It seemed I was living in a tragedy I’d seen on television before. When the deputy and the victim’s advocate showed up on our porch, I thought, I’ve seen this on television. When the doctor broke the bad news to us, I figured, I know how this goes. As I wondered about Ann’s death, I braced myself for the dramatic showdown that would inevitably occur with Conor’s attorney, thinking, It’s happened a thousand times.
Perhaps we’d seen too many courtroom drama movies.
About nine months before Ann was shot—on Father’s Day—Andy and I were relaxing in the living room when Ann and Allyson came in and lingered near the sofa.
“You need something?” Andy asked. He recognized the look on both their faces. This was going to be a tag team effort.
Allyson smiled an awkward smile and came over to us. “You know how you always taught us to take care of animals? That if we find one that’s sick or injured, we should make sure it has shelter and help?”
We looked at each other, then Andy looked over their shoulders, expecting to see (or hear) their latest rescue. “Go on,” he said, waiting for them to reveal just what they had found.
The story spilled out. Ann had gotten a call from Conor. He was at a friend’s house, having literally been thrown out of his house by his dad. He had nowhere to go and only the clothes on his back.
“Can Conor stay here?” Ann blurted out, bracing for an immediate denial of her request.
“Where is Conor now?” I asked. The girls glanced past the kitchen to the small room off the carport. Conor shuffled in, his head hung low.
A lost puppy would not have looked more forlorn. His eyes were red as if he’d been crying, but there was more—red marks on his face. Fighting with his father? On Father’s Day of all days? It occurred to me how little we really knew about the parents and family life of the young man who was dating our daughter.
“What happened, Conor?” I asked him gently.
“I asked for the car to go to the movies,” he said. “My dad said no, and we started arguing about it. One thing led to another and all of a sudden, he just picked me up and threw me out the front door.”
I knew we were hearing only one side of the story, but the immediate problem was this young man standing in front us with no place to go. Compassion came first. Along with some rules.
Conor and Ann had just graduated from high school, and they were about to really experience the world in college. Conor had been accepted to Stanford but had chosen to go to Tallahassee Community College so he could be closer to Ann. Maybe by opening our home, we could help his last summer before college be less tension-filled.
“Ann,” Andy said, in his most serious dad-voice. “He can stay, but he’ll have to sleep in the rabbit room.” This wasn’t a bedroom with a cute rabbit motif; it was more of a mudroom or spare room where we had kept our pet rabbits when we first moved into the house. It had plenty of room for a spare bed and was where we often put visitors.
“Of course,” she said, leaning over and hugging me.
“But I’m going to call his mom to make sure she knows where her son is,” I said. “I bet she’s worried sick.”
“Fine!” she gushed.
I called Julie to tell her that Conor was at our house. She shared with us that the family had been in counseling. That’s good news, I thought with relief. I offered to make sure that Conor showed up to any appointments.
“It’s good they are working through their issues,” Andy said, relieved, before adding sternly, “and make sure he knows counseling is a condition of him living here.”
He lived with us for a couple of months, until he got an apartment with a few other guys while attending Tallahassee Community College. During those two months, we had the chance to get to know Conor. Even though it wasn’t ideal—he and his parents should’ve been enjoying their last few months together before he went to college—we grew close to Conor, and he became a part of the family.
Conor was the type of teenage boy I appreciated. Not the Eddie Haskell type: “Why, Mrs. Grosmaire, you look quite lovely in that outfit.” Nor was he a mumbly-mouth teen who wouldn’t look you straight in the eye. He said “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am” and even offered to do chores around the house when he stayed with us—like clearing brush and mowing the lawn.
We also had serious conversations about his life at home. I counseled him to work toward making himself the best person he could be and urged him to be accepting of his parents’ shortcomings. We can only change ourselves, and we can’t expect others to change for us. We are each on our own healing journey. He took it all in as much as any eighteen-year-old could. I know it would have been hard for me at eighteen to think I was the one who needed to change and not my parents.
Once Conor moved into his apartment, he suddenly became less of a family member. He and Ann had begun attending classes at Good Shepherd that would lead to Conor joining the church at Easter. But being across town at school, and with no transportation, he stopped attending the classes. Then, it appeared that Ann and Conor were no longer dating.
One day she stopped by my office and asked to use my phone. Clearly Conor was not answering when he saw her number flash up on the screen. When she called him from my phone, he answered. From the half of the conversation I heard, it seemed she wanted to meet and talk things over, but he was refusing.
On another occasion Andy and Ann were riding through Tallahassee on some sort of errand, when Andy posed a question.
“Does being with Conor make you a better person?” he asked.
They drove silently for about a mile before Ann burst into tears.
