November 13   Sister Nicholas Hinkes   1966.   Age 93

This is what greeted me yesterday morning as I looked at our Congregational “Pilgrim Book” which lists birthdays, feast days and death anniversaries of our Sisters. I know that I always smile a bit each November 13, noting Sister Nicholas’ death anniversary.  We had a ‘history’.

During my two years of initial formation before my novitiate, each Sunday afternoon (weather permitting) we postulants and candidates went over to St. Joseph’s Hall, our “infirmary” with an assignment. Janet Griffin and I were assigned to Sister Nicholas.  We helped her into her wheelchair and made our way outside. Janet and I wheeled Sister Nicholas over to our beautiful Lourdes Grotto with its flowerbed of roses nearby. We often walked the path of the outdoor Stations of the Cross.  After an hour or so each Sunday, we would make our way with Sister back to her room.

Sister was an amputee and her getting into a wheelchair with only one leg took some maneuvering. I remember Sister’s eyes big with apprehension while Janet and I helped her into her wheelchair, and until she was carefully, safely seated.

What did we talk about? I don’t remember. I do know that neither Janet nor I ever asked her about her earlier life, ministry, community experiences, or the family she left in Germany.  As I looked at her notice yesterday morning, I realized that she knew Mother St. Andrew, was just a young woman in her late 20s when Mother St. Andrew came home from her patriarchally imposed exile. Oh, how I wish I had asked her for stories about Mother St. Andrew!  It is a regret that won’t go away.

There is another reason I smile and it is in recognition of and gratitude for the intentional intergenerational relationships these Sunday afternoons provided.  I am reminded of a workshop I attended some years ago when the speaker asked us to share the first time we ever went into a nursing home. I told the group it was when I was in my 40s and my parents were moving from their home into a nursing home. But I had to correct myself.  I remembered Sister Nicholas. I remembered the times we Junior Sisters took our hour keeping vigil with dying Sisters. “Wait,” I told the workshop speaker. “My first visit to a nursing home was when I was a teenager.  It was at our convent, but I didn’t think of it as a nursing home because it was home; it was part of our convent home. The Sisters were part of our home.”