On Dad's Birthday and The Untidiness of Death (and Life)

Today would have been my father’s 57^th birthday. It would have, except that he died suddenly and unexpectedly of a massive heart attack almost two years ago, July 3.

I remember much about the days after his death. My father’s death, like his life, left in its wake a mess for others to clean up. Only this time, Dad isn’t here to help, or to push along with his, “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission” motto. He is also not here to come in with his calm, jovial personality (when at his best) to diffuse or completely mask the pain.

Chris and I are fans of the show “The Good Wife.” We started watching it because we’d previously been fans of the show “Numbers,” and when we heard the same brothers (Ridley Scott and Tony Scott) who had made that show had a new show, we had to check it out. And we got hooked.

Little did we know that one of the brothers, Tony Scott, would become himself a news story, like his characters. In August of 2012, he committed suicide. I remember at the time—before I ever imagined our family would have its own story of suicide—thinking it highly unlikely that he hadn’t, as stories seemed to say, really indicated why he had done it. I was sure the family knew and was keeping it. And maybe they are. We are not entitled to the fine details of their pain. But I know now that many, even most, people who commit suicide do not leave a note. And even when they do, it’s rarely the entire story. News stories about Tony Scott’s death indicate that he left a note, but it did not reveal why he took his life.

What I remember most about that tragic loss, though, is something Tony’s brother Ridley said later, when defending the show’s sudden, and not-neat death of one of its key characters, Will Gardner. I can’t find the quote now (so indeed, maybe it is apocryphal and conflated with words of others on the show) but it was something to the extent of how he wanted the death to seem real. And often, death does not bring the neat and tidy endings portrayed in film and TV. Sometimes, as the show has teased out with Will’s death, there is mess, and uncertainty. Sometimes you try to think back over the final days of a person’s life to fill in the holes your relationship with them left. And usually, try as you might, you cannot tidy things up.

Indeed, sometimes the untidiness of death also leads us to focus more on a person’s death than their life. I suspect this is true and becomes less so as time passes, once you resign yourself to the untidiness of it all.

My father lived 55 years and a couple months. He experienced many things in those years. He had great successes and deep failures. He helped many people and hurt some.

Today, yes, his birthday still brings thoughts of his death. Not his death itself, but all the things I would’ve liked resolved. Tidied up. I would very much like the script rewritten. But we do not have those chances in life. Nor do we know how “rewrites” would impact the final draft. Maybe next year will, as this year is from the last, be even easier. Perhaps we shall get even more of the mess left to us cleaned up. Perhaps I will be able to even more fully see Dad with the eyes I proclaim to others, that we are never known to God by our worst moments.

I remain convinced that Dad knew the love of God. That he was deeply grateful to have been called to share God’s love with others. That he sought to live out, day by day, the Prayer of Thomas Merton. A prayer which had such meaning and importance for him. In all of life’s rewrites, it is indeed well that all of us hold on to it as well:

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen."