Died alone

The anguish persisted.

The deaths came with speed and magnitude. As painful as they were, they were delivered on an aging community in which the end is spoken about with comfort borne in their belief that eternal salvation awaits. For women whose lives are steeped in tradition and faith, the losses themselves were dwarfed by the agony of not being able to make good on their long-held promise: No one dies alone.

As the end neared again and again, they couldn’t surround their sister, grasping her as they recited the Hail Mary, its final words pregnant in the weight of the moment: “Now and at the hour of our death.”

Sister Mary Martinez Rozek, who taught English to immigrants. Sister Mary Madeleine Dolan, stirred by two disabled siblings to become a special education teacher. Sister Mary Danatha Suchyta, the brilliant student who entered the convent as a seventh-grader and rose to become a university president.

And then finally, it seemed, after 13 were killed in Livonia, maybe the worst was past.

As some convents remained locked down, the Greensburg sisters were able to maintain a semblance of normalcy in their small convent, walled off from most visitors but finding joy in their rhythms of gathering for meals and for the daily bookends of religious life — morning and evening prayers.

For all the darkness that had entered the sisters’ world, summer brought glimpses of light.

On the porch, Labik hung a basket overflowing with purple flowers, and filled planters with daisies, impatiens and begonias, and when July 4 came, she twirled sparklers. In the living room, she came to relish the game shows other sisters introduced her to, and in the kitchen, her voice would drip with tongue-in-cheek judgment in an ongoing debate on hazelnut coffee vs. traditional roast.

“Lot of nuts around here,” Labik would say.

As fall came, there was even room for a party. Labik was pinned with a corsage of white roses to mark her 60th anniversary in the convent, and after Mass, there was a dinner in her honor. Glasses were full, smiles were wide, and Labik ordered chicken romano, her favorite, surrounded by her sisters.

It was the last time they’d all celebrate together.