She never answered.
As with previous breakups, this one lasted only a few weeks. Soon they were back together again, and whatever tension had existed for those few weeks was gone.
That fall, Conor came to Andy and asked for a job. Though Andy wasn’t convinced it was a good idea, he thought it might give Conor a chance to prove himself in the workplace—in the mailroom, actually. He took in the mail, sorted it, and passed it out to people at their desks. He also did odds and ends—scanning, moving paper from one desk to another, and anything else that popped up over the course of the day. Andy wasn’t his direct supervisor, so he figured that giving Conor a job would offer him the opportunity to make a little money and to better himself.
If working for Andy was an effort to demonstrate maturity, it failed. Right off the bat, Conor showed up late and called in sick frequently. He had a hard time adjusting to his new life of living on his own and going to school full time.
Thankfully he didn’t directly answer to Andy, but that didn’t mean Andy didn’t notice how he was barely doing the minimum to get by. “You know,” Andy said to Conor’s direct supervisor after a few weeks, “feel free to treat Conor just like anybody else. It isn’t doing me any favors by keeping him on if he’s not doing the work.” Then, to make sure she understood, he added, “You don’t need my permission to fire him.”
Conor wasn’t fired, and Andy watched his struggles from afar. Then, one crisp October day, Conor showed up at Andy’s office unannounced.
“What can I help you with, Conor?”
“Mr. Grosmaire, I’d love to go to lunch with you next week sometime.”
It was a curious visit, but Andy agreed to the unexpected request. By the time their lunch meeting rolled around, Andy had gone over several scenarios in his mind. Why would Conor want to talk privately with him? He’d braced himself for the worst. Halfway through their sandwiches, Conor worked up the courage to say what he’d wanted to say to Andy.
“I’d like to ask you for Ann’s hand in marriage,” Conor said.
This was the “worst” Andy had feared. It’s not that he didn’t like Conor. In fact—after all we’d been through together—he loved the boy. But that’s what he was. A boy. Though Ann and Conor had dated all through high school and now into college, he didn’t appear to be growing into manhood well. Not only did he show a lack of responsibility at work, but also he’d frequently keep Ann out past her curfew and flout our household rules.
To be fair, he’d been going through a challenging time of life. First, he’d left his parents’ house rather abruptly and lived with us before moving into an apartment with other college students he didn’t know. But even though he was now effectively on his own, he hadn’t developed the life skills required to keep a household. He lost an unhealthy amount of weight during that first semester at school, since his diet consisted of ramen noodles and Red Bull. He didn’t seem to sleep well. Plus, he and his family were supposedly in counseling—but they didn’t seem to go on a regular basis. We figured he’d need some time to figure out his family issues before trying to have a family of his own.
Andy took a long sip of his iced tea, trying to think of a clever response. How can a dad cloak the fact that he doesn’t want his daughter to marry this person at this time? He wanted to say no, or at least that they needed to wait. But he knew that declining to give a blessing might make them more apt to run off and get married anyway.
“It’s a big step, Conor,” Andy said. “I’ll have to think about it.” But before the sentence was out of his mouth, he noticed Conor’s face fall. For the rest of the meal, they picked at their food and slurped their drinks until the waitress mercifully brought their check.
When Andy got home, he and I sat on the couch to discuss all the angles.
“They’re obviously not ready for marriage,” I said. “Neither of them.”
“What if I try to talk her out of it, but it only pushes her toward him?” Andy asked.
“You think they’ll elope?” I asked.
“If we say no, then what better way to defy your parents than to run off to Vegas?”
It was true. We had laid down our curfew policy, but our rules only seemed to cause them to break them even more.
“And think of how disappointed Ann will be if we say no,” I said.
We both knew it would devastate her if we “ruined” this momentous occasion in her life. At that very time, she and Conor were probably feverishly discussing the lunch conversation from their point of view and what it meant for their future.
After we rolled the topic around for hours, Andy said, “I think it comes down to this: Do I want to be known as the father who blessed their marriage or the one who cursed it?”
We sat quietly as we contemplated the answer to that question.
Wednesday morning at the hospital, we came in to a touching surprise.
“Look!” I said to Andy as we walked into the room. I stopped in my tracks. During her shift, Marie—the night nurse—had washed Ann’s hair and braided it.
“I didn’t even know if she still had hair!” I gasped. After all the head trauma, we assumed most of it was gone except the small part that wasn’t covered by her head dressing. The braid was just a little touch of kindness, but it meant so much to us.
“How do these look?” a nurse named Pattie said, as she slipped the boots covered in thick gray fur onto Ann’s feet as she lay in the bed. The special boots kept her feet bent to prevent them “freezing” in a pointed position.
