Just as a well-lived Catholic life is unique and set apart, the same can be said of a Catholic death.
Kendra Tierney Norton knows this personally.
In 2022, after nearly 21 years of marriage, Norton’s husband, Jim Tierney, passed away from cancer. Norton and Tierney shared 10 children, the youngest being 2 years of age at the time of Tierney’s death.
Recently remarried, Norton is the founder and CEO of Catholic All Year. She described this apostolate as “dedicated to helping parents bring Catholic traditions into their homes.”
Norton shared with Our Sunday Visitor about Tierney’s passing, as well as the Catholic beliefs and traditions that supported her family, both in Tierney’s final days and during their bereavement.
Keeping vigil
Norton credits the “grace of God” for her ability to choose a different path from “our current Western culture,” which “tends toward trying to keep death private and suffering private.”
“That was … a real moment of grace for me … a nudge from the Holy Spirit,” said Norton.
She explained that, following a turn in Tierney’s health, hospice set up a hospital bed for him in a public area of their home.
Because she was uncertain about the length of Tierney’s days, Norton was reluctant to cancel a homeschooling event she was set to host at her house. So, the gathering went ahead, and families were notified of Tierney’s worsened condition.
“Instead of it just being the moms and the kids, many of the dads who were friends with Jim came along, as well,” said Norton.
One of these dads made a significant contribution.
“He grew up in a big family and he had experience with these sorts of vigils for death. And he was like, ‘Let’s just bring everybody in and say a Rosary,'” said Norton.
This resulted in people crowding around Tierney’s bed to pray. Norton recalled that this “set the tone” not to have to sneak around whispering. “We could be present in there together.”
After that experience, Norton opened her home further.
“It felt important to me to be able to share that,” said Norton. “We told people, ‘Just come in the door, and we’re going to be in this room, and you’re welcome to come and visit and spend as much time as you like.'”
This open invitation freed Norton from “any burden of scheduling things.” It also resulted in the visual memory of Tierney being surrounded by loved ones and praying in “his last days and hours.”
“People would come in and out, and they would speak to me, speak to the kids, go up and talk to Jim, and then we would say a Rosary together, and it just gave us something to do together and something that we could share. I will always be really grateful for the part that the Rosary played in the end of Jim’s life,” she said.
Norton extolled the Rosary as an especially fitting prayer for the end of life, with the “set period of time” required to pray it, as well as its definite conclusion. “If people were trying to move on, there is an ending, and they can go,” she said.
A holy death
While noting that Jesus’ death was “brutally public,” Norton understands the impulse for privacy, including wanting to shield loved ones from being seen in a “vulnerable state.”
Even so, for her family, opening to others the experience of Tierney’s dying was a blessing.
“In our case, it really was such a beautiful thing for my kids to be able to see — these are Jim’s friends, these are people who care about their dad, who care about our family, who want to support us in this really physical way, in this great time of need. Not just bringing meals over, but ‘We want to just be with you and share this burden with you.’ I think that that is a very traditionally Catholic approach.”
Being invited into someone’s final earthly days is uniquely sacred ground. It also is an intimate experience that is not common in our present culture. Those variables may explain the feedback Norton has received.
“Surprising to me is how often people who were there have thanked our family for allowing them to be part of it and that it really did feel like a sacramental death. It felt like a holy death and a happy death,” said Norton.
Public mourning
Another way Norton chose to be public in the experience of Tierney’s death was her decision to wear black for the first six months after his passing. This served as a reminder to allow herself time to grieve and to find her “place in the world again.”
“My day-to-day responsibilities hadn’t changed, but it felt like inside everything had changed and it was really helpful to me to be able to put on all black and say, ‘I am different than I used to be.'”
In this practice, Norton pointed to the sacraments as tactile expressions of inward realities. “By our nature, we are physical beings, and so I think that a physical representation of an internal reality is really helpful for ourselves,” she said.
While Norton acknowledged that for someone else, wearing black might not be helpful, that wasn’t the case for her. She noted that grieving practices such as this, or wearing an armband, were customary in “almost every culture in the world.”
Wherever public expressions of mourning were commonplace, they were cues to treat others more compassionately. “Dressing in mourning was a signal that everyone understood that this person was going through something,” she said.
Norton proposed that our society has perhaps lost most of these traditions because of an avoidance of death and grief. However, fear of death, like death itself, does not have the final word.
“If we believe what we say we believe, death isn’t something to fear,” Norton said. “We know how the story ends, and therefore that gives us a power over death.”
