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Now, I was asked for a story that cuts close to the bone, and I’ll tell you one, not to offend, but because it’s a true thing that happened to a man I once knew. His name was Patrick O’Malley, and he was a mason by trade, a man who understood the world through the level and the plumb line, through stone that was true and mortar that held.

When I knew him, Patrick was the finest stonemason in three counties. He was a great, broad-shouldered Irishman with a laugh that could shake the dust from the rafters and a faith as solid as the granite he worked. Every Sunday, you’d see him, his brood of children polished like apples, his wife, Maeve, on his arm, marching into St. Jude’s like it was the one sure port in a stormy world. He didn’t just attend Mass; he was a part of the very building. He’d laid every stone of the new foundation with his own hands, for a pittance, as his offering to God.

The trouble began with a cough. Not a grand, dramatic thing, but a dry, persistent rattle that started deep in his chest. Maeve, God rest her, she fussed over him. “See a doctor, Patrick,” she’d say. But Patrick, he was a man of faith. He had his St. Jude medal, he said his prayers, he trusted in the Lord’s plan. A doctor was for those who lacked conviction.

Well, the cough got worse. It stole his breath, then his strength, and finally, the rattle in his chest became a constant companion. He could no longer lift the great blocks of stone. The other masons, they took up a collection, sent for the finest doctor from St. Louis. The man came, listened to Patrick’s chest with a grim face, and pronounced the sentence: consumption. Advanced. There was nothing to be done.

It was then that Patrick’s faith, which had been his foundation, became his frantic, last hope. He turned from the medicine of man to the comforts of the Church. He went to Confession until the priest grew weary of his same, simple sins—impatience, a harsh word, a moment of doubt. He took the Eucharist until it was just a dry wafer on his fevered tongue. He prayed until his knees were raw.

And then he heard of the relic. Old Father Monahan, who was a bit of a magpie for such things, had acquired a splinter of bone said to be from the rib of Saint Peregrine, the patron saint of cancer and, by hopeful extension, all terrible diseases. It was to be brought out for a special blessing for the sick.

The day of the blessing, a terrible, blustery Tuesday, Patrick insisted on going. He was a skeleton by then, wrapped in a good suit, his breath coming in short, painful gasps. Maeve and I helped him into the church, which was cold and smelled of old incense and damp wool. There was a handful of other ailing souls there, their faces pinched with the same desperate hope.

Father Monahan, a well-meaning man but one who had seen too much of hope and its fading, gave a homily about the mystery of God’s will. Then he brought out the relic, housed in a gilded monstrance, and carried it down the aisle, pausing before each of the sick, making the sign of the cross with it over their bowed heads.

He paused before Patrick. Patrick looked up, his eyes burning with a fierce, final plea. He was not asking for a miracle for its own sake; he was asking for a sign that his life of faith, his work on this very church, his love for his family, had meant something. That the universe was not just a chaos of stone and pain.

He looked at that sliver of bone, and he prayed with every fiber of his being. He waited for a warmth, a lightening, a single clean breath.

Nothing happened.

The cough rose in his chest, a harsh, racking sound that shattered the holy silence. He doubled over, his body wracked with the same old, familiar agony. Father Monahan moved on, his face a mask of pity.

I helped Patrick out of the church and into the cold air. He leaned against the very stone wall he had laid, his shoulders heaving. When he finally looked up at me, his face was wet, but it wasn’t from the wind. It was the look of a man who had seen the gears of the clockwork and found them rusted and still.

“He wasn’t there, John,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “He wasn’t in the bone. He wasn’t in the wine. He wasn’t in the words.” He laid a hand, trembling, on the cold, perfect stone. “I built this with my own two hands. I thought I was building it on faith. But I was just piling one rock on top of another.”

Patrick O’Malley died a month later. He didn’t die raging against God, mind you. That would have required a belief that God was there to hear him. He just… let go. It was as if the foundation of his soul had been made of that same hopeful faith, and when it crumbled, the whole structure came down with it.

He lost his belief not in a fiery debate, but in a quiet, cold church, with the taste of failure on his tongue. He didn’t lose his faith; it simply packed its bags and left him, and when he went to look for it, he found the room was empty. And that, y’all, is a sorrow far deeper than any anger.

*****

And, you know I couldn’t possibly neglect the obligatory shameless self-promotion. New Yesterdays, a very nice Christmas stocking stuffer, is available through the following links: Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon as well as your favorite bookshops. The Audiobook is available from Libro.fm, as well as Amazon.