In the months following my father’s death, a new friend came unexpectedly onto my horizon. His name was Michael Murray, and he was a regular reader of my newspaper column who one day took the time to send an e-mail commenting on one of my pieces.
His words reflected an intelligence and sensitivity I admired. I wrote back, and soon we were corresponding. I liked him right away. He was smart and thoughtful; funny and self-deprecating; direct and plainspoken. Only gradually did I figure out that my new e-mail pal was a Roman Catholic priest. He did not hide his religious faith, but he did not wear it on his sleeve, either. He insisted I skip the “Father” business and just call him Michael. I was so comfortable being candid with him that sometimes I had to remind myself I was talking with a clergyman.
He was a fan of what I did for a living, of using words to reach out to the larger community. As he put it in one e-mail, “Just remember: Jesus’s favorite and most frequent way of teaching was telling stories. Is it any surprise that as things have come and gone with the passage of time, storytelling remains? It is part and parcel of what makes us human—and puts us in touch with our humanity.” He called writing my “ministry” and added, “In your own way, John, you are doing God’s work.”
One day in May we met at a pub near my office for bratwursts and beer. Michael was my age, broad-shouldered and bearded, a guy’s guy who looked more likely to be running a lumber mill
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than a retreat center. His father had died six years earlier, and his mother now lived alone on the family homestead. He was trying to balance his vocation with his care for her. Trying to be a good son but feeling guilty that his best was not quite enough.
We had a lot to talk about.
As I drove home afterward, I had to laugh. Was Dad meddling again? It seemed oddly coincidental that this likeable, nonjudg-mental, wise priest had just happened to pop into my life. I enjoyed the image of Dad somewhere in a cloud-ensconced heaven, white robes flowing just like in the cartoons, hard at work to find the perfect moral adviser to parachute into my life. I could almost hear him ruminating: “That John’s a piece of work. Whoever I send can’t be too conservative; can’t be preachy; can’t be overly dogmatic or holier than thou; can’t come on too strong. Has to be a regular kind of guy. Someone who can curse a little and enjoy beer. Should be about his age, too. Hmmm, let’s see. Ah, what do we have here? Father Michael Murray at the Oblates of Saint Francis de Sales down in Wilmington. A little liberal for my taste, but John would like that. This looks like a good fit.” I found something comforting in the fantasy of my father busy at the switch, minding the details, like the Wizard of Oz furiously working the levers behind the giant curtain.
Summer turned to fall and fall to winter. As Christmas neared, I brought home a tree and strung lights. But mostly I thought about how to mark the first anniversary of my father’s death. I couldn’t visit his grave; it was three states away. I couldn’t get together with my siblings or my mother; we were scattered across an even wider swath of geography. I didn’t want to drag Jenny and the kids through some kind of schmaltzy family ceremony.
Maybe I would just take a hike in the woods, like I did so often with him as a kid.
On December 22, I wrote Father Michael a brief e-mail: “To-
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morrow’s the anniversary of my dad’s death. I’d appreciate you keeping him in your prayers.” Over his lifetime, Dad had spent a fortune making prayer offerings for others; I knew if anyone would appreciate having a priest say a prayer for him, it was Dad. A few minutes later came Michael’s response: “I’ll do your dad one better. I’ll say Mass for him. And for you. Merry Christmas, John.” Why this meant so much to me I still do not know.
I had spent a lifetime avoiding Mass, ridiculing it, daydreaming through it, trying to get out of it at every turn. Yet Michael’s gesture touched me deeply. In my reply, I thanked him and added this postscript: “Who knows, this prodigal son just might get up a little early tomorrow and stop by a church on the way to work.”
The next morning I did exactly that. Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church was just down the hill from my house, but in five years I had never once walked through its doors. I arrived as the nuns were shepherding in scores of exuberant students from the parish elementary school, positioning them in the pews with a full arm’s length between each child to discourage horseplay. It was the last day of school before their Christmas break, and the kids bubbled with excitement. The girls wore blue plaid jumpers with knee socks and the boys dress shirts with navy ties and slacks, just as we had back at Our Lady of Refuge. Some things did not change.
The altar was decorated with a life-size crèche scene and scores of potted poinsettias, another throwback to my past, and the altar servers wore the same ill-fitting, wax-spattered cassocks. I slipped into the empty back row, not quite sure why I had come or whether I would stay. Out of habit, I knelt and crossed myself. As kids, we were taught to say a silent prayer as we waited for the Mass to start, but no prayers came to me, and I spent the time watching the children fidgeting in the pews, thinking it was an experience my own children had never known.
The organist launched into a hymn, signaling us that the priest and altar servers—boys and girls now—had begun their way up the center aisle. Father was a tall, graying man with a
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folksy manner. He was good with the kids, and geared the liturgy to them. During his sermon, he walked up and down the aisle, talking to them about the true meaning of Christmas and coaxing them into a dialogue. During the Offertory, a boy and girl nervously carried the vessels of wine and communion wafers down the aisle, and I remembered the thrill of being picked for that special task—the excitement tinged with terror over the imminent possibility of stumbling and sending the sacraments flying.
