My Father: For Bill Hayes
by Mary Hayes Grieco

My father had a will for goodness.

It walked with him as he strode nimbly to the train with his brief case slightly swinging. It greeted the world in the lift of his chin, the twinkle in his blue eyes, and the tidy dip of his hair. After he retired, my father took his good will out for a walk each day (or did it take him, like a dog and his master?) on one of eight routes through his neighborhood. He chose the route each day based on some merit or other, but over time, I imagine that he trod them all about the same in an unconscious attempt to be fair and give them all the same amount of attention. Indeed those paths are blessed with the memory of his footsteps, trees and bushes pleasantly haunted by the sound of his sighs and exclamations, and the click of his rosary beads as he walked. I’m sure many neighbors still watch for him and his will bouncing briskly by at a predictable hour, for it is these regular appearances of a good person which form the rhythm and life cycle of a good neighborhood. Towards the end of his life, he needed to stop and perch thoughtfully on a certain fire hydrant, gathering his breath, calling his will back to him like a dog who strays too far. If that fire hydrant were animate it might sigh with the loss of him, as we do.

My father had a will for goodness.

My father’s tears watered our lives as readily as an Irish rain.

All comings, all goings, all hallmarks and nuances of community connection were worthy of a tear from my father’s eye, before he brushed them along like a fly off his nose. Like a fly, those moments alighted upon him again and again. When we were young we teased him about it — how can a man cry at a kindergarten graduation (again!) or at the sentimental manipulations of the Marcus Welby show? Why wasn’t he tough like some other Dads, firemen and bricklayers? Because our father’s heart was exquisitely tender. He overflowed with pride at our spindly accomplishments, and he hurt with our hurts. When I was eight, I used to sit next to my father in church each week, and wonder why he took off his glasses and wept into his hands after Holy Communion. Did he weep for his own failings? For the love of Jesus? For his departed parents? I never knew why he wept, but I watched him weep, and loved him more for it. And how many tears did he offer for his companions dead in the war, still alive in the chambers of his memory? History left them behind, but he never did. As he got older, he stopped apologizing for his tears. He let them flow freely and without commentary. My father did not say good bye to us before he died. There were too many of us, too much tenderness for his tears to handle. So he showered his good byes on us in the sheets of silver rain that fell on his funeral day. Tears for leaving, tears for reunion, tears for the shimmering grace that streamed on him and us from a Sacred Heart ---- all fell down on us that day. The rain drenched our hearts til they were as green and sodden as wet valleys, grateful and yet aching for more of his love.

My father’s tears watered our lives as readily as an Irish rain.

My father and I did a shadow dance with each other. There were too many of the same forces inside us to rest easy in each other’s company, and so we were drawn together and flung apart like magnets attracting and repelling. I saw more of him than he wanted me to see, and he saw more of me than I wanted him to see. He knew things about me I didn’t want to know about myself. I knew things about him he didn’t want anyone, including himself, to know--- because they weren’t part of being a good man. He could not remember the few moments when he hurt me to my soul during alcohol’s oblivion, and I could not forget them. And so he was a good man with a deep shadow which fell across my face and forced me to carry a shame for both of us. There could be no anger in my father’s house, and so I raged alone from four hundred miles away, occasionally waving a distress flag in a letter home that no one else could understand. We could not break the code of truth and denial, shame and sensitivity, that kept our hearts in a standoff with each other. But we made our peace at last, in the white spaces of forgiveness, something he always showed me but something I needed to teach myself. We spoke no words about it, but our hands occasionally darted across the gap between us to share a squeeze of recognition and profound compassion. For me those moments were gifts of mutual support for the battle each of us had to fight with our own selves.

My father and I did a shadow dance with each other.

My father sat in his chair each night, golden lamplight falling on his silver head and his open book, stalwart in his wait for true privacy. He marked the hours with Coca Cola and crackers, the late return of one of his cheery children, and the eventual silence of his wife’s bedtime music--- until he was alone. He reviewed his day, sought understanding for his difficulties, and renewed his will again and again to be a good man. At a certain point in his reflection he turned out the light, but continued to sit in the dark until his contemplation was complete. Sometimes I thought he was waiting for something. What was he waiting for? One night I rose from sleep and stumbled into the dark living room to find my father in his most private moment: on his knees before his chair, stretched over his hassock with his head bowed and his hands clasped in prayer. His posture radiated into the silent room the most humility and deepest reverence I have yet to see another human being assume. It was a moment of Holy Communion and I know that the cushion was moist with his tears. Once again, he felt me seeing him, seeing too much of him. As he leapt to his feet in embarrassment and walked briskly to the dark kitchen blowing his nose, I longed to say something to ease him in his vulnerability. Once again, I said nothing. But now I knew the moment for which he waited at night.

My father doesn’t sit in his chair any more, and we miss him terribly. My father was a good man.