“They’re certainly a fashion statement, especially with that hospital gown,” I said, tilting my head to consider them. “But she always wanted Uggs.”
As odd as it sounds, we established a “normal life” at the hospital. We became friends with the nurses, who tended to Ann with such care and kindness.
“You guys should bring in some photos,” Marie suggested Wednesday evening. “I’d love to see what Ann looked like before all this.”
Her sweet request gave us the opportunity to look through pictures from cell phones and photo albums. I even found her baby “brag book,” which visitors enjoyed flipping through as they sat in her room. One particular photo—of Ann pushing her sister through Costco in a large grocery cart—caused everyone to smile until the contrast to the girl asleep in the hospital bed caused the smiles to fade.
In a further effort to make Ann comfortable, we arranged her special stuffed animals around her in bed; her boss from the store placed a Sophie giraffe on her bedside table; and we tucked a hand-crocheted afghan, a graduation present from her friend Khadijah, nicely around her legs.
Visitors came and went all day in our makeshift “home.” Even though the priests from Good Shepherd didn’t plan to stagger their arrivals, there always seemed to be at least one of them in our conversations, in the waiting room, or by our side. Being Holy Week, it probably was the most inconvenient time for them to drop everything to be with us at the hospital. Though Easter is an important holiday for all Christian denominations, some merely consider it a special Sunday when children wear new clothes, have an egg hunt on the church property, and gorge on melted chocolate infused with blades of grass. But it’s the holiest week of the year for Catholics—the high point of the liturgical calendar—and it represents the core of our faith and source of our salvation. We reorient our lives around the church, and special masses are held during the week.
Holy Week is ushered in the Sunday before Good Friday, which is known as Palm Sunday. It’s a celebration of Jesus’ triumphant entrance into Jerusalem when crowds welcomed, worshipped, and laid down palm leaves before him. Of course, that’s not how the story ends. Holy Week contains the greatest tragedy and sorrow of the year.
The story of the arrest, trial, and suffering of Jesus is called the Passion, after a Latin word meaning “suffering.” The whole week contains a certain sobriety, as the parish walks through the agony of Christ and relives the Gospel of Luke from beginning to end. Early in the week, each church in the city holds a penance service, and there are always several priests on hand for the sacrament of reconciliation, or what people commonly know as “confession.”
“Would you mind hearing our confessions while you’re here?” Andy asked Father Kevin, after he realized we’d not been able to make it to any of the penance services that week. Father Kevin smiled as he brought out a stole from his pocket and placed a band of colored cloth around his neck.
“Always prepared,” he said, gesturing to a more private room for our individual confessions. The sacrament of reconciliation is a time for us to sit down and reflect on our lives, to admit the things we have done that don’t live up to God’s standards. In the book of 1 John, God instructs us about the practice: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1:9). After confession, the priest usually assigns some sort of penance. This is simply an action that someone can take to reestablish the relationship between the sinner and God, in order to restore God’s grace.
At least that’s how it is supposed to work.
Once I went to confession with the girls when they were teenagers. Father Bill, who was probably eighty years old at the time, heard the confessions of Sarah, Allyson, and Ann first.
As I entered the room, he said, “Are those your daughters?”
For a moment I hesitated. Since I had no idea what the girls had confessed, I wondered if I should I claim them. He laughed at my pause before assuring me, “They’re great girls.”
Relieved, I knelt down and said, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been three months since my last confession.”
“I have anger toward my husband. I don’t give him the respect he deserves, and I argue with him frequently,” I confessed.
“For your penance,” Father Bill said, “say the Our Father twice, very slowly.” In a way, penance completes the process.
Most people would’ve come out of the room, prayed, said their penance, and gone on with their lives. But I couldn’t. More accurately, I wouldn’t. Not that day. In fact, I may have left angrier than when I arrived. I had secretly hoped that after I told Father Bill why I was so angry with my husband, he would side with me or justify my anger. I imagined Andy sitting at home, not even thinking of our fight, and certainly not acknowledging that he had any fault in it. And there I was, humbling myself before God.
I was sick of being the one doing all the work! I loaded the girls into my car and went along with my errands of the day, without obeying Father Bill’s instruction.
The next morning, when I woke up, I turned over and saw Andy sleeping soundly on his side of the bed. As I looked at him, oblivious to what he’d done, it dawned on me that I still hadn’t done my penance. Then, with equal force, it dawned on me that I didn’t care. I secretly relished the fact that I wasn’t completing my penance. To do so would be to admit my wrongdoing, which somehow seemed to relieve Andy of any responsibility. No one but God knew I was in rebellion against Andy, which made it easier to maintain. I guess I hoped I could teach him a lesson, that my anger would somehow hurt him enough that he’d change. And so I pouted, considered how wrongly Andy had treated me, and congratulated myself for taking my faith more seriously than he did.
