Saying So Long

I'm never sure that I should write the type of blog I'm about to author. They become about you, and I don't really want this to be about me. I think you'll understand.

A dear friend died yesterday. Forgive me if I stay cryptic and vague, but most of you wouldn't know him anyway, and as the family has made no announcements yet I feel it's a matter of their privacy that I not get too specific. 

Still, I owe the man. He was 10 or 11 years older than me, but we'd known each other more than fifty years. Over those years we've had many good conversations, and a lot of good natured joking and jiving went on between us. Yet what I was most grateful for was in how he kept in touch with me, at least once a week, every week for better than a year, after my Dad passed. Many, many of you did too, and believe me, those kindnesses will never be forgotten, will always be treasured. Yet right this minute his are on my mind.

He didn't have to make it a point to check in. He didn't have to offer such regular support. But he did, and still did at least with some regularity, ever since. 

His passing is a genuine shock. Godspeed, you old Lutheran. Trust me, he'll laugh at that quip.

Stretch to the Limit

I have this old friend, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who seemed be people averse. His personal space halo was about as round as a silo on a farm.

This included things like drive through restaurants and toll booths. When exchanging money, Cloyce would situate his car as far away from the window or booth as possible. He would have to stretch as far as fragile human anatomy allowed to hand over payment. The poor attendant would need to reach out to their limit, often leaning out of their perch, until touching the money precisely enough to take it without a tumble to the pavement.

I teased Cloyce once that there were extension hooks with metal fingers which could be used to grab objects just out of reach. Funny thing: he seemed to give the idea a lot more thought than it merited.

Rico

Way back when, when neighborhood children played actual games on actual outdoor fields, there was this preteen who was an absolute vacuum cleaner on the baseball diamond. We called him Rico, after Rico Petrocelli, a known Boston Red Sox third baseman at the time. Our Rico could snap up any ground ball and track down any pop fly hit anywhere near his station. He impressed us almost every pickup game.

It turns out his name is Ray, and he works as a counter man at an industrial supply store where I occasionally make needed purchases. I'd dealt with him there for the last few years, until he realized who Cosgriff was and made the connection. Now I call him Rico when I see him.

He hasn't played ball in years. Of course, neither have I. Yet I remember thinking back in the day that he surely had a future in the game. "Nah, that was just kids having fun," he modestly explains it away. 

However that may be, it is cool to have a childhood connection in your life again. We had a lot of fun on the sandlots. Small world.

Father the baseball player, Father the priest

It's funny how in life there are times where a person or an event from your past comes back into your mind seemingly out of nowhere. Just this past weekend I found myself telling my son how Fr. Willoughby, a former pastor of our church (St. Dominic in Detroit, MI) used to drink cola warm. He believed that you tasted the flavors more fully with warm pop. For whatever reason, the story had simply 'popped' into my mind.

Then yesterday, an old friend from the parish called my mother to say that Father Willoughby had passed away on November 19.

I'm not intending to be maudlin nor am I trying for an 'aw, that's too bad' moment either. But I'm interested in why I would be thinking of him recently to then hear the news of his death. I wonder if we are being told something, or reminded of something when such things happen.

In Father's case, it is with fondness that I remember his faithfulness to the Church, his straightforward yet friendly instruction, and his friendship itself which I recall well. What really struck me was his obvious humility, his willingness to accept that he wasn't the center of human history. He could see that it wasn't him or his opinions which mattered, but rather what was right. A little story he told on himself one day might illustrate that trait.

Before joining the Dominican Order in 1942, Fr. Willoughby among other things had played semi-professional baseball. He was a first baseman, I believe he said. One day, his team was involved in a game where Walter Johnson, whom baseball fans know was a quiet, flamethrowing pitcher for the old Washington Senators, indeed that he was part of the first class selected for enshrinement in Cooperstown, would be the home plate umpire. Needless to say, Father and his teammates were excited about that.

As it was, Father came up in the bottom of the first with the bases loaded and two out. He worked the pitcher into a full count, then let the next pitch go by. Johnson promptly called him out on strikes, ending what turned out to be his last chance at baseball semi-immortality. "I was sure it was a ball, but I guess it was a strike", he said, and in truth matter of factly, at the end of the story. Indeed, it was profoundly self effacing.

My wife teased him, "That first part was the ballplayer talking, but the second was the priest talking!" Father just smiled, and kind of nodded his head. He could take teasing too.

Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine. Godspeed, Father Willoughby.