After the priest consecrated the hosts and wine, it was time for the kiss of peace, that part of the Mass where congregants are encouraged to turn to those around them and offer a greeting. I had always dreaded the stilted handshakes and forced pleasantries with strangers, and I was grateful that I was sitting alone in the last row. I watched as the children exchanged gleeful greet-ings, their one opportunity to bridge the dead zones between them and touch. Three pews in front of me, a freckle-faced girl about nine greeted the children on either side of her. Then she turned around and smiled at me. I nodded at her, and she knelt on the seat and stretched far over the back of the pew, so far I thought she might tumble into the empty row behind her. She extended her arm out to me. It took me a second to realize she wanted to shake my hand. I reached forward over the empty pew in front of me and met her halfway, letting her hand slip into mine. “Peace of the Lord be with you,” I mumbled woodenly, the words that had been drilled into me decades earlier.
“Merry Christmas, mister,” the little girl said. And her face and voice and bright eyes were filled with such innocence, such beauty and wonderment and unbridled joy, I could not help but feel a rush of holiday warmth. For just a moment I wanted to scoop her up and hug her.
“Merry Christmas,” I said.
The children filed to the altar for Holy Communion, and when it was my turn I filed up behind them. Except for the wafer I had accepted at my father’s funeral Mass, it was the first time
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I had received the sacrament in many, many years. I knew I was no doubt violating some ironclad Church rule—I had not been to confession in decades—but I didn’t care. It was the anniversary of my father’s death and something I wanted to do, for reasons I could not quite pinpoint. As I made my way back to the pew, the organist began “Silent Night,” and all the children sang along in their squeaky sweet voices. I flashed back to my father’s deathbed and the hospital carolers who had gathered in the doorway. In my pew, I knelt and rested my face in my cupped hands. I closed my eyes and let the music carry me to a serene a
nd safe place.
“Hey, Dad,” I whispered. “Bet you didn’t think you’d find me here, huh?” It had been a year; there was much to catch him up on. I told him about the kids and how fast they were growing up. “You should hear Patrick on the trumpet,” I said. “He’s really getting the hang of it. And Conor’s quite the little writer now.
The teacher asks for ten sentences; he turns in ten pages. You wouldn’t even recognize Colleen; she’s a foot taller than when you saw her last and reading chapter books now.”
I told him about my own book, the one he had known about but never gotten the chance to read. “It’s on the bestseller list, Dad, and each week it moves a little higher. I know how proud you’d be.” I told him how Mom was doing and how Michael was getting along alone at the house. “You’re not going to believe this, but he’s mastered both the lawn mower and the snowblower.” I assured him the Buick was still going strong, and we’d gotten the gutters cleaned out before the first freeze. I told him how much everyone missed him. “I can’t believe a whole year has gone by,”
I said.
From somewhere far outside our private conversation I heard the priest’s voice boom out: “The Mass is over. Now go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” Then everyone was singing “Joy to the World,” and I could hear the squealing, happy children filing out past me. That’s when I realized I was crying. I was not sure for how long or why. Maybe it was the children’s sweet angel voices
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or the season’s celebration of birth and how for me it would now always be tinged with loss as well. Maybe it was the girl who offered me her hand, and with it a reminder of all life’s promises and broken dreams. I had fought back tears at the hospital a year earlier and again at the funeral, but nothing like this. I was a mess, a snot-nosed, blubbering mess. I kept my head down and let the tears soak my sweater sleeve. “For Christ’s sake, John,”
I whispered. “You’re acting like Mom.” Now I could see more clearly why she cried her eyes out each time she received the Eucharist. Part of it, no doubt, was her belief that she quite literally was taking Christ’s body into her own, but maybe another part was that it helped her feel closer to those she had loved and lost.
Maybe it was her portal into a place where she could commune with her parents and lost siblings and the infant daughter she would never hold. I thought of the lay definition of communion: the sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings, especially on a mental or spiritual level. Maybe that was what all her tears were about.
When I looked up, the church was empty and silent again. I wiped my face on my sleeve and told Dad to take it easy and not worry too much about the rest of us left behind. “We’re going to be okay, Dad,” I said, and I knew we would. I knew I would. It was my life, for better or worse. He had laid the groundwork; the rest was up to me. The only expectations I had to meet now were my own.
I walked out into the wan December sunlight, the cold morning air a welcome slap to my face. Rummaging through my pockets, I found a tissue and gave my nose a good blow. Then I started the car and drove off to begin a new day.
Epilogue
o
At the front desk I signed in, then made my way down the polished linoleum floors to the last door on the right. To the corner suite we had briefly, hopefully, considered the place where my mother and father could live out their days together, and where Mom now stayed alone. Peering in the door, I spotted her cane against the couch, but her wheelchair was gone and so was she.
At the nurses’ station, I said, “I’m Ruth Grogan’s son. Is she around?” It was a ridiculous question. This was a nursing home.
Of course she was around. All the patients were always around.
“Ruth’s at Mass right now,” the nurse said and pointed toward the chapel.