It took a lot of energy. Maintaining a steady stream of hostility, contempt, and aggression toward him did little or nothing to Andy, but it ate me up. Finally, after an entire week, I got tired of it. I got down on my knees next to my bed (though I rarely do this when praying), folded my hands together, and said the words the priest had instructed.
“Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name,” I said, very slowly. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.”
As a Catholic, I’d probably recited this prayer thousands of times. We say it as a part of the mass before taking Holy Communion, the Liturgy of the Hours, and the rosary. But there was something different about saying it this time. Father Bill had instructed me to say it deliberately. Slowly. Twice.
“And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” I said. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, amen.”
And then, after taking a deep breath, I said it all again.
“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” I repeated, really spacing out the words as instructed, letting their meaning cling to me, change me.
By the time I said “amen”—the second time—God’s grace washed over me. When I acknowledged my own sin without focusing on Andy’s, the bitterness was taken away. Only when it was gone did I realize that God’s grace had been kept from me because I was unwilling to obey and feel his forgiveness.
Forgiveness didn’t come naturally to me. If doors could come off their hinges when slammed, we would’ve replaced all the doors at our house. I’m a really good door slammer. Many times in our marriage, my anger at Andy was probably disproportionate to the offense. At the beginning of every month—after we deposited Andy’s paycheck—we’d go to Walmart and buy all our major groceries. My paycheck covered eggs, milk, and bread—all the “fill-in” groceries that need to be replenished over the course of life. My money also paid for the girls’ music lessons and the extraneous things that seem to pop up all the time. Because he handled the bills, I never challenged his financial decisions; and I expected him to return the favor.
I’ll never forget the time we were shopping at the beginning of the month when I picked up a box of generic Oatee O’s.
“The girls like Honey Nut Cheerios,” he said, picking up a brand-name box and sticking it in the cart.
“But that box costs $1.50 more.”
“We can afford to get the girls the kind of cereal they want,” he laughed.
“I don’t think they taste that much better,” I said.
“But the girls like this one,” Andy repeated, and the more expensive cereal remained in the cart.
Just one aisle later, I picked up a bag of Starbucks dark roast ground coffee.
“Wait,” he said, holding up a generic brand. “Here’s one that’s half the price.”
“I thought we could occasionally splurge on the things we like,” I said, putting the Starbucks into the cart, right next to the cereal to emphasize my point.
“This is just as good,” Andy insisted. “We’ll get this kind.”
“But I like Starbucks better. We’re talking about pennies per cup of coffee.”
He didn’t even bother to respond, but instead just reached into our cart, removed the Starbucks, and replaced it with the cheaper version.
“You’re overreacting. Coffee is coffee,” he said. “Why are you so upset about this?”
“You’re buying Honey Nut Cheerios because that’s what the girls like,” I said, “but you refuse to buy the coffee I like because it’s too expensive.”
“But they like the Honey Nut,” he said, in the most unassuming voice. He had absolutely no idea why this was problematic, which dumbfounded me. I didn’t know how to respond, but I grew livid as I stood under those fluorescent lights.
“I’m buying the kind of coffee I want from my own checking account,” I said, very slowly, holding the coffee next to me. “I’ll just have the cashier ring this up separately, so you don’t have to take out a loan for it.”
It was the kind of argument that escalated quickly, both of us shocked that we were standing in the middle of an aisle, furious at the other. People looking for their own coffee products scooted by to give us privacy. Then the whole way home I tried to explain how it wasn’t about the coffee, but how he didn’t think enough of me to buy the good coffee. He never understood. For him it was only about saving money.
Another time we were shopping for a new car. As we walked through the Hyundai parking lot to the new vehicles, one of the SUVs from the used car lot caught my eye. It was a shiny, black Mercedes, and—because it was used—it was priced about the same as the new vehicles we were going to see.
“Oh, Andy,” I said. “Look at that! Can we test-drive it?”
“Why do you want to test-drive a Mercedes?”
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s just drive it and have some fun!”
“We’re not going to buy a Mercedes.”
“I know. But it’s here, and it’s a beautiful day,” I urged. “Let’s just take it for a spin.”
“But if you’re not going to buy it,” he said, “why do you want to drive it?”
“Because it’s a Mercedes,” I said, feeling that should’ve settled it. “I’m never going to have another chance to drive a Mercedes!”
When we got home, I slammed the door to my bedroom, flopped myself on the bed, and cried out to God.
