FancifulMemory

Old Age Delight

I refer to my recently published book as a fiction/memoir, not because I have consciously taken liberties with what I remember, but because what I remember is filtered through an 83 year long memory.

The well known phenomenon of aging memory doesn’t acknowledge one of the wonders of a long life, which is the retuning of events as they look in a long retrospective.

The pivotal moment in the formation of my vocation as a priest came when I was 8. I remember teaching my Beagle, Birdie, to heel. Beagles aren’t easy to train but Birdie was beginning to catch on to my sketchy leadings.

I carelessly, thoughtlessly, crossed the road and gave him the command. It was a test of how far away I could be and have him obey.

He came running just as a car came around the corner and crushed him.

Gertrude, our maid, heard me wailing. She came running, lifted me off Birdie’s bloody remains, took me inside and lay my sobbing self on the couch while she went out and shoveled Birdie off the road. She came back in and called Mr. Rightor, our parish priest.

He came right away. When he came in he found me, sobbing, curled up in Gertrude’s lap. In the book I record what I remember (imagine?) of what was said and done over the next couple of hours. Gertrude and Mr. Rightor were my connection to deep grief as a portal into life’s deepest mystery.

Decades later, in a conversation with other clergy about what formed our vocations, I knew instantly it was that afternoon when I was 8. Did it all happen as I remembered and told it? Likely not. Does that diminish the impact of that event on my formation as a priest. I think not.