Which Door Fall 1995

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Barnadette has died from cancer at the age of forty-seven leaving two girls, aged seven and ten. I have just returned from her farewell. Those of us that loved her held her as she prepared for death. We watched the coffin being lowered into the earth. We dug up the soil and filled up her grave.

"Farewell beloved, sleep and take your rest.

Lay down your head, upon your Saviour's breast.

We love you well, but Jesus loves you best.

Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight."

This article is about why I have chosen so far to be a virgin.

My beautiful friend with sparkling eyes and pink cheeks is in her grave. Her body that was once glowing and warm is now ghost-white and cold. Her soft fleshy limbs are gaunt and thin. Worms and maggots will feed from her body. She will decompose like compost. She will stink.

In less than two weeks I will celebrate my thirty-second birthday, but I have not yet met the person with whom I want to have intercourse.

What solace that her soul lives on? Who cares if her spirit has wafted away somewhere? What comfort is that? I loved her body too. I loved her bones. Her husband has kissed her skin all over. Her children have sucked her breasts. How can that beautiful body be turning into earth?

My reason for being a virgin has nothing to do with the church's teaching on sexual ethics, with which I mostly disagree.

"As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot" (John 20:11-12, NIV).

It is more to do with the sense that my body and my soul are one. To try to separate them, to force my body to go where my heart is not, is to choose the path of death rather than life.

"Jesus came and stood among them and said: 'Peace ...

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