POPE Emeritus Benedict XVI recently indicated he’s at peace facing death when it comes. Well, Brisbane Catholic Shanelle Bennett is too.
Having served for two years as pastoral carer at Mercy Community aged care at Nudgee, she sat with many people as they prepared for death.
As we approached the Church’s annual celebration of All Saints’ and All Souls’ days (November 1 and 2) when we pray for our loved ones who’ve died, Shanelle says it’s her own parents who’ve most influenced her attitude to death.
She said her experience accompanying the aged residents at Nudgee had enriched her faith, but her mother and father had shaped the way she felt about life and death.
“My Mum, she nearly died when she was quite young, when she was nine years old,” Shanelle said.
“In fact she did die; she clinically died, and she had one of those kind of after-death experiences, which I didn’t find out about till I was 28.
“But she spoke about this experience one day, and how euphorically peaceful she was, and she said to me, ‘I’ll never be afraid of death … ever’.
“And so I think that really affected me because my Mum was not given to emotion; she was a pragmatic, ‘say it as it is’ woman so it wasn’t like she was on some kind of emotional high or anything.
“I think that really affected me and it’s affected my children because they knew that story and they then asked her about that, and now my grandchildren know that story.
“And her apparent non-fear of death was there right to the end with her.
“It was like, ‘Oh, I’m peaceful; I know where I’m going’.”
Shanelle said it was somewhat the same with her father when he died.
“I remember saying to him – he was all of a sudden told he had nine weeks to live -– and I said, ‘Are you afraid, Dad?’,” she said.
“And he said, ‘No, I’m not. I’ve lived my faith all my life, I know I’m loved by God, I’ve had an amazing life, I’ve got you kids, great grandkids … No, I know where I’m going …’
“And so I think both of those experiences first-hand have really helped me not to be afraid of death … and my faith of course.
“My connection with God is so strong that I just think, ‘Well, I mean, when (death) comes, bring it on I guess … Let’s go, let’s do this thing …’
“But … yeah … not that I want to do it prematurely …,” Shanelle laughed as she thought about what she was saying.
“But I think I’ll be okay when it comes, but who knows? You never know how you’re going to feel about these things.”
The faith that sustains her came alive when she was a teenager, in a dramatic way that completely changed her life.
“I grew up in a Catholic family … had a pretty wild youth, I must admit, but then had a really deep experience of God in those middle teenage years …,” Shanelle said.
“Having that really deep encounter with God just changed my world, changed my life, gave me a totally different perspective.
“I think I could truthfully say I’ve just lived for the Lord all my life, and just loving other people, fulfilling all of that in my life.
“It’s been fantastic really.”
It all happened because she agreed to go with a friend to a Charismatic prayer meeting at Bardon.
“I went there ‘too cool for school’ kind of thing and wanting to guard my reputation … as a tough kid …,” she said.
“But I could not deny the kind of love and encounter that people had.
“I was just watching it and experiencing it but not giving too much away.
“So I kind of almost went incognito every Friday night to this prayer meeting but then kept meeting other young people who were experiencing it and who were on fire and were just incredibly loving.
“And I thought, ‘Man, there’s something in this thing …’ and so they offered to pray for anybody who would like to be prayed with for this encounter with the Holy Spirit, and I thought, ‘What the heck … why not?’
“So I did, not knowing what to expect and not understanding that it was anything like what I could experience, but I can tell you it was mind-blowing.
“I sat down and I simply said as they went to pray for me, ‘You know what, God, I don’t even know whether you’re real but, if you are, let me know … I’ll give you my life. If you’re real, you can have my life …’
“Well, I was just hit by the Holy Spirit and I experienced an unfathomable love.
“It was just like I knew, that I knew, that I knew that there was this God and He loved me and it was powerful, and I could’ve danced out of that place, and I couldn’t have cared less who watched me.
“I was just on fire.
“… And I think from that day on, my life was committed to Christ.
“It was just a Holy Spirit moment, really.
“But people now will say to me, ‘Oh, yeah, that was an emotional experience …’
“And I think ,’Man, it was a heck of an emotional experience; it’s been going for 54 years …’
“I mean an emotional experience doesn’t change your life forever.
“That was an encounter with the Holy Spirit that changed me forever, and from there on in I was committed to God and committed to, I think, bringing young people to know that they could have that encounter with God, that it wasn’t just going to church on Sundays or being a Catholic Christian, however you want to frame it …
“It wasn’t just about the have-to’s or a set of laws; it was about an actual encounter with a real person, (the Holy Spirit) …
“And I can truthfully say the Holy Spirit has led me through everything in my life …”
Shanelle met her husband Shayne Bennett in a church youth group during that period of her life.
They’ve been married for 45 years, have three married children and 11 grandchildren, and have been active in Church life over all those years, so much so that they’ve been honoured with the papal award Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice for service to the Church.
