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The Story of Roxy, aged 16 died of cancer 3rd May 2003

by Fr Brian Traynor CP

I was fortunate enough to be called to her bedside and anoint her a few hours before she passed on.

Roxy was proud of her South African heritage. Her family moved to Brisbane four years go after suffering extreme danger in Johannesburg.

The family understandably chose to live within an enclosed estate where security could be guaranteed, and Roxy’s father said he saw his priority as being “to look after my small family”.

Although they joined a Passionist Family Group they were not able to attend frequently, because of Roxy’s illness and the need to spend time with her. After Roxy was diagnosed with cancer eighteen months ago when much of their time was spent going to and from hospital and caring for her. She was very brave and as best she could, continued a normal life. There was great rejoicing when she was declared free of cancer last December. Unfortunately this lasted only two weeks and the aggressive cancer returned.

Roxy’s Family Group celebrates their twentieth birthday in September, so they have been together for a long time. At the suggestion of the group co-ordinators, the Family Group began to gather every Monday night for an hour of prayer. Roxy’s Mother attended one of these nights. After Roxy died it was a gift to hear her father describe how important those Monday nights. “Monday nights” he said, “were very special to us. We could not leave Roxy, but we knew you were all gathering each Monday to pray for her, and we felt very strengthened by that and grateful for it”.

He said saw the Family Group essentially as a social group that he personally did not need. Most of the adults were older than he and his wife and there were not many children Roxy and her brother Josh’s age. He enjoyed the people, but he never saw a deeper dimension to the FG until these events unfolded. He said that through Roxy’s dying and the way the Family Group had supported his family so continuously and non-intrusively, he could already feel Roxy was asking him to open up more to others. He sees this as a special gift. He and his extended family were overcome by the genuine ‘no strings attached’ love and fellowship they extended beyond themselves.

By meeting in prayer, the Family Group has drawn closer to one another around this most unlikely person, a 16 year old girl. They have also gifted her family with courage and hope. The tone of the funeral and the peace within their family despite their terrible loss had a lot to do with the Moore Family Group and its spiritual strength.

It is important to recognise that the group co-ordinators were proactive in the response the Family Group made. This enabled the, family to join them for a special home Vigil two nights after Roxy died. The funeral booklet was printed in fine colour by the Family Group and the home where they met weekly to pray, hosted a small wake after the funeral with large photographs of Roxy on display.

When I stood on the Cathedral sanctuary and looked down at the people and saw all those lovely devoted faces who were there as a Family, I felt so honoured to be able to be a part of farewelling Roxy on their behalf as much as anyone else’s. What a statement it made to see every single member of the Family Group sitting there together behind Roxy’s family!

We cannot live life in such sustained peak moments, but they do bless our endeavours and point to our deeper realities. Whatever any of those people expected when they joined their Passionist Family Group, surely they could never have expected to display or feel so united in their gift of family to Dioney, Laura, Josh and their extended family.

An extended guard of honour of one hundred and twenty Year 12 girls lined the route the coffin took from the cathedral. This was a very emotional experience. Gathered around to farewell the hearse were two families. Her natural (South African) family and her (Brisbane) ‘Moore’ family.

This is what we seek to offer everyone who belongs….’a Family for All’.

Perhaps the efforts this Family Group made, can inspire others to celebrate these profound occasions by offering spiritual, personal and practical support and recognising the deeper dimensions to our Movement. How frustrating it is to hear some people still say “it is only social”!

Brian Traynor CP

Roxy’s homily…..May 7th 2003

by Fr Brian Traynor CP

The most simple, and yet most profound secular question is “What is the meaning of life ?” Some people never stop to seriously think about this question, and others, when faced with a sadness such as the death of a very young woman like Roxy, simply suggest that there is no meaning to life at all.

If, ‘What is the purpose of life’, is the most profound secular question, what then is the most profound religious question ? ‘What do you do with your pain ?’ What sense do you make of sorrow ?

Love and sorrow are never far from each other. We grieve most for what we love most. We grieve for Roxy because we loved her greatly. This invites us to reach into the mystery of love and to embrace pain, because it is the greatest teacher of love.

It is easy to show love to another person when there is no hardship, no fear, no lack of trust, no disappointments. But this love is not yet deep. It has not yet been tested and proven. Sadly, many people seek to escape pain or escape suffering instead of welcoming it and accepting it. Only if we face and embrace pain do we begin to be transformed.

This is not something born of logic. This is the mystery of the human heart. The great mystics, those who have had profound experiences of God and written about them all say one thing in common ‘if you can understand it, it is not of God’.

Why did Roxy suffer ? Why was her life so short ? These are such obvious questions, but no matter how often you ask them, there will be no answer. Perhaps though, instead of asking such questions, we could listen to Roxy and hear and see what happened to her.

In those months of suffering she changed from a girl into a young woman. There was something different about her, not just because of her age, but because of what she was experiencing. She had already in her young years shown concern for those who suffered. She had kept the annual forty day fast for famine relief, three times.

