherapist and to the Occupational Therapist whose visits helped me to help myself. On the first day of his visit, the Occupational Therapist greeted me and asked: “Have you any day clothes?” “Only what I was wearing on the day of the mugging,” I said. “I’d like to see you in them tomorrow.”
He gave me two aids, a leg lifter and a leg dresser. It seemed a daunting task, but the aids proved very helpful. The lifter is a type of synthetic plastic lassoo. I put it under my foot and swung my foot out, the other followed. On the ground I could hold the Zimmer frame and cautiously stand. It was a great achievement. The leg dresser is a plastic stick with a shoe horn on one end and hooks on the other. By managing the hooks dexterously, I pulled up my clothes and let the top clothes slip down over my head. I felt grateful and mindful again of the tiny things I took so often for granted. The Physiotherapist, by constant exercises, enabled me to move my leg to the right, at first one/two inches and gradually one/two feet, to stand, by holding on to a bar, on the tips of my toes and to bend my knee. I was gaining confidence and competence.
Despite my physical improvement, the shock and injustice of the assault shook me up and still rankled. Sometimes I just wanted to close in on myself. Where was God in all this? After great disasters, I’ve heard that question asked. Fundamentalists, who see God as a punishing God, might tend to say that God caused those disasters as punishment for crimes committed by humanity or by individuals. In my case perhaps, after the achievement and success of my memoir launch in November and early December, I had become too big for my boots and needed a warning. That answer did not fit my image of a God of love and tender mercy. In the Sunday Gospel story St. Luke referred to the horrendous incident in which 18 Galileans were killed in the Temple, when the tower of Siloam accidently fell on them and killed them. Some Scribes wondered if they were worse sinners than all the others in the Temple. But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, adamantly denied that they were killed because they were sinners. Jesus did not explain about God’s permissive will that allows evil to happen. He did not appeal to a hidden plan through which, out of evil good can come. He continued by telling the listeners the Parable of the Barren Fig-Tree: “Cut it down. Why should it be wasting the soil?”
The possibility of perishing, not by a sudden tragic event, but by my shrinking from life was a wake up call. Helder Camera stated that surprises which disrupt our lives and shatter our dreams happen, but not by chance. I moved from asking; why this happened? to, what now? How can I be a fruitful fig tree? What in God’s plan is my ministry now? I slowly discerned what faith means in this new situation. Carrying this pain is my primary ministry and not a distraction from it. This challenge is not done by willpower and by my own efforts, it is a free gift of God’s love. My call is to stay patiently with the pain. Nevertheless my desire to get active as soon as possible grew. My priority was to be patient and positive but I needed to ponder on forgiveness.
The struggle to forgive is not easy, as I hobble about on two crutches. The ethic of justice in the Old Testament was ‘an eye for an eye,’ but the test for a Christian is not to give back in kind – hurt for hurt, blame for blame. My faith asks me to radiate the compassion of Christ, anger and bitterness will not help. In one of Pope Francis’s early speeches he quoted part of his conversation with an elderly woman. “The Lord forgives everything,” she said. “That is interior wisdom regarding the Mercy of God,” he commented. I’ve no desire to hold on to ill feelings. Indeed I wish to have a positive forgiving attitude which will lead to healing and happiness. Biblically speaking, Jesus asks us to forgive not seven times but seventy times seven. The focus of the gospel is the Good News about human life. This is a spiritual process, an internal letting go that replaces fear with love and even enables me to pray for the wellbeing of that mugger who absconded with my bag, its contents and my mobility. Thanks to this positive attitude, I acknowledge a greater sense of life and a greater desire to nurture it. I’m aware of and appreciate what the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, calls ‘the little things that make life great.’ Every day I witness the generosity of the human spirit in the generous self-giving of my friends and sometimes sense a sacred presence intangible but real. I appreciate what Brendan Kennelly says in his poem:
How should I know that what a storm can do is to terrify my roots and make me new. – Brendan Kennelly
To be inspired by the following two-minute video, ensure your speakers are turned on and click on the play arrow.
Text: Loreto McLoughlin rsm
Video: Suzanne Ryder rsm
Western Province
