Two countries, two days, one death...
Around 4am, on July 31, 2004, my brother Sean called me from Ireland. My father had taken, as they say, a turn for the worse. He and my mother had gone to Ireland on a long-awaited, well-deserved vacation. They were both fine when they left, but during that last week of July, my father got sick and ended up in the hospital and needed surgery. Sean went over to help them. At first, things seemed dire, Dad needed surgery, the surgery didn’t go as well as they’d hoped, then things seemed a bit better, then worse, then better. It was up and down all week.
On Friday (the 30th), my dad really rallied. I even got to speak with him on the phone. He sounded great. He’d made a new friend, an African priest who was the chaplain at the hospital in Letterkenny. My aunt Catherine told me a few years later that when she went to visit Dad in the hospital that day, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, smiling and laughing, telling stories, thanking everyone for all they’d done. I went to bed that night thinking, “Thank God, they’ll all be home soon.”
The call the next morning made it clear that while all three of them would be coming home, it would not be a happy homecoming. Sean and I spoke briefly then he put my mom on the phone. She was a nurse, as am I. We both knew what was up. It would take a miracle for him to survive. There was nothing to do now except pray and call my siblings to let them know. And so, that is what I did.
I remember being in my old room at my parents’ house, where I was staying while fixing up the house I’d just bought. The sun was rising. Birds were singing. Eventually, I got out of bed and went downstairs to make some tea. There really wasn’t much I could do at 4am. It was too early to call the rest of the family, but it wasn’t as if I was going back to sleep, so I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and the phone book, waiting for 8am, which seemed an “early but not too early” time to start calling the family.
Making those phone calls was awful, absolutely awful. We have a big family and my parents had lots of friends. I probably ended up calling 20 or 30 different people to share the news. I knew my parents would both want the prayers and I didn’t want people—especially my dad’s siblings and his closest friends—to hear this terrible news via the grapevine.
A few hours later people started showing up, making tea, sandwiches, chatting, trying to help. The house filled up with stories and food and drinks and prayers and people.
I was sitting at the kitchen table when Sean called again. It was around 8pm or 830pm our time, so 1am-1:30am Irish time. I stood up and went out to the back deck because the house was so loud and I knew what Sean was going to say and I knew I couldn’t hear those words with a roomful of people looking at me. It was pouring rain.
My father had “gone to God.” It was July 31, 2004 in America and August 1, 2004 in Ireland. This is still a strange thing to me because, in my mind and memory, today is the day of his death and yet, officially, it’s tomorrow. I still don’t understand this. I know it is real, but it makes no sense to me.
While I believe my father is in heaven, with the One who “moves the sun and all the stars,” (and seriously, he was a really good and holy man, so if he isn’t in heaven, the rest of us don’t stand a chance!), please pray for the repose of his soul. Go to WaWa, buy a cup of coffee; go to a diner and leave a good tip; go to Holy Hour and fall asleep; if you fix something or hang a picture up on the wall, just eyeball it; smoke a cheap cigar on the porch; love your family and friends; and, as my father always said, “thanks for talking to me.”