“What am I supposed to do with him?” I asked. By this time in our marriage—after seventeen years—our relationship was stretched really thin. After I gave birth to Ann, I had another stillbirth. It seemed particularly cruel for us to bury two babies. To add even more heartache, this time it was a boy we’d named Lucien. The tragedies that we’d gone through, not having a church home, and the normal wear and tear on all relationships had taken a toll. As the years went by, we had been attending church less and less. The Methodist church didn’t seem to have the spirituality I was looking for. Andy and I would joke that we knew the sermon was over only after the minister had told three jokes and at least one fishing story. After going there for several years, I discovered there are twenty-six tenets of the Methodist faith, and I couldn’t name one of them. I always felt like a Catholic who went to a Methodist church—never a true Methodist.
Just before Sarah entered the sixth grade, when she would have started going to the youth group, I found out from a friend that the church had a sex ed class for the youth. I’m sure part of the course was abstinence, but I was shocked to learn that they also taught them how to use birth control—just in case, in a you-know-how-kids-are-these-days type way.
Andy and I knew we couldn’t attend a church that taught our daughters what we felt was our duty to teach them. In a way this incident made us take our faith more seriously, and it awakened my deep longing to return to the church of my youth.
“We need to take the girls to church,” I said, after several weeks of sleeping in on Sunday. Though Andy agreed, we didn’t quite live up to our aspiration of church attendance, and the weeks turned into months, which turned into years.
One fall Sunday in 1999, Andy was out of town, and I took the girls to a Catholic church named Good Shepherd for mass. We filed into a pew near the front, with the girls sitting on my left near the center aisle. We listened to the announcements—they were having a weekend retreat—and the homily. But when it came time for communion, something went awry. Ann, who was the youngest and totally unaware of how things work in a Catholic church, stood up and got in line with everyone else.
Sarah and Allyson scooted out of the pew to retrieve their sister. Somehow, and I’m still not sure how, they ended up in line as well. It was too late. We were so close to the front of church, it was all over before I could reach the end of the pew.
When I made it up to the priest, I held out my hands and he placed the host on my palm.
“The body of Christ,” he said.
“Amen,” I said.
But instead of the priest moving on to the person behind me, he leaned over to me and whispered, motioning to my girls. “They aren’t Catholic, are they?”
I guess it was obvious they didn’t know what they were doing.
Up to that point, I had been enjoying the mass. The familiar rituals and prayers. Reciting the creed and acknowledging to myself that, yes, I did believe all those things. Now, however, I went back to the pew, devastated, my face reddening with shame. My girls were Catholic. At least my oldest two were, because they’d been baptized in the Church. But I knew that’s not what he meant.
Just because they were baptized Catholic didn’t make them Catholic, any more than me attending the Methodist church had made me Methodist. My daughters really didn’t know what it meant to be a member of the faith into which they had been baptized. If I didn’t like the Methodist church, then I should’ve found another one—any other church. I should never have let my family languish for years without a spiritual anchor.
After mass, I went up to the priest.
“I just wanted to explain about what happened in there,” I said. “Actually two of my daughters are, in fact, Catholic. At least, they were baptized . . .”
After he listened to my convoluted story of unrealized potential and broken vows, he simply said, “Enroll them in religious education.” It wasn’t an admonishment, and it wasn’t a suggestion. It was a gentle commandment.
I knew it was a message straight from God.
Almost immediately, I plunged into the heart of the church. I enrolled our family as members, attended a weekend retreat, and started faithfully attending mass. Even though Good Shepherd was a place I’d never regularly attended, I finally felt I’d come home. And I couldn’t help but sing out my praises louder than anyone else during the mass. Suddenly God became so alive to me that I often teared up as I sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth.”
But one of my first priorities was to enroll my girls in the religious education program. They took it pretty well.
“It’s an obligation that I have as your parent,” I explained as they loaded up into the car to go to church for their lessons. “To bring you up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”
“Aren’t we already ‘up’?” asked Allyson.
“How long will it last?” Ann asked.
“Well, it starts now and ends in December next year.”
“We’ll be in college by the time this is over,” Sarah groaned.
“Listen,” I said. “All kids count the weeks until summer break. This won’t hurt you, and it might even be good for you.”
But even as we dove headfirst into church, it added yet another issue to my relationship with Andy. When he had said he thought we should get the girls in church, I’m sure he wasn’t thinking of the Catholic Church. While I had been willing to go to any church Andy wanted, neither of us really wanted to return to the Methodist church we’d been attending. By then I had no desire to search for another “compromise” church. “I feel like an outsider,” Andy said to me as he saw how dedicated I’d become to the church in just a few short months. “It’s like you’ve moved on spiritually to a church that won’t even allow me to take Communion with you.”