They’ve both been involved in youth mission and other ministries.
They brought the Catholic youth ministry NET (National Evangelisation Teams) Ministries from the United States to Australia, and helped establish it in other places like Africa and Ireland.
“That’s been our life, really … All of our kids have been involved in that, and all their married partners were involved in it, so we’re sort of a NET family …,” Shanelle said.
“And we were involved in establishing Christian Catholic communities in Asia and different parts of the world, so it’s been an interesting life.”
Shayne’s a former moderator of Brisbane’s Emmanuel Community, a role he filled for 15 years, and he and Shanelle each have been chief executive officer at NET Ministries in Australia at different times.
Shanelle, a trained counsellor, is Mercy Community’s director for mission integration, covering aged care, disability services, support for families and young people, and the Romero Centre, which works with those seeking asylum in Australia.
She misses being a carer, though, and has had to adjust to the governance role involving lots of spreadsheets, board meetings and reports.
“I miss it (being in pastoral care) a lot, I miss it a lot, I think because that’s my gift,” she said. “I became a counsellor because I’m a carer by nature, I’m a helper by nature.
“So you’ve got to translate this executive-level job into, ‘How’s this then caring? How’s this helping?’
“And it is transferrable; it’s transferrable in the sense you’ve almost come out of a frontline into that governance position and now you’ve got the opportunity to really support those who are on the frontline in the ways that you advocate for change or advocate for culture.
“It can be done but it’s not easy.”
Shanelle’s been in the role for almost three years, after having been in pastoral care in aged care with Mercy Community for two years.
She’d been offering pastoral care for academic staff at Australian Catholic University before that and had spent some time as a parole officer.
But she really cherished her time as pastoral carer among the elderly residents at Nudgee.
“I loved it, absolutely loved it,” she said.
“I loved being with the people, I loved their stories, I loved befriending them, I loved walking beside them, I loved – in listening to their stories – trying to work out what was meaningful and purposeful to them, because it’s so difficult for them at that stage, and then trying to make that happen – even if it was something as simple as ‘I love going out in the garden, but it’s hard to get out there …’
“So I’d say, ‘Well, let’s put you in a wheelchair and I’ll take you for a walk; we’ll go right through the gardens …’ It was just so unbelievably fulfilling to do that.”
Her role put her in touch with people who were in palliative care, or who were dying, and she very much treasured “the privilege of being with people in their final moments”.
“The things that they allow you into was just … it was beautiful, just beautiful …,” Shanelle said. “There were many encounters that I had through that time … that affected me.
“… People actually let you into their life in a very, very privileged and a very vulnerable moment.
“They’re facing death, they’re facing their immortality, they’re leaving this Earth, leaving everything that they know, so it can be very confronting, very scary for some.
“They’ve got a lot of questions still or they’re trying to all of a sudden scramble to get resolved to do this.
“And sometimes some people are just extremely peaceful; they’ve actually been through that process in one way or another.
“Other people avoid it to the end, literally to the end.
“They just go, ‘Nah, I’m not going there. No, I actually don’t want to speak to you about death or anything else; I’ve just got my TV set on and I’m watching TV until I die …’ And they do; they avoid it.
“And, you know what, that’s okay.
“It’s not up to us – me – to force them into that place, but to just be with them and accept them where they’re at.
“It’s about the privilege of being allowed into spaces where other people are not allowed to go. It’s a real privilege to be trusted to that point.”
Shanelle learnt that just as “everyone’s so different in life, they’re so different in approaching death”.
She said people had “amazing experiences before they die that bring them peace”.
One she remembers is John.
“He was dying and he had deep faith, and we’d had a lot of encounters talking about faith and his experience and the journey of life,” she said. “He was a bit of a character, and as he was dying he had a lot of his family and grandchildren and great-grandchildren (with him).”
He took a moment to have a chat with Shanelle on his own.
“And he said, ‘Do you think I’m going to be alright?’,” Shanelle said.
“And I said, ‘Do you mean, do you think you’re going to be alright with God when you get up there?’ And he said, ‘Well, yeah’.
“I said, ‘John, we have shared the most incredible experiences of God, faith and love … God’s not going to abandon that now ..’
“‘He loves you. You are going home to be in the arms of the God who’s loved you all your life.’
“And he said, ‘Yeah, but what about all the things that I did wrong?’
“And I said, ‘He’s not going to worry about that; He loves you … Look, you know, you’ll face your sinfulness, like everybody else, in the arms of love …’
“And he said, ‘Yeah, you reckon? Do you reckon I’ll be fine?’ And I said, ‘You’ll be great. If you can’t get through, no-one can.’”
She then called a priest to visit John for the Anointing of the Sick.
“It was just beautiful,” she said.
He died a few hours later.
