I'm trying to remember a time when I shut my little eyes and said, "Dear Lord, please let..."
Or kneeled beside my bed.
Forget Jesus; we didn't even know who he was in my era. He was a generation away from becoming everyone's best, cool, hippy-like friend.
My parents went to church on most Sundays. If you call Presbyterian "church." I later learned that many serious religious souls think of it more as "church-lite." I wouldn't have known that in the late 50s and early 60s.
They took me to Sunday school most of those Sundays until I reached the pre-teen stage where it was more of a hassle to get me up than to just let me sleep. My older brother and sister had cleared that path for me.
We never prayed before meals. I remember seeing a Bible on a bookshelf, along with about 1,000 other volumes. It came off the shelf less often than approximately 999 others.
I do remember two episodes of note involving my father and First Presbyterian. One was when it was announced that First Pres was going to have its 11 a.m. service televised locally. This sent my father into a state of sheer joy.
Was he excited about what the increased exposure might mean to fund-raising efforts, which he often led?
No, he was excited about the fact the 11 a.m. service would have to end on time, exactly at noon. This means, of course, that Sunday tee times could be set for 1 o'clock and be in no danger of the long-winded pastor going overtime.
The other was when my father was made a Deacon in the church. I'm not sure what that is to this day, but I guess it's some sort of secular honor. I do know that he kneeled at the alter, because I was there and saw it. And I heard the chuckles all around me.
As bold as a billboard was the number 96 written in white marker across the soles of both shoes. Ninety-six was the number of his locker at the River Oaks Country Club. The marking was so the shoe-shine boy would know where to return the shoes before my father finished his round.
I also know that I found a letter from my father to the pastor, that the pastor had given back to him. In it, my father questioned the existence of god. A brilliant and widely read man, he based his arguments on solid philosophical grounds, and made it clear that he really wanted the pastor to convince him he was wrong.
I don't know if he did or if he didn't, but I do know the pastor was in my mother's library, comforting her after my father killed himself at age 63.
I have to stop here and explain the circumstances. I may be the only one on the planet who believes he killed himself. My mother found him in the middle of the night on the carpet, half-way between the bed and his bathroom which was across a fairly large bedroom.
A best-friend-physician and favorite tennis partner was at the house long before the police or coroner. However events unfolded, with no obvious physical wounds, a heart attack was ruled to be the cause of death.
Here is what I know:
- He was less than a month past a comprehensive cardiac exam and had bragged to me what great health he was in and had even started running again.
- He was almost hopelessly in debt. A brilliant man who had been a partner at a huge and prestigious law firm, he had been unable to resist the lure of the easy money and his knowledge of oil and gas. He had seen friends make fortunes and was certain he could do the same.
- He hit dry holes in numbers that would defy statistical probability
- This era became known as the "savings and loan scandal" and those easy loans were suddenly being called and collected...aggressively.
- He had loaded up on life insurance for my mother, just the right number of months before suicide would be excluded
- He was a prolific reader of mystery novels and had even written a few
- He had taken a job that could only have humiliated him, just to pay the bills.
- He left a "suicide note" that only I found on a hard drive, and only I have read. I don't know why I didn't share it with my mother and sister; I guess I made the judgment that they were better to live with the "heart attack" story.
Had I been privy to the conversations between my father and his pastor, I once again would have been predisposed to simply ask, "Whose god" are we discussing?