Another thing to anticipate in 97 is Mother Teresa dying. I can t see her making it through another year.
There was a photo-call for her doctors after one of her 96 crises had passed in which eleven lined up, all smiling with a sense of accomplishment. There was a heart specialist, a liver expert, a neurologist, an anaesthetist and so on and on. A couple of them had been flown in specially from the US.
How strange, let us note again, all this state-of-the-art horrendously expensive medical attention being provided for a woman who won t have anything as high-falutin as X-rays made available for people in her dying rooms, on the grounds that physical pain and physical death matters not at all when compared with the safety of the eternal soul.
In 1996, she had round-the-clock attention from a multi-disciplinary team with enough medical equipment to furnish a spacecraft.
They died in straw cots with a prayer and an aspirin in a cloudy glass of water.
Every newspaper and TV and radio news programme in the land has a special prepared for the moment that the old Albanian shuffles off. Each of them will refer to her as having been a living saint . It seems that preparations are already in train for her canonisation.
So why does she shrink back from the beatific vision every time it begins to form before her?
Aa-rr-gh! she gurgles, and twitches her bony fingers to summon the rescue team.
Could it be that Mother Teresa is having doubts? It happens to many believers. When they are on the very brink of being transported onto a higher plane of inexpressible happiness it suddenly occurs to them that maybe they re wrong . . . maybe there s nothing on the other side, this is the only life they ll ever have to live . . .
And they shrink back from on-rushing nothingness to savour for a little longer the sweetness of living.
Mother Teresa s continuing life testifies to the non-existence of god. Still can t see her making it through 97, though.