Ironic Advent 2016 Meditation #11:
Saint Charles Day
My father died on a cold gloomy Advent day like this; well, this
day exactly, senior year.
It was cold and gloomy in New York anyway (or anyways, as
Jennifer Lynne Ricke says), and that's where I was that morning.
He was in Houston. He had a heart attack in his car. I guess it
was hot and gloomy.
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
I had just worked out a new bluesy arrangement of "O Come O
Come Emmanuel." The Advent song to end all Advent songs. A way of tuning
one's soul (by which I mean my whole being, including my body, of which I am
fond) to the ideas, the meanings, and the specific stance (or bend or bent) of Advent.
I had always loved minor keys.
I know now.
And death's dark shadows put to flight
Or maybe I just think I know now.
Perhaps in some culture somewhere,
Mars for example, or Iowa,
the minor key is not the hearing aid for sorrow, loss, and
lament.
But in New York, in my senior year of college, reading Auden in
the gathering gloom, it made sense.
I used to be in a church with a song leader named Fred. Fred would
complain about any song written in a minor key, even if it was chosen by the
pastor. Fred "had the victory," he said, so he thought that the minor
key was a kind of blasphemy.
We mourn in lonely exile here.
My last note to Dad contained some “clippings” as he called them
of our game the night before--
Ricke had 18 points and 14 rebounds.
I grew up reading and rereading the faded clippings of his forty
point games in Houston.
And sitting in his lap reading the sports pages.
That's probably when I began my spiritual practice of
remembering useless facts.
Under the influence of Auden, another kind of father, I had just
written him a rather formal and pretentious poem called “Father Christmas”--
If you are keeping track, that's two rather formal and pretentious
poems I wrote under Auden's influence that December.
It was going to be my father's Christmas present, but he never
read it. It's at home on my fridge.
Somewhere I still have the piece of paper on which my friend had
written Joe, call home.
My words scrawled under it, during the phone call, you're too
big to die daddy.
And he was. He really was.
He was like a god to me.
Like a god now in my memory.
A loud god. A messy god. A very present god in time of
trouble.
A god who didn’t ask me to take every little thing on faith. Who
hugged and held me like it mattered. And, as I said, shared the sports pages.
Saint Charles brought life and light and a certain wry, slightly
inebriated smile to everyone who knew him.
His father had died before Charles was a teenager, so he became
a bit of a wild one. He didn't teach me how to gamble, but I'm sure he would
have if I asked. He doesn't know it, but I got pretty good at poker and
blackjack in college anyway. Once won $20 from the rest of the basketball team
on a long Saturday morning.
I flew home to Houston and, a few days later, was giving his
funeral sermon. I don't remember much of what I said. I know I said he loved dogs,
which was true. And family. Whatever I said, I'm sure my words meant,
"you're too big to die."
Charles fought the big one, in both Europe and Asia. He was
wounded twice, I mean in the war. I know for a fact he was wounded many more
times than that. I'll bet I was responsible for some of those wounds. I know my
mom was.
Not to mention the time Noel hooked him in the shoulder once
with one of those nasty three-pronged fishing hooks. That was on the jetty
at Padre Island. Dad laughed. Loudly. Probably as good a way of any as
dealing with pain. Noel was ten. And still alive.
O Come Thou Dayspring, come and cheer
He could laugh about things, that's for sure. That was his
standard liturgical response to most things. Who knows what he saw in the Pacific
and in Italy during the war? I know he piloted amphibious landing craft in
several invasions.
It's not really much of a guess to say that he had seen enough horrors
for one lifetime. A fish hook in the shoulder was funny.
Although he spent most of his time in a little town with his
family, being as domestic as he could stand to be, he got that look in his blue
eyes when he got on the road. Especially somewhere big and open and wild.
He'd pull over and stop if it was amazing enough. And remind us
all to be amazed. Well, I think he just said, look at that.
Driving in the mountains on our infamous vacation to Colorado,
he'd like to drive as close to the edge as possible. We had an old dam outside
of town we called "the waterfall." He used to like to drive over it
while we screamed in the back seat.