We talked—sometimes for hours—about what he thought were the Catholic Church’s overly restrictive rules regarding joining the Church and participating in the Lord’s Supper. Secretly, I knew Andy wouldn’t feel so rejected if he didn’t really want to be a part of it.
And so, we went about our spiritual lives separately. Because I was now involved in putting on a spring retreat for women, I knew that a men’s weekend retreat was coming up as well. More than anything else, I wanted Andy to attend . . . not because I expected any great conversion, but rather because I felt that he had no real, deep friendships. He knew people at work, but how many of them were good Christian men? I knew I couldn’t push him. So instead, I prayed. And prayed. Then, when I felt completely discouraged, I prayed some more.
“God, please open Andy’s heart so that he’ll go on the retreat weekend and meet good Christian men.”
At the very last minute—on Thursday night—he decided to go. When he returned a couple of days later, he seemed to have had a good time. That fall, we were walking through the Walmart parking lot, back to the scene of the Honey Nut Cheerios and Starbucks showdown. I was wondering if we’d get through our grocery shopping without conflict when Andy casually said, “I’m thinking of going to that class at church you mentioned.”
“Really?” I tried to maintain a nonchalance in my voice that didn’t betray how much I’d prayed for this moment.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just to learn.”
In December 2000, Allyson and Ann made their First Communion. And on Easter Vigil in 2001, my husband and daughter Sarah became full members of the Church.
Though Andy had become a member of the Catholic Church, our troubles did not end. We decided to go to counseling to save what was left of our union.
After months of sessions, to our complete surprise, the counselor looked us straight in the eyes and delivered the bad news.
“I’ll have to be honest with you,” she said. “You are the most incompatible couple I’ve ever met. I see no option for you but divorce.”
It was one thing to be furious at Andy and wonder if I could ever get along with him. It was another for a stranger to diagnose us as “incurable.” Suddenly, Andy and I were united in a common cause: being furious at, then later laughing at, this counselor who was supposed to be helping us save our marriage. We didn’t go back to her. But a united front against a wacky counselor wasn’t enough to set our relationship on solid ground. Once, after Andy did something particularly offensive, I wondered how on earth we’d survive.
Was that counselor right?
“He doesn’t get me, God,” I prayed, after running to our bedroom, slamming the door, and burying my head in a pillow. “He’ll never get me, and he’s such a jerk. What am I supposed to do?”
“Forgive him.”
Where did that voice come from? And anyway, why should I forgive him? How will he learn his lesson if I forgive him?
“Forgive him,” said the voice again. No matter how much I argued, the answer was the same: “Forgive him.”
It seemed impossible.
Then, something happened. It was one of those marital incidents between us that made me wonder, Will we survive this? Can I forgive him? Though I tried to suppress the incident, the pain of it lingered in my heart for several months. Finally, I asked for the help of a Catholic marriage counselor, who met with me in a chapel.
“God, please be present with us,” he prayed.
We talked about the pain I was feeling, and how I couldn’t shake it.
“What does God want you to know about this?”
As I sat there in the quiet chapel, I went from tears to laughter.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s like the song,” I said, and began singing, “Jesus loves me, this I know.”
I heard God telling me that Andy loves me imperfectly. When I’m feeling imperfectly loved by my husband, I should remember that God loves me perfectly.
What a simple message! God loves me always.
I realized that Andy’s inability to trust me—and his need for control—came from his family history, not a lack of love for me. Suddenly, a weight had been taken from my shoulders. God loves me unconditionally, and he asks me to show that sort of love toward others. Slowly, I realized something else.
I don’t love Andy perfectly either.
Not only was I able to forgive Andy, but also I asked him to forgive me for not being able to love him perfectly either.
In 2005 I joined the Secular Franciscan Order, which is a community of people who pattern their lives after Christ in the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi. That meant I stood up in church and said, “It is my intention to live a gospel life.”
Of course, all Christians should be living a “gospel life,” but this was an intentional change, a permanent calling. In AD 1208, St. Francis showed people who weren’t able to commit to the priesthood (because of family commitments or because they weren’t ready to take a vow of poverty) how to live gospel-saturated lives—at home and at work—and to spread the good news of Christ among their neighbors and community. In “The Letter to All the Faithful,” he wrote that we should live “a renewed life characterized by charity, forgiveness, and compassion toward others.” And so, as I stood in front of the church and made my vows, I prayed.
“God, help me to be patient and to be more forgiving.”
My marriage, I knew, depended on it.
