Finding forgiveness for a hired killer?

I used to worry that when I’d die, I’d end up in line at the Pearly Gates right behind someone like….. well, like Mother Teresa. St. Peter would give Mother Teresa a big hug, the trumpets would sound, the angels would gather ‘round singing “Halleluiah,” and all the saints would be there to welcome her to her Father’s House. Then St. Peter would turn to me, check his most recent computer records (on an iPad, of course) look me up and down, shrug his shoulders and hold up his hands in that universally understood gesture that says, “What am I supposed to do about her?” Then he’d be checking on the availability of rooms in Purgatory. I can only hope.

Here’s another one to worry about: Gail and Joe Sullivan have been married for 40 years. Currently Gail lives outside New York City and Joe is a guest of the New York State Penal System. When they met, Joe was a handsome young Irish Catholic boy and Gail was lovely Jewish woman from the same neighborhood. When they were married, Joe was “slightly” involved with the Mafia, sort of dancing around the edges, you might say. In the early ‘70s were married and quickly two sons. They began building a normal family life together. However, while Gail was home taking care of the boys, Joe was climbing the corporate ladder – in the Mafia. Gail explains that at that time many people considered the Mafia “a necessary evil.” In some boroughs in the 50s the Mafia kept some semblance of order in the otherwise petty-crime-ridden neighborhoods. A necessary evil of sorts.

Through these years Gail says perhaps she did keep her head in the sand and perhaps she ignored some things she should have noticed. But between 1975 and his arrest (not in a blaze of glory) in 1981, Joe was a Mafia hit man. It is thought that he killed between 30 and 40 people. He was put on trial, found guilty and sentenced to several life sentences.

Here’s the kicker: Gail has completely forgiven Joe for the life he led; she visits him weekly, buys him cigarettes and snacks out of her salary and says, simply, “I married him for better or for worse.” She raised her boys by herself (they have turned out spectacularly), has never owned a house nor a new car and worries about her financial future. (The Mafia somehow “forgot” to fund a pension plan, he has no IRA and they did not pay into Social Security for Joe).

Forgiveness is “in.” In fact, in the spiritual reading I did this Lent, I heard more about forgiveness than I did about the three things we traditionally focus on during Lent: prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

It’s not that I don’t have some forgiveness issues myself. I have so many resentments some mornings I can barely get out of bed. They range from an argument I had with the owner of a trendy ladies’ dress shop in Rathbone Village (near my house) in the 70s. He refused to take back a dress that obviously had never been worn. Then there are the resentments I have against myself. (We Irish-are good at being mad at ourselves.) I have some that go back to the 60s. That’s a 50-year-old resentment; is that some kind of record?

We are told by counselors and therapists that we forgive the people who have wronged us because it actually heals us. When we forgive, we are happier, we sleep better, we are open to new relationships, new adventures, more love. Once I heard a speaker say, “When we are angry and hold on to that anger, it is like swallowing rat poison and expecting the person who we are angry at to die.”

I took the amazing story of Gail Sullivan to my prayer group. “How could this woman forgive this man for the horrific things he had done, but more over for leaving her to raise their sons alone?” I asked. “How could she be such a good ‘Christian’ (she is Jewish, remember) to love him totally when he had not treated her very nicely?” When the Wise Women gather each Saturday morning, they can usually answer all my questions and set me on the right road. They pointed out that Joe had not done anything to Gail. He had not killed someone she loved, for example. Good point. But I think they also reminded me of the words of a prayer we say fairly often: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Come to think of it, that measurement is pretty scary. My thanks to Gail Sullivan for a reminder of what forgiveness really means.