I walked down the hall past a row of wizened women lined up along one wall in their wheelchairs. A few looked up at me; most stared at the floor. One called out, “Take me with you.”
At the chapel entrance, I peered through the glass doors to see an ancient priest, himself a resident, saying Mass before a handful of nuns and about three dozen women in wheelchairs.
From behind, the residents all looked alike—crowns of fine white
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hair bowed between slumped shoulders. At first I thought their heads were lowered in prayer but quickly realized every one of them was sound asleep. Among them, I spotted Mom, a sweater over her shoulders, her chin resting on her chest, eyes closed.
“Wake up, Ruthie,” I whispered, sidling up beside her and kissing her on top of the head. “It’s your number three son.”
Her eyes opened and she smiled up at me with wonderment as if she were seeing me for the first time, even though I had visited the previous evening with Jenny and the children. After a few seconds, a glimmer of recognition spread across her face. “Oh, hi, John,” she whispered.
I sank down on one knee and rubbed her shoulders, looking up at Father as he soldiered through the profession of faith for the sleeping residents. When I looked back, Mom’s eyes were closed again, too. At communion, the priest walked down the rows of wheelchairs, waking each resident long enough to press a wheat wafer on her tongue. Mom opened her mouth without opening her eyes and murmered, “Amen.” The instant the host was inside her, she pressed a fist to her heart and began moving her lips in silent prayer, even though she still appeared asleep. Some things were not easily lost.
After Mass, I wheeled her into the courtyard, where she tilted her head toward the sun and smiled. Deep furrows crossed her face now, and her hair was as snowy as an egret, but it was a child’s face basking in the warmth, lost in innocence. She began to hum and then sing, her fingers dancing on an imaginary key-board. It was a song I had never heard before, a children’s ditty about a brash child swallowed by an alligator she thought she could tame. Mom had no idea what she had eaten for breakfast that morning or why I had miraculously materialized beside her at Mass, but she reeled effortlessly through the stanzas, not missing a beat.
“Where did you learn that?” I asked.
“Girl Scouts,” she said.
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“Girl Scouts?” I exclaimed with a laugh. “That was eighty years ago! It’s about time you got around to singing it to me.”
That was all the invitation she needed to sing it all over again.
I wheeled her back to her room and positioned her in front of the window where she could look out on the lawn and gardens.
“I’ll be back this evening with Jenny and the kids,” I told her.
“We’re here all week.”
“I’ll count on it, dear,” she said, but I knew better.
“Love you, Mom,” I said, pressing my lips to her temple.
“Love you, too, sweetheart,” Mom said. Then she added something I was not expecting.
“Once they leave home, that’s it,” she said. “They come back to visit, but it’s never the same.”
I wanted to protest, but she was right. It never is. It never was.
Outside on the sidewalk, I glanced back through the window where I had left her. She was gazing up at something far away as if her eyes had locked on an airplane or flock of geese in the distant sky. I waved and caught her eye, and she flashed me the same startled look of pleasant surprise she had given me in the chapel.
“Aw, Mom,” I whispered.
She blew me a kiss, and I blew her one, too.
Acknowledgments
o
Writing is a solitary act, and yet a book like this one cannot happen without the help and support of many people.
I would like to start by thanking my literary agent, Laurie Abkemeier, for the indispensable role she played in developing this story from a seed of an idea to a finished manuscript. She served as my sounding board, brainstorming partner, cheerleader, therapist, and first line reader and editor, and her sugges-tions proved invaluab
le. I owe a big debt of gratitude to my entire publishing team at William Morrow for believing in this book and making it a reality, including Michael Morrison, Lisa Gallagher, Lynn Grady, Seale Ballenger, Michael Brennan, Jennifer Schul-kind, Ben Bruton, and especially my editor, Mauro DiPreta.
I want to thank Anna Quindlen, Doris Kearns Goodwin,
Brian DeFiore, Jim Tolpin, Dan Sullivan, JoAnn Burke, Susan and Peter Brown, and Sara and Dave Pandl for their listening ears, encouraging words, and wise counsel. Ray Albertson took a dilapidated shack and turned it into a beautiful writing studio for me that exceeded my wildest dreams. Nice work, Ray! Thanks
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also are due to Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in whose elegant Linderman Library I wrote much of this book while my studio was under construction.
My siblings, Marijo Grogan, Timothy Grogan, and Michael Grogan, trusted me to tell this story accurately, honestly, and sensitively, even while recognizing that each of us sees our shared past through a unique prism; I appreciate the faith they put in me. My siblings also helped me reconstruct many of the scenes in this book, sharing their own insights and memories, and Michael dedicated hours to helping me find and catalog a half century of family photographs, movies, memorabilia, and documents. My mother, Ruth Marie Howard Grogan, even in advanced age, continues to inspire me with her wit, spirit, and boundless sense of humor, and her lifelong gift of storytelling is reflected in these pages. My late father, Richard, remains a strong presence in my life, guiding me by his past example, and I often find myself asking the W.W.D.D. question—what would Dad do? My eternal debt of gratitude to both my parents for a happy childhood, and for a love so deep and unconditional it defines the word.