Normally I don’t get along with priests at all. I go out of my way to avoid them. But there was an old gentleman in Sacramento that made me wish he was a pal.

Our meeting came about when he decided to leave the world of the dead.

As Monsignor Patrick Nolan he was in charge of the Catholic cemeteries in the Sacramento area. He laughingly called himself the “C.E.O. of graveyards.”

It was shortly after his 75th birthday that  he decided to turn the duties over to younger hands. But before he left I had the chance to sit and visit.

“When I was a child I certainly never thought I’d wind up in charge of a bunch of dead people.”

He was ordained in his native Ireland a half-century earlier.  When  I asked if he had always wanted to grow up to become a priest he laughed. “No, no, no. I was planning a career as civil engineer, but a classmate pointed out that the only Irish men who got to drive their own cars were teachers, ,doctors — and priests.”

When he concluded his studies and was ordained, he was asked where he’d like to serve as a priest.

“I told them that I thought Austrailia  would be  nice, but they said, ‘Nope. We already have enough priests in Australia. So I asked for Los Angeles, and was told they were up to their necks in  priests in L.A.

“So I asked flr San Francisco, but they said they didn’t like the bishop there, but I coluld have a little town nearby. It was called Sacramento.”

The six-footer, who casts the shadow of a healthy refrigerator, was 25 years old when he arrived at his new base. They quickly assigned him to far-off Eureka, up north. “It was wetter and colder than  Ireland,” he recalls.  “I was one of four Irish priests there, and we all had to share only one car.”

He learned to enjoy most of  his parish duties, but still offers a joking shudders when he recalls his job as the parochial school’s bus driver.

“Have you ever tried to control a busload of kindergartners who can’t understand a word of your Irish accent as they try to pry open windows and doors as you’re racing down a highway?”

But he found his life’s work when, in 1973, he was reassigned to Sacramento and put in charge of the cemeteries in Sacramento and Vallejo.

“I began making a serious study of our feelings about death and burial. When I was a lad in Ireland I was always scared when I passed a cemetery, and I’m afraid most people, even grownups here in America, have some of those feelings hidden inside.”

Whenever he runs across such fears and concerns he deals with them with humor.

“I remind them that the people in the graves are just fine. They’ve gone on. It’s the live people they have to watch out for.”

He thinks many people just don’t like to be around cemeteries. But Father Pat urges everyone to think long and hard about their own funeral.

“If you knew how many times I’ve seen a poor widow standing on a hillside in the rain while trying to choose a spot for her husband’s body, you’d know what an awful thing that is to do to someone. At a time like that they’re scared, worried and susceptible. They allow themselves to be talkedi nto extreme costs for caskets, grave sites, headstones. Maybe they’re feeling a little guilty about something they did, or didn’t do,  and they try to make up for it with extravagance.”

He begs people to make their own funeral arrangements. “Pick your mortuary. Pick your grave site. Pick your own casket — and pay for it all now.  Then, many, many years from now, when you need all that stuff you’ll have saved your family a lot of grief — and you’ll get it at yesterday’s prices.”

The only time I saw saddness on his face was when he told  me about his visit to Ireland to see his little brother. They had been separated when they were boys when their mother died. The brother grew up living with an aunt and uncle, and the boys didn’t get so see each other often.

“I realized I hardly knew Liam , so I took a sabbatical and returned to Ireland to get closer to him.  Well, it turned out that he was the type of fellow that didn ‘t go to doctors because he thought they always found something wrong with you. He was sick, but he didn’t tell me. While there in Ireland FatherzPat suffered a gallbladder attack that required instant surgery, and when he got out of the hospital  he learned that his little brother had died and was already buried.

“Aw, the shame of it.  If I had been in  California I wouild have flown over for his funeral, but there I was in Ireland, only a few yards away from him, and I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

But Father Pat can’t stay sad very long.  When I asked if he still returns to Ireland often he says, “Of course. Why do you think I still talk like this.”

The jovial priest with the solemn duties had a lot to say to the man who replaced him. “I reminded him  to keep fighting to see that our cemeteries don’t become commercialized. The burial of the dead is a ministry, not an industry.

“The burial of the dead is a very, very  special moment to people.  It is their last chance to say goodbye to a loved one. There should be a religious tenor and attitude.  They should know that it’s perfectly okay to cry. It’s even okay to get mad at God. He can take it.”

He says that Catholics have taken to cremation, just like the rest of the country.  But he’s quick to insist on a proper burial for the remains. “None of that stuff of scattering people around in oceans or forests.”  He insists that the remains be given a place to rest — a place where they can be connected to loved ones left behind.

“You know how vital such a spot is when you see people coming to visit years after a funeral. They come to  chat, to bring news of the family, to brag — and to cry. The living need that.”

The monsignor laughed when I asked if he had any fear of death.

“Oh, no, indeed. Just remember what comes next.”

—————————————Fight Forth————————————-