Suddenly the world presented many opportunities to try out my new convictions. Very soon afterward, a church retreat planning committee was communicating via e-mail. As we discussed the itinerary for the retreat, some dissension arose among the “get up at a reasonable time” and the “sleep in” groups. When I emphasized that we should enforce “Lights Out” to encourage people to go to sleep at a reasonable hour since the wake-up call would be at 6:30 a.m., someone—perhaps intending to e-mail a smaller group of people that didn’t include me—wrote, “Who does Kate think she is? We can do whatever we want. It’s our retreat.” And, to make it even more maddening, he insinuated he didn’t want to listen to my counsel because I was a woman—even though I’d been placed in that position by Father Mike.
It boiled my blood. My instinct was to fire off an e-mail defending myself, along with a few choice words for my accuser. This time, however, I stopped, took my hands away from the keyboard, and prayed.
What does God want me to see in this e-mail?
After collecting myself, I replied to everyone with a simple message: “The retreat manual was written for a purpose, to guide us on how to do the weekends. I think Father Mike would back me up on the schedule.”
The next time I saw the man at church, I could tell he was embarrassed.
“Hey,” he said, approaching me cautiously. “I’m sorry about that whole e-mail thing.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I forgive you.”
It wasn’t the parting of the Red Sea, but sensing God transform my heart like that was nothing short of miraculous. But here’s the real miracle. Not only did I say that I forgave him, but I really—in my heart—forgave him.
From that point on, I chose as often as possible to forgive people who hurt me—from the guy who cut me off in traffic, to a rude cashier, to Andy when our arguments involve more than cereal or coffee purchases. I was becoming a forgiving person, in spite of my natural inclination toward anger. I practiced forgiveness—repeatedly—on Andy.
As I tried to live a more charitable life, my own shortcomings became even more obvious. Not only did I need to forgive; I needed forgiveness. Forgiveness became less of a commandment I was trying to follow and more of a lifestyle. My heart softened toward those who’d done wrong, especially now that I realized how much I do wrong.
I began to relish my time in confession. To non-Catholics, it might seem odd to walk into a booth and tell a priest your sins. But all Christians should take confession seriously, because it is the way forgiveness is applied.
James 5:16 says, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” Then, 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” So, as we sat in the hospital watching Ann fight for her last breaths, it was important for me to be able to confess my sins during Easter week.
I waited for Andy to come out of the small room that the Neuro ICU used as a consultation space, but which also served as a place for us to have occasional meetings. We met with the sheriff’s detectives in this room and conversed with the hospital staff there. It was the size of a small office, maybe ten by ten, and had four comfortable chairs, a table with a pretty lamp, and soothing pictures on the walls. On that day it also served as our makeshift confessional booth. Normally I prepare for confession by examining my conscience and trying to be aware of everything I’ve done that violated God’s command to love him and others by obeying his laws. This week, however, I hadn’t had time to really think about my sins with all that was going on. But I said a quick prayer to the Holy Spirit, asking for guidance in the thing that was most keeping me from a full relationship with God. And an odd little thing came to mind.
I crossed myself, and began. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was one month ago.”
Father Kevin looked at me kindly, waiting for my confession. Honestly, as I prayed, what came to mind was theft. I’d gotten into the habit of putting Splenda in my iced tea and taking a few of the yellow packets for my purse. I knew it wasn’t the worst sin in the world, but I also knew that restaurant owners across Tallahassee didn’t expect to supply my sweetener needs just because I bought one drink from them.
Father Kevin is a jovial man who loves to laugh. He talks about God in simple, yet somehow deep, ways at the same time. He managed not to laugh at my big confession, but I detected a look of amusement passing over his face. Perhaps he expected some sort of angsty confession—of my lack of trust in God, of anger toward Conor, in despair over the tragedy that had come upon our house. Oddly, however, I felt closer to God that week than perhaps ever before. The church community had surrounded us, buoyed us with prayer, and loved us well.
“Anything else?” he asked, his voice full of compassion.
After lunch on Thursday, Andy went to Ann’s room to find some peace and quiet after a busy morning. He knew he wouldn’t have too many more opportunities to sit with her, so he valued every second. He liked to sit in her room and talk to her—about his feelings and thoughts, dealing with the family, or reading the latest comments from the online website, CaringBridge, where friends followed her progress. That afternoon, as on each one before, he prayed the daytime prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours with her. By this time, Andy realized that God was not going to heal Ann, but she was not lost to him yet. After he finished praying, he stood over Ann and listened to her steady breathing and the noise of the medical machines, looking for some sort of sign. He no longer had hope in the occasional twitch of Ann’s hands or legs. They were now as routine as everything else in the room.
Father Will knocked on the door.
