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My Father, Myself
Divine Mercy at the hour of death for a father and a daughter.
by Joan Carter McHugh
Like a king presiding over his kingdom, my father sat in his armchair in the living room while he sipped his scotch and soda and contemplated life. Each evening when I turned the key in the apartment door, my dad would be sitting there waiting for me.
"Joanie!" he cried, his high-pitched voice revealing a depth of emotion. Surprised by the enthusiasm, I'd giggle. We lived in entirely different worlds, yet I knew that my dad was there for me. Years later, after marriage and four children, I'd ring the doorbell, let myself in with my key, and there he would be in that chair. Ecstatic to see me and the children, he opened his arms wide to scoop us up in his love. Now that my dad isn't here anymore, I think about those greetings-"Joanie, I'm behind you a thousand percent," he'd always say to me. My dad gave me a taste of unconditional love, a love which our heavenly Father has for each of us, intimate and inexhaustible.
Fast forward the story twenty five years. I cut short a retreat I was attending in New Orleans to fly to my dad's bedside in New York. When I phoned him on a Sunday morning he could hardly speak he was so out of breath-and so alone. I was on a plane within the hour but, due to bad weather, we were rerouted to Washington, DC. From there it was a three hour train ride to New York. At 10 PM I finally put my arms around my dad-who looked so old and so vulnerable-reassuring him that all would be well. His gratitude showed through his tears. That week he was diagnosed with throat cancer which he courageously fought for the next year and a half.
My dad was a fighter and had been all his life. A poor boy who grew up on the sidewalks of East Harlem, New York, in the twenties-who played baseball with sawed-off broom handles and who had very little formal education-my dad ended up as one of New York's leading libel lawyers. A high school varsity baseball career with Lou Gehrig launched him in the world of sports and led to a baseball scholarship to Fordham Law School. A stint with the Cincinnati Reds followed; then he carved out a career as a trial attorney. Marriage and two children rounded out the picture. There wasn't anything J. Howard Carter put his mind to that he couldn't do, and do well, including learning to fly his own plane as he did when he turned fifty-three. He often invited me to be his co-pilot.
I don't know when he fell away from his Catholic faith, but as long as I knew him, he never went to church, except during my high school years when I insisted that he accompany my mom and me to Christmas Eve midnight Mass. His lack of faith was a thorn in the side of our relationship and caused me much heartache. Heated discussions about religion often took place around our dinner table, where he would coax me and my high school friends into long debates. We had all the answers for him fresh from our high school theology classes. But we'd go around in circles and never get anywhere. Sensing my frustration he'd throw back his head and laugh: "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear!" He'd tell me he couldn't pretend to have faith. If he didn't have it, he didn't have it. Period.
I commuted between my home in Illinois and his New York apartment during that year and half to take him to his radiation treatments, to buy his favorite groceries, and to just be with him in his time of suffering. And I never prayed so hard in my life. Back home a friend told me over coffee that she had prayed for God's mercy for her mother before she died. Prior to her death, her mother said to her, "Bea, I got your message." Bea had left no message. "What message, Mom, I don't remember leaving a message?" Her mom said, "Mercy."
Bea knew God heard her prayers. From that moment on I prayed for God's mercy for my dad. I also asked to be with my dad when he died.
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