50

Sunday was the fiftieth anniversary
of the untimely death
of my father.

My father was a good man
although, like many good men,
not always an easy man.

I thought it would be nice
though I no longer count myself a member,
to commemorate the occasion

by receiving Communion in a Catholic Church.
All the way there I thought about my father,
tried to summon up some memory

hitherto unrecorded, but I came up empty.
The minute we walked into church,
before we had even found a seat,

something happened, something
so trivial it isn’t even worth relating,
yet something that reminded

why I had left the Catholic Church
in the first place. This time.
And recollection turned to energy

and energy turned me around
and as gracefully as someone
who can actually dance

I put my hand on Carol’s shoulder
and steered her back out the door.
I didn’t say a word, I made no demonstration;

like any man who suddenly realizes
he has blundered in where
he doesn’t belong,

I simply got us out of there—
clean getaway. Twenty minutes later,
over breakfast, already I could smile to myself:

every effort to recover some
long-lost paternal memory had failed;
my attempt to receive Communion had failed.

Is it possible for something to be
lethal-injection ironic and at the same time
perfectly, drop-dead apropos?

The one thing I did all day that made me
feel a little closer to my father
was lose my temper.