I had been planning a family gathering to celebrate my 80th birthday when a herniated disc sent me into surgery.
A few weeks later, I slipped on a hidden patch of ice, fell, and broke three ribs.
And then it snowed, blanketing the world in white silence.
Even the deer that frequented my yard stayed hidden and still.
Winter, illness, and age stir memories.
What remains unsettled arises first.
I thought about my father.
He was the head of our Bible-centered, God-fearing family.
We were part of a closed community.
Relatives, church, Christian school and summer camp were safely inside.
“The world” was outside. It was a walled village, and guilt was its currency.
And gradually, at first secretly, I began to pull away.
I attended a secular university in a major city. I may have been a little too eager for my parents to say goodbye and leave.
It was a very different world, not least my atheist roommate.
Belonging proved much harder than I had imagined.
Senior year, my father came to watch me play soccer. I introduced him to my Jewish girlfriend.
Later, she said, “He was polite, but I don’t think he wanted to talk to me.”
After the game, the coach came over to us.
He commiserated over the loss—I was the goalie—and offered, “Hey, at least there’s a dance tonight.”
My father turned to me with surprise: “I hope you’re not going!”
The coach was baffled. I wanted to disappear.
People told me he was a kind man. For those who believed as he did, I’m sure he was.
I can remember only a single instance when he yelled at me, though his face was quick to show moral disdain.
He avoided confrontation, but “I will pray for you” had an ominous ring.
Eventually, written words became his voice.
Envelopes stuffed with religious pamphlets routinely arrived in the mail.
He never enclosed a letter.
They annoyed me like his praying aloud in restaurants.
I felt the same dilemma each time: did I have to look inside before throwing it away?
I could only guess at his youth.
He never told stories; there was only memorabilia: an old upright bass,
hockey skates and sticks,
wood skis and leather ski boots,
boxing gloves
and books on tying knots and building shelters.
He was an Eagle Scout. He joined the Navy and volunteered for submarine duty. By all appearances, he was a good man.
And yet he needed to be saved by Jesus. I didn’t understand why.
He said he was glad his sins were forgiven.
I knew nothing of what they were.
I had been immersed in his beliefs. I believed what I was told.
And then I stopped, despite the rule: no salvation by inheritance.
The years passed—occasional visits and ritual phone calls.
When my daughter and her husband came with me to see him, they got religious pamphlets, too.
I never told him to stop.
My sister had a yacht docked in Maine. Still a Navy man, he was eager to get on board.
Age and arthritis meant he couldn’t get there on his own.
The journey by plane and car took several hours.
We didn’t talk much along the way.
Staying that night at my sister’s house, he said to me, “Can you help me take a shower?”
Inwardly I recoiled.
I had not seen my father naked since I was a little boy.
For a nursing attendant, it was all in a day’s work. I became one.
He was grateful.
I wasn’t sure what to feel: pride that I had managed it, relief that it was over, nagging unease at his frailty—and at his needing me.
It was easy to be a non-believer with friends.
With relatives, I was wary.
But my inner debates about God continued.
My imagined opponents never answered—I always won.
Yet I remained unsettled.
And then he died.
I knew that his funeral would honor his devotion.
My older brother, no less a believer, would do the same.
He sat with my father as he was dying.
They prayed together amidst tearful goodbyes.
My father spoke to me on the phone.
His last words to me were jarring: “Have a nice day.”
And now he lay in his casket in front of me.
I took the pulpit.
I wanted to declare myself. I wanted to have an impact.
I would not be bland.
But I began with a story.
I took a 100-mile trip on a 24-speed carbon fiber bike.
It had disc brakes, an electronic shifter and skinny tires.
There were rest stops every ten miles, stocked with orange slices, electrolyte drinks and energy bars—even pecan pie.
I compared that to the 65-mile round-trip he took from Philadelphia to Trenton for his cycling merit badge.
I pictured his equipment: a heavy steel-frame bike, a single gear, pedal brakes, balloon tires.
And his comforts?
A gas station to fill his canteen, a convenient clump of trees for privacy.
And definitely no pie.
And I said to his coffin, “Dad, I think you outdid me.”
Those were experiences we might have shared.
Now he was dead.
He would never hear me.
I fought to keep from weeping.
I mourned that he had never fully embraced me.
I should have struggled with him.
I had let him go unchallenged.
Courtesy ruled.
I had silently blamed him, and his piety.
I never told him what I felt.
We might have found some middle ground, if not in belief, at least in mutual respect.
And what of faith? If religion were cast aside, was anything left—or was there nothing?
The question haunted me.
Even in sadness, there can be surprises.
Not looking for answers, I stumbled upon Thomas Jefferson’s Bible, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.
With scissors, he cut and pasted the gospel stories into a single narrative free of miracles.
Without theology, the humanity of Jesus stood out.
His story, like all human narratives, ended in death, yet left me connected to my past.
What I said at the funeral remains with me.
It is a marker of what was and what I might still wish for, but now accept with humility.
It’s snowing again, and it’s much deeper.
There is a hollow in a nearby grove of trees where the deer had been scratching for forage, but they can’t get to it.
And when memories awaken, I will feel them, without argument.