In The Name Of My Father Chapters: 9 & 10
A meeting with Dr. Stafford:
“Hello Ailsa. It’s Dr. Stafford here. We met last week when your father was admitted to hospital.”
“Dr. Stafford…yes, I do remember. How are you?”
“I’m very well thanks Ailsa, as I hope you are too. I was wondering if you had any plans to visit your father today?”
“I hadn’t, but I can be there very soon…if you need me!”
“I just want to discuss his condition with you. We’ve run some tests that highlight why he may have had the fall.”
“And they’re not so good?”
“‘Look, why don’t we meet over a coffee? There’s a very nice café on the precinct called Attica. I could meet you there in say, half an hour. How does that sound?”
“Perfect.”
“Do you need directions?”
“No. I know exactly where it is. Good coffee helps when you need some support. See you soon,” and with that she dialed her mother.
“Mom I just wanted you to know I had a call from one of the hospital specialists, Dr. Stafford. He wants to discuss Dad’s situation…was wondering if you would like to be there?”
There was a brief pause, her mother’s well-practiced response, this time only momentary, after which Helen answered, “Of course.”
“Then I’ll pop over in ten minutes and pick you up. Have a feeling the news isn’t good.”
There was absolutely no way that Helen would not have gone with her daughter. If John was seriously sick she needed to play her part. He WAS the father of her children…as far as they were concerned! She carefully removed a tear from her eye, and braced herself for what was to come.
“So the thing is,” Dr. Stafford began, “John’s been having some dizzy spells, and we think his tripping at home is not entirely due to the hoarding issue you spoke of Ailsa, though it may have contributed. We’ve done a whole gamut of tests on him, and it’s clear he has some problems with muscle weakness and coordination. One side of his body seems to be impacted more than the other. He’s also complaining of headaches and an inability to sleep.”
“There’s a good chance he knew a long time ago that something wasn’t right,” Ailsa sighed, “but it’s the nature of the beast to be at loggerheads with his own reality.”
“Males tend to be in denial! The attitude of ignore it and it will go away, prevails,” he answered.
“I can tell you now, Dr. Stafford,” Helen interrupted, “he’s probably put up with this for a long time. It is, as Ailsa said, the nature of the beast I’m afraid. He’s just not someone to go to a doctor unless he’s doubled up in excruciating pain…which simply put, means he avoids them at all costs.”
“I’m not surprised. He’s a tough nut to crack, but I’m working on him. We’ve had a few interesting conversations so far. Let’s all try to think positively, at least until it’s proven otherwise. This afternoon I should have the last of the results and then we make decision as to what to do. I just wanted to prepare you for things.”
“Don’t think you can offer him some treatment and he will jump aboard. Whatever you find, if it is a tumor, chemo won’t be an option. Dad’s done a lot of reading on the subject, and I could be proven wrong, but he’s always said that he’d let nature take its course,” Ailsa said flatly.
“I can assure you there will be no coercion, Ailsa. I can’t obviously comment on his opinions, but even if it turns out to be something malignant, it still depends on the size, the type and the location. I’m not an oncologist but I know we can do wonderful things to prolong life.”
“Well, whether you can or can’t, prepare yourself to do battle. He’s a bit set in his ways. Whatever you say, he will come back with a counter argument. That’s my Dad!” said Ailsa smiling bravely.
“‘MY DAD’…if only,” Helen thought, “if only I’d had the courage to be honest.” There were so many stories she’d used in the past to get out of sticky situations, so much on-the-spot fabrication, such a wealth of untruths that she had lost track of most of them. How many people had found her out, the ones who noticed that her stories sometimes didn’t quite match up? Probably more than she cared to think about!
‘My goodness, your two children couldn’t be more different!’ a new friend remarked one day. And ‘Isn’t Ailsa so tall and dark!’ and another, ‘Are you’re sure you took the right babies home…such different coloring and personalities’, all said jokingly of course, and Helen would garble on about recessive genes, and her great-uncle so and so…all blatant lies, untruths that more than likely fooled nobody.
