The Silken Tent -- The Soul Ajar

January 16, 2005 Sunday How they do live on, those giants of our childhood, and how well they manage to take even death in their stride because although death can put an end to them right enough, it can never put an end to our relationship with them. Wherever or however else they may have come to life since, it is beyond a doubt that they live still in us. . . . . The people we loved. The people who loved us. The people who, for good or ill, taught us things. Dead and gone though they may be, as we come to understand them in new ways, it is as though they come to understand us - and through them we come to understand ourselves - in new ways too. . . . through them something of the power and richness of life itself not only touched us once long ago, but continues to touch us. . . . and one imagines all of us on this shore fading for them as they journey ahead toward whatever new shore may await them; but it is as if they carry something of us on their way as we assuredly carry something of them on ours. That is perhaps why to think of them is a matter not only of remembering them as they used to be but of seeing and hearing them as in some sense they are now. If they had things to say to us then, they have things to say to us now too, nor are they by any means always things we expect or the same things. — Frederick Buechner The Sacred Journey That's a long passage to quote. I even took some of it out and left just the meat of what it says to me on this day. I've known it for a long time, used it in this space before, and it's the first thing I thought of when I opened the paper this morning and learned that Mary Conrad had died at 95. Regular readers of The Silken Tent know that I write a lot about death and regret. My parents died in 1985 and 1993, and in the years since, many of their friends, those giants of my childhood, who came to their funerals have themselves gone on to join the communion of saints. Mrs. Conrad was such a giant. She and her husband, who survives her, lived at the corner of Fifth and Woodbine Streets in Harrisburg. They'd moved there a few years before my family moved in ten doors away. They had a daughter six years older than I, a son a year younger than I, and another son the same age as my sister. They were members of the Catholic parish that served our neighborhood, and they became my parents' close friends. They came to my wedding, they sent a gift at my daughter's birth, they were there when my father died, and then my mother, and then my Aunt Mary, whose own daughter (my cousin) had been best friends with the Conrad girl. My family moved from Fifth Street in 1963, just as it began to change from a solid working class neighborhood to something a little more run down and dangerous. But the Conrads continued to live in their house on the corner, keeping it the best maintained structure for several blocks. They lived alone there. Their daughter became a nun and is the dean of a school at a Catholic university. Their middle son lives in a southern state, and their youngest is a priest who pastors a parish some fifty miles away. I have seen them from time to time, at funerals, of course, and at the daily noon Mass at the church I grew up in (which I attend intermittently). My birthday is the same day as their daughter's and more years than not Mrs. Conrad remembered me with a card. I always invite them to my Christmas party. They haven't been able to come for a long time, although they were by no means housebound or inactive. Mrs. Conrad has always written me a lovely response with news of her family. She did so just a month ago, always with an invitation to stop by. And that I haven't done that will be one of the regrets I'll carry for a long time. My sister and I almost went last year, on the spur of the moment when she was visiting for a day, but decided against it. If we'd called, they'd have insisted we come over, no matter how inconvenient it might be. I was walking in the neighborhood just last week (a portion of the property that was once the parish school figures prominently in a fiction scene I'm working on). Their car wasn't there, and I knew they were probably at the hospital, where Mr. Conrad undergoes dialysis three times a week. Mrs. Conrad was one of the giants of my childhood. My sister called her "a kind and true soul." As I ran through my memories I could hear her soft Irish accent, his hearty laugh. I remembered the time their younger son, then about 10, discovered our cat, which had been missing for three weeks, about two blocks away near a supermarket. The cat looked bedraggled and frightened, and Brian was afraid to approach it, lest it run away from him and get even more lost. So he came to our house and got a can of cat food, and presently he and my sister and some other neighborhood kids made a procession walking backwards, luring Jinglebell along with the open can. Now that's a scene that belongs in fiction!

January 16, 2005
Sunday

How they do live on, those giants of our childhood, and how well they manage to take even death in their stride because although death can put an end to them right enough, it can never put an end to our relationship with them. Wherever or however else they may have come to life since, it is beyond a doubt that they live still in us. . . . . The people we loved. The people who loved us. The people who, for good or ill, taught us things. Dead and gone though they may be, as we come to understand them in new ways, it is as though they come to understand us - and through them we come to understand ourselves - in new ways too. . . . through them something of the power and richness of life itself not only touched us once long ago, but continues to touch us. . . . and one imagines all of us on this shore fading for them as they journey ahead toward whatever new shore may await them; but it is as if they carry something of us on their way as we assuredly carry something of them on ours. That is perhaps why to think of them is a matter not only of remembering them as they used to be but of seeing and hearing them as in some sense they are now. If they had things to say to us then, they have things to say to us now too, nor are they by any means always things we expect or the same things.
— Frederick Buechner
The Sacred Journey

That's a long passage to quote. I even took some of it out and left just the meat of what it says to me on this day. I've known it for a long time, used it in this space before, and it's the first thing I thought of when I opened the paper this morning and learned that Mary Conrad had died at 95.

Regular readers of The Silken Tent know that I write a lot about death and regret. My parents died in 1985 and 1993, and in the years since, many of their friends, those giants of my childhood, who came to their funerals have themselves gone on to join the communion of saints.

Mrs. Conrad was such a giant. She and her husband, who survives her, lived at the corner of Fifth and Woodbine Streets in Harrisburg. They'd moved there a few years before my family moved in ten doors away. They had a daughter six years older than I, a son a year younger than I, and another son the same age as my sister. They were members of the Catholic parish that served our neighborhood, and they became my parents' close friends. They came to my wedding, they sent a gift at my daughter's birth, they were there when my father died, and then my mother, and then my Aunt Mary, whose own daughter (my cousin) had been best friends with the Conrad girl. My family moved from Fifth Street in 1963, just as it began to change from a solid working class neighborhood to something a little more run down and dangerous. But the Conrads continued to live in their house on the corner, keeping it the best maintained structure for several blocks.

They lived alone there. Their daughter became a nun and is the dean of a school at a Catholic university. Their middle son lives in a southern state, and their youngest is a priest who pastors a parish some fifty miles away. I have seen them from time to time, at funerals, of course, and at the daily noon Mass at the church I grew up in (which I attend intermittently). My birthday is the same day as their daughter's and more years than not Mrs. Conrad remembered me with a card. I always invite them to my Christmas party. They haven't been able to come for a long time, although they were by no means housebound or inactive. Mrs. Conrad has always written me a lovely response with news of her family. She did so just a month ago, always with an invitation to stop by.

And that I haven't done that will be one of the regrets I'll carry for a long time. My sister and I almost went last year, on the spur of the moment when she was visiting for a day, but decided against it. If we'd called, they'd have insisted we come over, no matter how inconvenient it might be. I was walking in the neighborhood just last week (a portion of the property that was once the parish school figures prominently in a fiction scene I'm working on). Their car wasn't there, and I knew they were probably at the hospital, where Mr. Conrad undergoes dialysis three times a week.

Mrs. Conrad was one of the giants of my childhood. My sister called her "a kind and true soul." As I ran through my memories I could hear her soft Irish accent, his hearty laugh. I remembered the time their younger son, then about 10, discovered our cat, which had been missing for three weeks, about two blocks away near a supermarket. The cat looked bedraggled and frightened, and Brian was afraid to approach it, lest it run away from him and get even more lost. So he came to our house and got a can of cat food, and presently he and my sister and some other neighborhood kids made a procession walking backwards, luring Jinglebell along with the open can. Now that's a scene that belongs in fiction!