It was odd going to the memorial mass for my dad yesterday. It actually wasn’t a memorial mass at all. I knew it wasn’t going to be a service dedicated to his memory, with a sermon, et al. But I evidently misunderstood my mother, thinking that the priest would list his name among several others who were being remembered that day. Nope. Just a plain old mass.
I went to chat with the priest afterwards, a guy who was a couple years ahead of me in the seminary (college), and he asked me if my dad was still in the hospital. When I told him he died last December, he said something like “Oh, right, I did see his name in the list for today.”
And then when I noticed that he didn’t even recognize my mother, I figured out what the problem was. He hardly knew her because she didn’t involve him at all while dad was dying, nor afterwards. She’d talked about him frequently as if he was up to date on everything. But it was all a smokescreen. Oh well. One more appropriately sad chapter in dad’s sad life.
I’d intended to spend some time walking around the old neighborhood, but it was cold and windy and the whole church scene didn’t put me in a mood to reminisce about my my childhood. Maybe next week when it’s warmer. I still want to scatter some of his ashes on the property, though. I asked mom about and she said it was fine with her.