She could easily have laughed things off. There was no malice in the comments, and many people have children who look dissimilar, but lies had always been her first line of defense.
The comments had always left her feeling exposed, wondering when the time would come, as it surely would, when they would lay open her deceit.
She remembered a quote she’d once read that talked about truth being like surgery. It hurts at the time, but it cures everything. Lies are like painkillers which give instant relief, but come with some nasty side effects.
How many had she told over the years, and how much had they eaten at her confidence? Consequently she had trained her children to be purveyors of truth, always explaining her reasons. “Lies will backfire on you,” she’d say, or, “the only way to remember the truth is to TELL the truth. Never forget that.” No way did she want either of them to go through life, burdened with the cross of deception, as she now was.
“Mom?”
She realized that her mind had trailed off to many years past, and that she had missed much of the conversation, except for the word. Glioblastoma! It had found its way to somewhere in her subconscious.
“If it is that, then…look…it’s not definitive, so let’s just wait and see. There’s certainly a mass that needs to be investigated. I really just wanted to prepare you for what might not be such good news. Thank you so much for coming.”
“It was very kind of you Dr. Stafford. Ailsa and I really appreciate your time and as you say, it’s probably best to wait until we are sure,” Helen replied. “Thank you for taking the time to meet with us,” and so, shaking hands, they left.
Chapter ten: Alistair’s Reality
Weeks passed and Alistair found that work demands gradually allowed him to put loneliness aside. Book Week, the annual celebration of reading and writing, was on the next week at the parish primary school and he had been asked to adjudicate the children’s costumes, which meant that he had to fast acquaint himself with the latest in kids’ books and movies. Was he really only twenty-eight? Amazing how creative some authors had become since HIS school days!
And a fun-filled day it was. He enjoyed it as much as the children did, and was delighted when a small child asked:
“Why aren’t you dressed up?”
“Oh but I am,” he answered speedily. “I’m the priest with the dirty clothes! AND, I even have the book to prove it,” he said wickedly, flicking it from behind his back.
“But your clothes don’t look dirty to me. When my brother’s clothes are dirty they look really yucky.”
“And that’s why priests have dark clothes,” he answered quickly. “You don’t see the dirt so easily.”
How good that he had managed the question.
Still, the quieter times continued to be tough, the nights when his ghosts hovered, and intense loneliness claimed his sanity, always depriving him of rest, and in those wakeful hours his thoughts almost always turned to Helen.
He tried his best, but his mind refused to let her go. Quick-witted and fun, she was interested in people, and had an amazing appreciation of the many things wrong with the world, ones she clearly was intent on correcting. Unapologetically herself, she exuded confidence, charisma and character. So many qualities don’t come together often, but when they do, could they be construed as a message from above, he wondered?
He hadn’t gone out searching for a soul mate, but now that he’d found her, a line of a John Lennon song rang loudly in his head. ‘There’s nowhere you can be, that isn’t where you’re meant to be’.
He realized she was everything he had ever wanted, a longing, a need that manifested itself as a constant physical pain in his chest, became his day-to-day companion. To see her again, just to sit and to talk awhile, was a yearning that hovered, and took wings in the night.
So how could that be so bad?
In his less needy moments he wondered if he was attracted to someone he simply couldn’t have, and that the more he resisted, the more he was reminded of his pledge to God, and the more determined she seemed to stay as his Eve, his constant, nagging, temptress.
Alistair was now beginning to see celibacy as a destructive bedfellow that came along with a couple of determined friends, abject loneliness, and temptation, neither of which could be denied. Now he concluded that the oath he had taken so easily was neither right, nor natural, and was more of an imposition designed to promote loneliness.
Had Christ demanded celibacy, he wondered?
Why was he even posing the questioning?
