August 31, 1994
"Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son."
Evelyn Waugh - Father And Son
This has been a hectic day, a day in which time moved at extraordinary seed. At 10:00am my mother and I went to Hurley's Funeral Home and made the necessary arrangements. The funeral Mass will be at 9:00am on Friday at Saint Mary's. There will be no wake, my mother and I despise the conceited and contemptible custom. However, prior to the funeral there will be a brief prayer service for close relatives at the funeral home.
After leaving the funeral home we met my aunt and uncle, Clare and Frank and went to Saint Mary's Cemetery to buy burial plots. My mother asked me if I wanted to be buried with her and dad? I told her I still wanted to be buried with my grandparents, next to grandpa Frawley.. So, my mother bought just two plots and Clare and Frank bought the two adjoining plots. Throughout their entire adult life, the Frawley sisters, my mother and Clare, have lived next door to one another in Randolph and in Sandwich - now, in some future time, they will rest side by side for eternity. Such everlasting love is edifying and enviable.
Once we got home there was a constant knock at the door, friends and relatives stopping by with food, flowers and offers of helping hands. It is strange how death can make us feel so vulnerable, so in need of the company of those who love us, so dependent of those we love.
I wonder if my family wishes that I had died in May and that my father stilled lived? If during the bargaining phrase of their grief, they prayed to exchange my life for his? I have had such thoughts and would gladly make the exchange. But all our bargaining and wishes are in vain, for as Aristotle wrote, "For this is lacking even in God, to make undone things that have been done."
So, we are left where we are. I, who desperately sought death, am alive this day. My father, who embraced life and all the love and pleasures it offered, never saw death coming. Just as life can be unfair, so, too, can death. And what remains within my mind is this question, did my father die so that I may live?
For weeks I have been thinking of suicide, making secret plans to die the weekend of Columbus Day in October. But that is no longer possible, no longer an option I desire. I need to find the courage to live, the courage to overcome my mind's madness - the courage to face the many challenges that await me. My family doesn't need another death, it doesn't need more sorrow and tears, it doesn't need another burial of lost love and broken hearts.
In the months ahead and in the years to come, my mother is going to need me and my family is going to need me - and I cannot fail. And I also know that I will need them. Now, I have no choice to live. Through my father's death I have learned that life is good - life is precious and must be respected and cherished for it is fragile and fleeting. Now, if only I can capture the essence of the words I have written and learn to live by their importance.
In his book, When Bad Things Happen To Good People, Harold Kushner writes, "When miracles occur, and people beat the odds against their survival, we would be well advised to bow our heads in thanks at the presence of a miracle, and not think that our prayers, contributions or abstentions are what did it." For the past three months I have been wondering and questioning why I survived my suicide attempt? I have yet to find an answer and probably never will. So, as I await my father's burial, I have come to realize that the time has come to stop asking why, and out aside all thoughts of wondering. Now is the time to be grateful, to say thank you God.
I have always been my mother's son and my brother has always been my father's son - that's simply the way our family evolved. It wasn't that someone was loved less, just someone was loved more. My father was always the perfect host and I was always the imperfect guest. I admired and loved him dearly, he was always there for me. Now, he is gone and for the first time in my life I miss him and will miss him until we are together once again.
8:15pm - My Childhood Room - Randolph, MA
contact: fortheheartcries@gmail.com
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