Absolution

I’m not at all Catholic. I’d have to research the Rosary. To me it’s just another crutch. But he held to it tighter than my son holds the kite string on a windy summer day in the park. He mumbled constantly and I thought I heard counting. There was a fear in his eyes. He was trying to out-run it. All I could think was, “Prayer won’t help you now Grand-pa.” Maybe you should count your rosary for all the times you got drunk, or all the times you left them alone with her, or for raising a daughter that didn’t know how to love me. Before the accident, Grand-pa was a brilliant man, even considering the amount of pickling his brain received. Sitting in the cold, fluorescent hospital bed, he could just barely scratch out MENSA on the paper, his writing as broken and haggard as the frame of his face. He used to send letters. God the man could send some letters, let me tell you. Only they weren’t real, more like jigsaw puzzles. I remember opening the envelope and watching all the little bits of newspaper fall out onto the floor like snowflakes. Scrawled across the top of each clipping, “Here’s something you’ll find interesting…” or “Andy, this story is for you” or “There’s a real lesson here Susan” Always wanting to impart wisdom or some greater purpose, I suppose this is where Mom got her drunken couch philosophy. “This too shall pass,” that’s what he always said, like a goddamn mantra. Hell, I’d heard it so many times it even ran through my head once or twice that night helping Mom walk him to the bathroom and back. I wanted to cry, seeing him flounder, nothing like my memories. And later, when everyone gathered in his church, when the rest of my family genuflected, when he sat in his coffin, holding his rosary beads, when my brother, who had been away at school, went along with the masses, I just sat there. I’m not at all catholic, and I won’t pretend to be.