He already knew. Many of Christ’s apostles had been married men, and they sure as hell were not imprisoned in this ecclesiastical brotherhood that mandated an unnatural abstinence from intimacy, a brotherhood that saw love as evil, and abstinence as pure God-given joy.
This led him to reflect on the unfairness of Church rules.
For those fortunate enough to have their vocations later in life, things were so different. These ‘late vocations’ were often men who had divorced or had lost their partners. Sure, they took their vows just as he had, they embraced a life of ministry, just as he had, but their situations were so very different.
Many of them had raised their children and they in turn had often delivered grandchildren. What amazing happiness was theirs for the taking…such a different story, a rich contract, not just between themselves and God, but one that happily included family.
That would not be his to savor. That barren, poverty-stricken prospect of his future tore at him with a vengeance that he was ill-prepared for, and with reality now biting, fear became his constant worry. No love, no intimacy…he could no longer justify the oath he had taken so recently, and with such pride.
What he was now regretting had little to do with physical love, but everything to do with being mentally at one with someone, and the deep intimacy of sharing.
What books tell you about the sacredness of the priesthood, matters little, he told himself. Words on a page are totally unhelpful when your mind is ablaze with doubt, and your heart assures you that all you have done in taking your vows, is repressed the natural instincts of what it is to be human…especially when you are convinced that the love of two people can be nothing less than a veritable incarnation of heaven.
How can two points of view be so conflicted?
He concluded that there was nothing to look forward to in repressing an urge that was as natural as breathing. Where would it eventually sit with years of being witness to the happy glow of couples in love, of celebrating their marriages, and the subsequent birth of their children?
How many times would he weep for what he could never have? And how often would the celebration of marriage remind him of the vow he had taken, the one that would effectively deny him the same happiness of the couples he blessed?
Sadness enveloped him, and he thought about the times he had been invited by well-meaning parishioners to family celebrations. Well-meaning indeed, but he wondered had they ever considered the effect these might have had on him, when everyone went home, and he returned ‘home’ alone?
Homes are sanctuaries. Homes are places where people feel secure and loved, shelters where differences can comfortably be shared and aired, where memories are created, and where laughter punctuates experiences.
Hearts are the very cornerstone of such homes.
By contrast, homes for priests are soulless, lifeless places where there is no one to reach out to, structures that are little more than shelter, where the courage of pledged aloneness is often augmented and challenged.
One heart cannot construct a home.
“My goodness I’ve become an accidental rebel!” Alistair thought to himself. “I’m a fighter from within, determined to escape imprisonment in a vocation I was so convinced of!”
He could easily have become a successful lawyer, a scientist, an engineer, a psychologist, indeed he could have embraced any number of disciplines, had he chosen to, for he’d always been a diligent student. But no, he’d heeded the call to Church and to God. As such he could only blame himself, for his family had been openly transparent in their protestations.
Why, had he been so blinkered?
‘Give it another five years Alistair, and then see how you feel.’ his mother had urged. ‘You need time to grow and mature. There’s a lot of water to be crossed over before you can possibly know what you want. Go to university and get at least another qualification that will allow you to travel, see the world, and meet up with like-minded people. What you need right now is a big dose of fun…and you will experience that at university…and maybe in a few years you can review your calling.’
After that she’d given him a hug, one of those rare demonstrations of emotion that Scottish people still have to write the rule book on, and quickly disappeared to the far corner of the house, where she emerged a few hours later, red-eyed but determined to say little else on the subject.
But others such as his life-long friend Dave had been less circumspect. This was his sparring partner, his joker, his go-to friend when things were either tough or he needed a laugh. Dave couldn’t, wouldn’t allow him to step into the arena of the church where he would be lost to him as his mate, forever.
“You’ve got to be joking man!” he admonished him. “YOU, the life and soul of the party, the off-the-cuff creative re-writer of prayers, the rascal masquerading as the perfect student when all the time we had to take the rap for your behavior…you’re joking, aren’t you? This is one of your stupid pranks.”
“I’m not Dave.”
The set of Alistair’s jaw told Dave, that he was serious.