Speaking of the driving close to the edge, he got married three
times. To the same woman. Eudora Juanita Thompson, as extravagant and wild and
worth looking at as her name. My mother. You may have heard about her.
He couldn't sing a lick, but that didn't stop him from doing the
"Streets of Laredo"or "I've Got Spurs that Jingle Jangle
Jingle" ("now ain't you glad yer single," he would emphasize
when Mom was in the car).
Really, though, he didn't sing a lot. Usually only when driving
a boat down near Rio Hondo. Or driving fast in his '65 Mustang down Rio Rico
Road, headed towards Mexico. When Mom or Missy weren't around, he might
sing his dirty sailor songs from the Navy for a line or two. Then blush and
shut up.
This year, this Advent, every Advent, December 7 shall be his
feast day. A day of remembrance. The feast of Saint Charles. Let there be barbecue.
And Border Buttermilk (look it up).
This saint taught me the important stuff. This is the saint who
taught me how to tie my ties. Or, more truthfully, who tied my ties most of the
time.
I can feel him standing close to me. Hear him breathing
heavy.
I thought that was a strange sound then, but I just wasn't used
to large human beings breathing close to my body. Now I miss it.
I learned to love and care, whatever little I learned, by
watching this giant, gentle man, this reluctant warrior, nurture and mother
four children for years when Nita was, for all practical purposes, out of
commission.
I learned to pray at mass by listening to him, sometimes sitting
in his lap or just stuck up against him close enough to smell the after shave
and cigarettes.
He would be saying the words, and I would be making sounds I
didn't understand. It was Latin anyway, but I figured out that the way to
pray was just to make sounds that sound sort of like words but have a meaning
you don't know yet. While snuggling with your dad.
Gaude, gaude, Emmanuel nascetur pro te, Israel
Now I’m thinking, who the hell really knows? Who really
understands? Maybe we don't want to understand. Maybe we want something more.
Maybe language isn't enough.
and close the path to misery
This is one of my clearest early memories, probably from
the same year Noel was born.
I'm maybe four, sitting next to Dad in the pew at Our Lady of
Sorrows (that was the name of our church; Second Baptist was already
taken).
I'm warm and happy mumbling my holy sounds and feeling very
close to my God and to Saint Charles whom I can hear mumbling beside me.
and give us victory o'er the grave
A Prayer
for the Feast of Saint Charles.
Dear
Eternal Being of Power and Love, if so you are, thank you for the life and
witness and sacrifice and amazement at this world's wild beauty, not to mention
the mysterious mumbling noises, of your creature Charles Ricke, who by his flawed,
wounded, and slightly inebriated soul (I mean his whole being, including his body
of which he was rather fond), brought life and light to the gloom. And who
points us, as we gather together mumbling at your altar, towards the mystery of
power and love we celebrate, if so it is, this Christmas season.
I didn't have the wherewithal to speak at my dad's funeral for a variety of reasons. Well done in pulling it off. If he drove a 65 Mustang how did you once end up driving a Chevette?
ReplyDeleteKerry
Thank you for this, Joe. It makes me wonder how much bigger my Dad was than I imagine him to be.
ReplyDeleteYour father was a character larger than life. I remember many instances of where I would say Hey Mister Ricke. What's up? and He would say with Texas Twang that I loved to hear "Boy, and he would launch into a story. I loved to hear his stories.
ReplyDeleteI love the line about prayer being sounds you make that are similar to words but you don't have the meaning to yet. And all the memories of your dad. Not to mention that "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" has been my favourite Christmas song for years now. I love the deep longing in it. It wasn't until more recently that I realized what minor keys are (pathetic, I know) and that there are some songs in minor key that are cheated when sung cheerfully and face-paced. Anyway, thank you for this.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading and commenting, unknown person. Not sure why you are unknown. About the prayer sounds, that is one of my earliest memories. Of course, the prayers were in Latin which made them even more unintelligible.
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