I loved my father through thick and thin, and he is, in fact, one reason I never call God Father.
Everyone thinks my aversion to God as Father is just my feminist politics, or my distaste for traditional theological language that confines divinity within the corset of excessive almightiness, ultra-distancing transcendence, exclusive masculinity, and fatherhood forever and ever amen.
Yes, I know the earthly Jesus is remembered as using the term Abba for God, but why wouldn’t he do that? He was a Jewish son of the covenant. Also, Abba was natural and intimate, suitable for just what he wanted to convey about God’s loving presence—and not enough.
Some people think I would eliminate “Father” for God, because I was abused by my earthly father and therefore Father is negative, frightening. That may be true for some, but not for me. I loved my dad, and I always knew for certain that he was not divine—not God, only godly.
Dad gave me my name. I was, in my mother’s dreams, supposed to be Michael McDonald, named after my dad: McDonald Gillespie—such a handsome name. He was very handsome in fact, with thick dark hair, a solemn yet dignified air, a crisp sense of humor, and a ski-jump nose. I look like him—nose and all. I have a better picture in the "somewhere" category, but here is Dad when I was about three and earned him an exemption from WWII.
He died with his dappled-gray but still thick mane in tact, and, so far, mine remains thus. The name they liked was Linda with a middle name Hall, my maternal grandmother’s maiden name. My father wanted to call me Lin, but the spelling didn’t work, so he changed the spelling to LYnda to call me Lyn or Lynnie. Between natural looks and naming, in addition to my own personality—shy, taciturn and, let’s just say, not extroverted but boldly introverted—I was “baptized” by my father.
Dad drank and smoked to help his personality along. I did the same. He died at 71 of smoking-induced esophageal cancer. He smoked right up to his end, claiming in his sardonic way that he had to smoke Lucky Strikes, because the advertising company in which he rose to the executive level advertised this brand. I knew and he knew that was blarney, but we knew little about addictions back then. “Everyone’s doing it” is probably the worst reason in the world to do anything. Still, human beings, like all other animals, instinctively continue to think that copy-catting is a worthy rationale for most behavior.
Until it’s not quite right.
My father was brave. I saw this in
two particular ways. We summered at a farm in upstate New York and once
Dad, city boy through and through, was invited to help Farmer Kurt to
prod an angry bull onto a truck—nasty business. The stud bull had done
his sperm-work with cows, and now he had to return to his own farm. This
bull was enraged, snorting, bellowing, and tossing his well-horned and
bulky head before he charged with all his bullish might, at several
men, including Dad, protected by a mere pitchfork, pale imitatio of
bullness. Kurtie had named this bull Donny after my dad. I was miniscule
at eight and stood way back to watch. Terrified.
The bull veered left right toward my dad. “Jump back fast, Donny,” Kurt
yelled. “He’s headed for you.” Daddy jumped away just in time.
The
men and their forks won. They finally got the rampaging bull onto the
truck and off. Daddy returned to get me and take me home. On the way
home I jabbered about how scared I was. My father listened and, I noted,
failed to brag. I asked, “Were you afraid, Daddy?” “You bet I was,
Lynnie!”
It was in that moment of modest truth that I knew my father had true courage—not God but godly.
One
other moment I saw his courage was at our family Christmas dinner—his
last—in 1982. He was at home recuperating from surgery to excise a large
cancerous tumor from his esophagus, but he wasn’t normal at all. He
couldn’t swallow, so he had, not only tubes for breathing, but a a tube
that went into a bag to drain saliva from the side of his throat, not to
mention the feeding tube in his gut. He was still handsome. He sang “Oh
Holy Night” in his rich bass voice the night before to the nurse, and
on Christmas day we all gathered as usual at the family table. Dad in
his wheelchair took his place at the head—unable to taste or chew a
single morsel of food or even imbibe a sip of any liquid. He asked the
nurse to bring him a cup of coffee. We watched it dribble out and into
the waiting catch bowl. “Boy, that hit the spot,” he said as he raised
his coffee cup. “Merry Christmas everyone. Merry Christmas.”
Holidays have souls.
Within
a week Dad was dead. He just went to bed to groan away his last
hours—minute by precious minute. He was not in physical pain, although
it sounded as if he were. His job was dying, and he did not “go gentle
into that dark night”, as the poet words it. He did go decisively. My
sister, my mother, and I kept vigil. I counted his periodic groans by
the quarter-hour bong of the old grandfather clock. I went home and
actually slept till Mom called at about 6 a.m. Dad was dead.
I
don’t know if he had any last words to my mother, but his last words to
me were: “What’s the point?” It was a phrase he often used as he
wondered, as most of us do, about the tragic exigencies of life and
death. His youngest daughter had predeceased him by just a couple of
years. I had no idea what the “point” was, but I promised to let him
know if I found out—one of my dumbest and most holy of promises, and one
I knew I couldn’t keep.
The last time I saw my father was as a
limp body in the strong sinewy arms of the funeral home director. I
noticed how paper thin his dangling legs were and wondered how they had
the strength to play so much golf in his last years. You think weird
things at such times.
The dying do not care much about the
living when they are dying. They have a job to do, a sacred and holy
task, and most people do it in their own way— not God but godly.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I love you to tears.
