On The Road—Again, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 4/23/23

The biblical story, as reported in Luke’s gospel (24:13-35) about what happened on the road away from Jerusalem and towards Emmaus is a classic story: something so radically outside the realm of our expectations happens that we can’t believe it. We can’t believe our eyes, our ears. These followers of Jesus knew that he had died—dead and gone. 

I remember such a feeling when I saw the bare body of my dead father, his frail bony legs hanging limply over the arms of the big burly funeral director who carried him from his home. I knew he was very sick with esophageal cancer. The surgery to remove the tumor had left him unable to swallow. I knew he was going to die. He was only seventy-one. I knew I’d received a call from my mother early that Sunday morning that “Daddy died.”  I, with my sister and mother, had kept vigil, taking turns for days as my father moved through his dying process. It took nearly a week. I timed his groans— every fifteen minutes as he tossed and turned on the pillow. The nurse said he wasn’t in pain. Was he wrestling with “demons” or himself or God?  I thought I would die from helplessness just listening and counting. I knew my father was dying, yet when I saw him dead I did not believe it. I could not believe it. My love was not ready for this death.

*  *  *  * 

A neutral Jewish historian at the end of the first century reported: “When Pilate, upon hearing him (Jesus) accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemn him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. (from “Overture” The Gospel of Jesus, by scholar John Dominic Crossan.)

Does this mean that these early Christians were stunned by their disbelief as if it were a delusion, or did it mean that some kinds of love never dies? I don’t know. But I do know that Emmaus-like experiences happen all the time. The couple in this Emmaus story left the crucifixion scene and walked along the road, incredulous. Of course they talked, trying to understand the incredible death. The gossip and the wondering ran wild. Who do we believe? How will we know? A stranger came along and asked them what they were talking about. They told him of Jesus’s death, and their incredulity. 

Later that evening they invited this stranger to join them for more conversation and a meal. In the meal, the breaking of the bread, they recognized the meal we now call the Communion/Eucharist, the meal Jesus had told them to keep on doing for remembrance and for ongoing sanctification of Truth. Suddenly, they remembered all they had experienced in their travels with Jesus. Yes, he was dead and yes, he still was alive with them in this meal. Only then did they race back to Jerusalem in high spirits, proclaiming the aliveness of Jesus the Christ/Messiah.  

Crossan wrote: “The symbolism is obvious, as is the metaphoric condensation of the first years of Christian thought and practice in one parabolic afternoon. Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens.”  

*  *  *  *

Some time after Dad died I rummaged through his drawers to find some kind of memory. I found his old faded golf sweater. I put it on. Its sleeves hung down well below my hands. I smelled the scent of his cigarettes, poked my fingers into the little holes made in the sweater by cigarette ash. I wore that old sweater on and off for some years, until one day, I knew I would never forget my father and his dumb toxic habits, nor his love for me and mine for him. That day I rolled up the sweater and placed it gently into the trash basket with a gentle pat. My father was dead. My father remains alive in my heart. 

Will I see him again? I don’t know, nor do I much care. Remembering is enough. Loving and writing the memories is enough. Continuing to celebrate the sacramental meal Jesus instituted in God’s name is enough to keep the Love he preached alive—to trust and reenact its potency always.  AMEN. 

2018.08.26 Dear Dad

Dear Dad,

You would be 107 today were you still alive. Happy Birthday wherever you are, Dad. I miss you. I’ve read that images of loved ones fade overtime, and that the face is the last to disappear from the mind's-eye memory. I still remember your face, Dad. I can see without a photo—lucky  because the scan of a very old photo didn't work. I also remember your personality and your influence on my life.

I wrote a lot about you in my memoir, especially the moments of spiritual understanding you gave me, times when you’d call me Lynda, the name you chose for me at birth. You chose the spelling, so you could call me Lyn, but then you and Mom called me Lynnie.

You called my Lynda when you were mad at me, like the night I tried, almost successfully, to sneak out to meet my teenage boyfriend, just to see if we could get away with it. We didn’t. You spotted my absence and hollered into the night from the front door of our suburban house: LYNDA!  It was louder than the blast of a train’s horn. I tore back home, feigning annoyance, but feeling secretly protected. Getting caught was less threatening than teenage sex in a car.

You called me Lynda when we had political fights, and then too when I told you I aspired to be ordained an Episcopal priest. I stammered to explain my sense of vocation. You stopped me and simply said: “I understand, Lynda.”  I was almost forty years old then, but I felt adult. I suppose a parent always feels like a parent even with a grown child and the reverse, but this time I felt truly dignified. Thanks, Dad.

Yes, I remember your  sarcasm. I’d been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. You said:  “There must be some mistake” then immediately said you were kidding, but it stung. I will say, however, that I didn’t give it much pain-time or credence, knowing that nasty humor was martini-generated. I also knew it was probably a critique you, the fifth child of a mother who abandoned her own aspirations to be an opera singer in order to have children, had heard about yourself. You and I, however were worthy of praise.

There was one time though when your silence, not your words, hurt me and shaped my self-image. I was five, a shy child, an introvert, like you. I wanted your praise and Mom was always in the way with excesses of adulation—compensatory for your silence, and mine I think. She complained to you about my refusal to greet the cheery doorman with cheer.“What’s wrong with that child?” she said.  You, Dad, said nothing.

You could be too quiet like me, but when you spoke you were honest. Do you remember the time you and Farmer Kurtie worked together with cattle prods to coax an angry bull onto a ramp and up into the truck that would take him home after the stud affair? You were a city guy. This was not your thing. I watched in horror, sure that ferocious bull would charge and kill you; instead he relented and ran onto the truck. I was so relieved and impressed. “Daddy,” I said, “”you were so brave! Were you scared?”  You said, “Scared as scared could be, Lynnie." I hugged you so hard, just for telling the truth.

So, Dad, on your natal anniversary, I will remember you in these ways:
    I will sit in your huge red leather chair and pound the arm with my fist, as you used to when you wanted to make some point. I love your chair, and I love that I have it.
    I will say your favorite phrase: “What’s the point?” during the day and in my prayers. It was the last thing you said to me when you were dying. I will resist trying to answer that question and assume you know the answer, and that you were wise to ask it over and over.
    I will re-read my memoir chapter:”The Old Sweater” about how I wore your old torn golf sweater around for a couple of years after you died. The sweater’s sleeves hung down to my thighs when I let them. You loved that old sweater, Dad, and I loved you.

Today I discovered the answer to “What’s the point?” Celebrating my 80th birthday with my four adult children with me in the middle (Robert William III, Jill Barlow, Beverley Ann, John Thomas) was a perfect day—good weather, good food, good conversation, good company, good laughter, good sharing, good love and Love. That’s the point, isn’t it, Dad?

Love,
Lynnie