Heavenly Lenore

A friend whom I'll call Lenore and I started in high school in 1957-58.  She moved away after freshman year, and we reconnected years later after our children were grown.  By then, she knew she was dying of cancer.  She had long periods of remission, however, during which she lived zestfully.  A group of us women friends began getting together each summer.  A year or so before she died, Lenore talked a lot about the trajectory of her life and of her conviction that she was heaven-bound.  Her optimism, it turned out, was a hard-won victory over the sense of sinfulness she had imbibed from her Catholic training, especially with regard to birth control.  

Lenore left college at nineteen to marry her high school sweetheart and followed him to an Army base in South Carolina.  Her pre-marriage preparation was taught by a nun, who advised the couples to refrain from sexual intercourse on their wedding night and instead spend the time in prayer.  Lenore's first baby came the next year, her second the year after that.  Because of an Rh factor, her doctor advised her not to get pregnant again right away.  She sought out the Army chaplain, who told her that by no means was she permitted to use artificial birth control.  Nor did he suggest any other means.  The implication was abstinence.  Lenore, young, far from home, and medically compromised, made an anguished decision to use birth control.  

Years later, looking back, she was angry at how she had been treated by leaders of the Church.  She had started to go to Mass again while wintering in Florida and to receive the sacraments.  The parish she found there seemed more humane to her.