Any Ordinary Day

by Leigh Sales

There’s another long pause. There is nothing hurried about Father Steve. When I listen to the recording of our conversation, it’s peppered with pauses of five to ten seconds – very long silences when you think of a regular chat. But Steve is entirely comfortable with sitting silently. It alarms me at first, but after a while it’s quite pleasant to sit together without saying anything, restful to not have to rush to think of what to say next.

‘Leigh,’ he says, ‘when I was a young priest, one of the Jesuits who was a very flawed human being but still a mentor, he said people are often afraid to visit someone in hospital. But he said, it’s not about you, it’s about them, forget about you. It doesn’t matter what I say or do, it’s not about me. It’s about that person. And so, you know, if you’re inadequate, you say the wrong thing, so what? If they have a go at you, so what? Fine. Just be there. It’s them that’s the focus. I don’t have a pathway or a lifeline, I just believe in people.

For once, Steve doesn’t pause. ‘I wish I wasn’t such a coward. All my life, still I’m a coward,’ he says. There follows the longest silence of our conversation. It