“Jeez I just don’t get it! What the hell’s been going on in your mind that you couldn’t have shared?”
“Sorry Dave, I can’t explain. I didn’t just come up with the idea yesterday. I’ve been dealing with this for a long time, and trust me I’ve done heaps of research. I’ve talked to a whole load of people, including priests, and I feel it’s what I was meant to do.”
“Oh shit, Alistair. We’re mates remember. You could have told me at least. We share everything. At least that’s what I thought…the good, the bad, and the downright ugly…no prizes for guessing what category this announcement falls into. I mean…tell me honestly. When in heaven’s name did YOU get serious about religion?”
“I’ve always been serious!”
“YOU?”Come on man! Don’t give me that rubbish. What about all that fun we had at morning prayers…give us this day our daily bread, fresh to the last slice — YOUR words mate, and we used to laugh our heads off. Fresh to the last slice was part of an advertisement for bread at the time. Or this one…Our father who art in heaven Harold be thy name…or blessed be the fruit of thy womb Jesus. You joked about the idea of Jesus having a womb, which then, if you remember, became a punctuation lesson for the dopes that didn’t get it.”
“They were fun times, I’ll give you that,” Alistair smiled. “Remember the Christmas carol when we asked why Mary bent Jesus’ face…to see what? Again…another good punctuation lesson! It could have been avoided with an explanation from the teacher about song, and rhythm, and poetic license.”
“See that’s the thing! You put a new spin on every prayer we ever learned, so that I couldn’t even remember the original one. Nothing much is changed,” he added softly. “Why didn’t I see this coming?” he asked, shaking his head and sending a hurt look towards Alistair.
It was true. He and Dave had been the best of mates from the time they were knee high to a grasshopper. They remembered walking into kindergarten, their first day at school, shoulder-butting each other with a confidence that belied their age. And from then on they had been inseparable. Everybody loved them, the teachers, their mates, and later on, the girls, especially the girls.
Alistair was the one the females tended to hang around and Dave was happy to have his pick after Alistair chose his. The two were the boys around town, never without a filly on their arms. It’s just how it was until Alistair’s announcement. That was too difficult for Dave to fathom. Thereafter their relationship had been strained.
“Maybe you could put things off for a while…we could go away…see a bit of Europe, go back to Scotland and Ireland and have some fun…you know, do the pubs, just the two of us. It’d be just like old times. What do you think? We could even go to Italy. Who could say no to that?”
“Sorry!”
“Well, sorry just isn’t good enough Alistair and you know it. You could have taken me into your confidence. We could have talked things through. If anybody can see different perspectives, it’s you…so why the secrecy?
“Don’t answer,” he answered flatly. “I know why. You were too scared of standing right here with me and sharing your plans from the start. It’s what mates do.
“Seriously, the holiday thing…it’s not too late. We could have a great time…the sowing of the last seeds, if that’s how it ends up. The last time I checked up, the Italian lassies were spicier than ever…especially since their grandmas pasta way!” he joked.
The joke fell flat.
Alistair was resolute.
And Dave couldn’t understand.
Looking back he realized how right everybody had been, and what a chump he had been, totally convinced about his ‘calling’, and not open to talking to the people who cared most about him…until right damned now when he had no choice but to confront what might have been little more than an all-too-vivid imagination.
Hindsight is such a wonderful thing. Where did he find the hubris to think he could change the world? Back then he could have thought things through so much better. What he should have done, was to call into play the De Bono thinking strategies he’d learned and used so well at school — the positives, the problems, the reasoning, the alternatives, the feelings, and the proof. He’d shone as a thinker, but, as he realized now, failed as a strategist.
But it wasn’t too late.
Sure he was right in the middle of a dilemma that was choking the life from him. How he might deal with the conundrum he had no idea, but he had to! It was now time to wade through his forest of doubt because he couldn’t afford another miserable mistake.
Where was Dave now? Never had he needed a best friend more.