A place where skeletons don’t dance
Father and son are both sinners in desperate need of grace
My dad died almost two years ago and unfortunately we had unfinished business between us.
A former U.S. Navy pilot, he was a lot of fun to be around. He loved to laugh and was one of the best conversationalists I’ve ever known.
Extremely curious, he remembered details of prior conversations and enjoyed asking penetrating questions. He was extremely photogenic and passed along to me the love of starting conversations with total strangers, especially servers in restaurants.
He also taught me to give people nicknames and to play a form of Backgammon called Acey Deucey, which I still dearly love. We used to play Twixt by the hours, until he got so frustrated at losing to me that he vowed he would never play again. And he didn’t.
If he liked you, there was no truer friend. Hugely compassionate, he did many behind-the-scenes good deeds for all sorts of people.
He professed faith in Jesus, and I believe there was a part of him that really desired to reflect the gracious heart of God. Like all of us, though, there was another part of him that warred against what God desired for his life. He used to joke with his preacher that he enjoyed pulling the skeletons out of his closet every once in a while and rattling them.
Looking back on it, I think it was his way of acknowledging how hard forgiveness was for him. He didn’t just rattle old skeletons he pulled them all the way out and danced with them.
Unfortunately, our relationship ended during just such a chapter, but that chapter doesn’t define him. I will choose to remember the cool guy who taught me to swim and water-ski on Lake George, N.Y., and the father who loved chasing the tour boat Ticonderoga in our borrowed speedboat so we kids could wave to the people way up on the top deck and water ski over its huge wake.
When he separated from my mom and moved to a tiny apartment in Queens, I was the first of us four kids to go spend a night with him, which shocked everyone because I was probably the angriest at him for moving out. I used to ride the train with him into Manhattan and spend all morning riding the elevators up and down every building I could sneak my way into.
One of my earliest memories is around age five when he had been involved in a horrific car accident that left him with a permanent limp and painful, lifelong ankle injuries. He had been in the hospital for weeks and we kids finally got to visit. I was so scared, all I could do was hide behind mom and cry; I wouldn’t go to him.
These and many more are the stories I miss. I didn’t attend his funeral, because the family tension didn’t end with him, and my presence would have been an unwanted distraction. I didn’t even get a mention in his obituary. But I loved him; he knew that, and I’ll continue to miss him.
For me, the grieving began 12 years ago. But my prayer for him was, and is, that he would receive the same grace from Jesus Christ as I hope to receive. For if I deem it necessary to point fingers at him, then by necessity many more must be pointed back at me.
Father and son are both sinners in desperate need of grace. And one day I hope to laugh with him again, in that beautiful place where skeletons not only don’t dance, they don’t exist.