Marian Helper Winter 2015-2016

14 M arian H elper • W inter 2015-16 •  marian.org Y es, it was an old steamer trunk. Yes, it opened with a creak. And yes, within it, I found a treasure. I pulled out a eulogy, typed on brown paper and protected in a see-through sleeve, just as it was when my father handed it to me 18 years ago. I was in my attic, in April, sifting through stuff. But of course, once you come upon old contents of a chest in an attic, your mind does that heaving fun-house-mirror thing that indicates the past is paying a visit. Against my will, I was emotionally regurgitated to Philadelphia, back to June 17, 1997. My father was eulogizing his father. “Pop,” we all called him. Speaking before an assembly in St. Bernard Catholic Church, my father was a wreck. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. The sound system was tinny. But at the time, I figured I didn’t need to hear what he was saying to know what he was saying. His words seemed to fold in upon themselves in a single, dreadful echo that hurdled through an open doorway and out onto the street where they ran away like fugitives. I felt I could have easily identified those words in a line-up down at the precinct. They were bloodied and guilt-ridden. That’s what it seemed to me at the time. As I read the eulogy all these years later, I was shocked to learn my father referred to Pop as “an excel- lent provider,” “extremely generous,” a man with “a great sense of humor … and devoted to his wife.” These things were true, but so were their antithesis, which went unexamined in the eulogy. Pop could be cruel. He was an alcoholic and an unfaithful husband, and my father’s childhood was riddled with land mines. Like his father before him, my father often repeats stories, including the time when he was 8 years old and with his father down by the dam. From high above, the older boys of the neighborhood were leaping into a bull’s-eye-sized, pine-lined natural pool. My father had always wanted a dog. Every-one knew that. He had asked Santa. He had begged his parents. On this day, at that dam, his father said, “Go on up there and jump. Do it, and I’ll buy you a dog.” “Really?” my father asked in disbelief. “Yes,” his father said. My father got down to his skivvies and climbed up on the dam. He was scrawny, shivering, hugging his arms to his chest. He looked down at the water. He looked over to his father. “Jump!” his father shouted. My father closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and leapt — the single bravest thing he had ever done. When he rose to the surface, he was the happiest boy in history. He was going to get a dog. He ran to collect his clothes, and then he ran to his father. “I did it, Pop! I did it!” His father looked at him, and — here’s the punch line — he said, “You sure did. So what do you want on your dog? Ketchup or mustard?” He didn’t get the dog. He got a hot dog. I’ve heard this story my whole life. As a child, it disturbed me. Now, as a father myself, it horrifies me. Just weeks before I came across the eulogy, my father told me the hot dog story once again. He now has dementia. The short-term memory is gone. The long-term memory is intact. He told the story, but for the first time he told it for what it was. “That was the most rotten thing anyone has ever done to me,” he said. In April, in my attic, as I read the eulogy for the first time, I realized how tender, how extraordinary it was. With his father’s coffin in front of him, my father chose not to wade into the vacuum of regret and bitter- ness. When he stepped to the lectern, he left the bag- gage behind and declared asylum from past injuries and injustices. To be precise, he embraced the true freedom found in forgiveness. He chose to praise the man who raised him as “an excellent provider” and “extremely generous” and who had “a great sense of humor” because his father was that man, too. “Any ill feelings should be buried here today,” my father said. “He was ‘Pop’ — a very simple and sensitive man.” The eulogy remains tucked away in my steamer trunk. Mercy is my treasured inheritance. Felix Carroll is the executive editor of Marian Helper magazine. F amily matters — the story of a son TREASURE IN A CHEST By Felix Carroll MH