"Does the Lord Work in Reverse?", a story for my father

December 18 2009

“I thought of something interesting yesterday…”…my father spoke…he looked sad and depleted. His comment broke the silence while we sat in “the barn” – the heated shelter across from what used to be the garage. The sentence came out of his mouth with a hint of realization, which seemed impossible to my sister and me, so soon after the fire. She and I had just returned from the Windowbox café, the little breakfast nook in my father’s rural neighborhood – the waitress had greeted us with a sympathetic look and a “How’re your Dad and Sam doing?”, along with some free desserts to bring back with us. The local newspaper lay in their front window…our father’s home on the cover, completely engulfed in flames. Above the photo the caption read, “A total loss”. It could be a photo any one of us may’ve seen a dozen times before in a newspaper – but this time, it’s of a home in our family. It was just…surreal. From this time forward we’ll join those families who’ve added the phrase, “the fire”, to their timeline – forever adding to the family’s vocabulary: “that was before The Fire”, and “that was lost in The Fire”. It was frigid weather today though we managed to rescue some large framed photos out of what’s left of a blackened basement hallway...we headed back to the barn to warm up.

My sister and I sat in chairs with our father and wanted to give him some time to talk, or weep…or to tell us this story. From the barn we could view the burnt remains of the home he had built over the years almost entirely by his own hands – his passion-away-from-his-profession. The place where we would go to visit for the past two-and-a-half decades. Not even two days ago, he watched it smolder to where there are now only outlining frames standing here and there…cryptic little hints of what used to be a kitchen…or was it the bathroom? Incredibly, it was hard to distinguish in some areas... We waited for him to continue. He spoke slowly...hoping to get his words out clearly and without another breakdown. He looked crushed, and he had something he needed to share... He paused a few seconds to try and collect his emotions. “Back in 1987…(pause)…Sam and I were waiting to hear from this woman about adopting a baby. Sam had been speaking to a young woman in Kingston…age 19, unwed, looking for parents to adopt her baby...(his sentence trailed off). So she had spoken with the woman a few times…(pause)…and Sam was getting very excited… (Longer pause)… And then my mother died in July of 1987.” (Long pause)…but then my father’s voice lifted slightly to say, “but then Drea came along in October.” He sounded reflective and lighter in that sentence. “And I remembered…(pause)…that saying (quote)…‘when the Lord takes something away…he gives you something in return.’ (Pause.) My mother had died…but here was Andréa.” That lighter voice in him reappeared for another few seconds of reflection, then he lowered his head with thought and remembrance of what was outside.

He paused a few seconds, took a drag off his cigarette, rubbed his forehead, and squinted. He looked up at Gabrielle when he said, “What happened in Fresno…that was a gift. I look at that as a gift. When I think of all the possibilities that could’ve happened then…we were given a gift.” He was of course referring to Drea’s accident this past July and 30-day-stay in a trauma center with temporarily rented housing for The Core Five (Dad, Sam, Gabrielle, Jade, Nancy) - five months ago almost to the day of the devastating fire that had just destroyed his and Sam’s home; Drea had relocated again to CA in November…but this was the home where she’d grown up – and even when you’re 22 and have just moved across the country to your first real apartment and relationship, there is always your home back where you came from, where you were raised, where your parents still kept some of your things, and where there is always a bedroom for you. Now, a completely different picture.

My sister and I watched him intently as he spoke, and we squelched the urge to interject with anything so that he could keep his pace: “…“I learned a lot in Fresno”…and his voice trailed off as we remembered the preciousness of life, the things that truly matter, that cannot be replaced, the value of time spent. He paused some more, bowed his head a bit, and we could tell that something truly profound had struck him last night. Something he was going to tell us too. We waited silently... He is a Catholic man, and though I am not Catholic, I was appreciative that he was struggling to find a reason, or the lesson, in what had happened.

And he said, “I couldn’t understand…Why He would allow me to keep my daughter…but then take away my house?” And there it was – the question that had plagued us non-Catholics on behalf of this Catholic man. He looked down for another second, and said, “So then I thought to myself…(he looked up at us)…does the Lord work in reverse?” He then quickly bowed his head again and put one hand over his eyes. My sister and I sat frozen on those words. But then he motioned that he had a second part to share with us. I felt grateful that his faith had provided him a reason to seek a lesson in all of this, and that maybe he’d share something with us that would make this horrible pain go away. I looked at him, with water leaking out of his eyes, and waited for the answer to, “Does the Lord work in reverse?”

He took a very long pause and then said, “This house…(pause)…I built it over the years…I know every stick of wood in it… It’s my labor of love. But it’s a lot of work – I know that.” (I wondered how long we’d refer to the house in current terms.) (Longer pause.) He looked at us intently and he said, “I work to keep this house going.” (It’s something we’ve all known but never ever expected to hear my father say out loud. His love for working on his house yet the work it entailed – he looked sad to be admitting anything other than the love for it.) He looked down and paused. “But what if…I wasn’t meant to do that anymore? What if He knows…that as long as I have this house…that I would never retire? (Pause.) In other words, we were given a gift in Fresno…and what if this isn’t the Lord taking something away from me…but rather trying to teach me a lesson...to show me…a lesson I might not have learned, any other way. A better way, to spend that gift.” He looked down and said quietly, “...I don’t know”…and his voice trailed off again. Then he had that look again of trying to fend off another breakdown, his voiced cracked a bit, and he said, “I just wish He didn’t have to take my dog in order to teach me.” We all choked... For my Dad and Sam, they lost someone in the fire that day – they lost Maggie, the puppy they had adopted a few months prior. They had completely fallen in love with her. It’s a loss that rattles my Dad worse than the loss of the house and the stuff in it – and for a man who “knows every stick of wood in the place”, that’s saying a lot.

I called the Plymouth food pantry where I was supposed to have volunteered my time on Christmas Day, to have served dinner to the homeless people who stop by for a meal. But this year, the location would change for me - though the mission would remain the same - and I would be intimately connected to the people receiving the charity.