Some of her school friends chose the song ‘True Colours’ for a prayer vigil on Sunday night because they said, “Roxy was like that; she was not a girl of pretence”. How difficult it is for a young girl in today’s world, to be like that! In the long months of her treatment for cancer, this ability to be true to herself was a vital gift. It helped her know who she truly was and how to be true to herself. She was now not just Roxy,….but Roxy who was sick and dying.

Roxy faced the pain of her cancer treatment and the likelihood of her shortened life. Although she continued to fight with hope, she accepted this pain and lived with this pain, and so she began to experience transformation.

This is something like the journey the caterpillar must make. Unless the caterpillar chooses to enter the dark and empty cocoon, it can never realise its full potential. To refuse that choice, is the die a caterpillar. To take that risk and live in the darkness, is to emerge as a butterfly.

Roxy’s father said she would often tell the family not to cry. What was she experiencing that others could not ? Jesus on his walk to Calvary also said ‘Don’t weep” “Don’t weep for me”, he said, “weep for yourselves and for your children’. This touches on our religious question. What do we do with our pain ?

If we seek only what we think makes sense, and dismiss as meaningless what we think does not make sense, what does this say of God ? All around us life speaks of the ‘law of two’ or the law of opposites. We cry when we laugh and when we are sad. We prune a bush to make it grow strong. We need the barrenness of winter in order to experience the growth in spring. We need the shadows of darkness in order to see, because pure light blinds us.

If we do not learn from what nature and all that life has to teach us, or if we are prepared to accept only what we want, and what we think makes sense, how can we ever surrender to life or hand over our lives to the God who created us and sustains us ?

The truth is, that if we choose not to give over to life and embrace its mystery, life does it to us! One religious writer suggested “God comes disguised as your own life’.

We can be tempted to seek happiness in the shallow things of life, but true joy is the sister to sorrow, and the child of true love. Life is a mixture of love and sorrow, and to avoid one, is to weaken the other.

There was a man who had a dream. He heard God speaking to him. “Press hard against the large rock”. He did not understand this until the morning. He looked out from his hut and saw a huge rock that had rolled down the hillside.

He began to push and push, but he could not move the rock. Throughout the day he had several attempts, but he could not move it. Convinced that God had spoken to him, he made a mission of this task and for weeks he spent some hours every day but he could not budge the rock.

A traveler came by and asked him what he was doing. “God told me to move this rock” he replied. The traveler laughed and said, “You must be mistaken. You will never move a rock that large”. Still the man continued his attempts to move the rock without success. Another traveler came by some weeks later and asked what he was doing.

“God told me to move this rock” he replied. The traveler scorned him and said, “Your God is stupid to ask such a thing. It is impossible. Give up”. That night the man turned to God in his prayer. “Lord, I have done what you asked, but the task is impossible and it seems you have made fun of me. The travelers have mocked me for believing that I could move the rock as you asked me to do”.

Then God spoke gently to him “My son. Look at your strong arms and legs; look at the rippling muscles in your back; look at the tanned hardness of your skin. Look at your increased strength. Look what has happened to you. You are a different man! I asked you to press against the rock and this you have done. I never told you to move it!”

We gather here today in thanks, because Roxy has completed faithfully the task God gave her to complete. It is a very different task from what her parents and her brother, her close family and friends would have wanted. There will be some travelers on her road that will say that God asked the impossible of her, or that it does not make sense. We can surely say it is better to have lived sixteen and a half years of life fully as Roxy did, than eighty years of emptiness.

In some long distance races, especially when a team member is seeking first place or trying to create a new record, one runner who is not capable of achieving those particular goal will sacrifice himself or herself and act as a pace setter. His or her job is to keep the pace of the race sufficiently fast for the team mate, and when that job is done he or she slows down or withdraws from the race. Roxy has been a pace-setter. She has shown those who have been closest to her, a way to live.

Roxy has now been transformed, and her wonderful spirit lives on in a new and profoundly present way. Her family began to experience this even while she was alive, as they saw new qualities emerge; her courage, her strength, her determination, her loyalty, her love. They are already seeing how she has invited them to a deeper understanding and a greater depth of understanding about family, love and life.

Roxy has finished the task God has given her to do. She has been the pace setter and run the good race. She has kept the faith. Now what remains for her, as St Paul wrote in the letter we read, is the life promised her and promised all of us. A transformed life in full love.

We who are left behind, especially Roxy’s loving mother Laua, and her father, Dioney who gave her life, nurtured and cared for and loved her throughout her life, her best friend and brother, Josh, and her very close family relatives and special friends, must seek comfort in Jesus’ invitation…‘Come to me all of you who labour and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest’

Some of her friends regarded Roxy an angel, a messenger from God. We can take great comfort in the words of another angel who stood by Jesus’ empty tomb. This angel said “Why do you seek the living, among the dead. He is not here. He is risen”. Roxy too is not among the dead. She shares now in the promise we all await. Life in God.

The best tribute you can pay Roxy, is not to look for her in the emptiness, but rather in your hearts, and to bravely commit yourselves to being open to the mysteries of life and embracing its joys and sorrows as she did, so as to find what she has found.

“I only asked you to push against the rock. I never asked you to move it.”