“May I stay and pray?” he asked. His innocent and hopeful demeanor comforted Andy, so he nodded and moved to the foot of the bed. The grief in the room was so thick that both men waited in silence. We’d decided to take Ann off any means of artificial life support the next day, so it was now a matter of hours. Andy turned back to Ann, but when he looked at her, this time he looked beyond her. What prayers are left to say? he wondered. What am I still looking for?
Father Will sat in a chair near Ann’s bed. The ventilator, which both men knew would soon be turned off, whooshed rhythmically. She appeared to be asleep.
When Andy looked down at Ann’s body, something happened. Instead of seeing Ann lying there in the hospital bed, he saw Christ. He looked away for a moment and shook his head. Is this real?
When he looked back at Ann, the vision remained.
The Lord and Ann had become one. Where he normally saw Ann’s face, he saw the face of Jesus. They blended together but somehow still remained separate. Her arm trailed down to become the hand of Jesus. Both her hand and Jesus’ were wrapped in bandages—they had both been pierced, one by a nail and the other by the blast of a gun. There was an overwhelming presence of peace in the room. It wasn’t strong, but just ambient . . . as if it had always existed.
He saw movement in the room, but he didn’t want to avert his eyes.
“Father Will,” Andy whispered, “do you see?”
Father Will stood up and walked over to Andy’s side. “What’s going on?” he asked, sensing the urgency in Andy’s voice.
Andy motioned to the bed. “I see Jesus lying there in the bed. Do you see him? But Ann is there too.”
“I don’t see it,” he said. “What else do you see? Both Jesus and Ann right here?”
“I don’t see two distinct people,” Andy said. “They’re one and the same. I can’t tell where her body ends and Jesus’ begins. They’re the same.”
“Jesus is here?”
“There!” He pointed to the bed.
Father Will leaned forward with a gentle and tender offering at the foot of the hospital bed, of the cross. He kissed the feet of Ann and Jesus. He moved to their bandaged hands and kissed them. He leaned forward and kissed the wounds on their heads. Andy was overwhelmed with a new sense of love in the room, as he watched Father Will touch the wounds of Christ, just as Thomas had touched Jesus’ wounds thousands of years ago. He recognized this person in the bed as someone to whom he’d given his life.
What else can you do in the presence of God?
Andy’s whole body began to rejoice and sing. He said he never felt more fully alive, as all the angst and sorrow of the past few days were temporarily replaced by an intense joy and happiness. He gazed onto the body of Christ, realizing that he’d misunderstood what had happened on Monday at two o’clock in the morning. He had believed he was having an “argument” with Ann over forgiving Conor. However, it wasn’t Ann at all. Jesus was the one asking Andy to forgive Conor.
It was God himself.
This penetrated his heart. When God asked him to forgive, it carried much more gravity than when Ann had been the one requesting it. Andy started crying, but not tears of sadness. Tears of joy flowed from his eyes as Jesus was asking him to do something.
Forgive.
The answer was yes. Andy forgave Conor right then and there, and not with the reluctant kind of forgiveness he’d proffered to Ann in exasperation a few nights before. Andy had never said no to Jesus before. Why would he start then?
A sense of awe overcame Andy, and he fell to his knees. Tears of happiness rolled down his face. Father Will knelt beside him and put his hand on his shoulder. Andy bowed his head and thanked and praised God for his love and mercy.
“Lord, how tender and merciful you are with me to come and show me what is so evident. You’ve always been with Ann. When she couldn’t speak, you spoke for her. How blind I’ve been not to recognize what’s so evident now. You’ve been and always will be one with her as she is now with you.” He felt Father Will hug him, and he realized that if Jesus was one with Ann, then he must also be one with Conor. “Yes, I will be obedient to what you ask,” he said. “Yes, I’ll forgive Conor.”
When he raised his head, he looked back to the hospital bed.
There, he saw only Ann, and he heard the whoosh of the machines once again.
Before we left the hospital that night, we shared with the nurses our decision to remove Ann from the ventilator the following day. As the neurosurgeon had predicted, her organs were failing. We received the news that day that her pituitary gland was shutting down, causing other systems to fail. We had to face the inevitable.
That evening we were in Ann’s bedroom discussing how things would go on Friday. I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that my name was scrawled on a list somewhere at the Leon County jail. I’d decided to go visit Conor.
Even more than that, I’d decided to forgive him.
It had started on Tuesday evening, when the McBrides came to see us. I’d said, “We don’t define Conor by that one moment.” For some reason, as I said those words, they reinforced in my head what I was feeling in my spirit.
I had forgiven the man who shot my daughter.
Of course, this was in keeping with the vows I’d taken at church—to live a life of patience, charity, and forgiveness . . . a life “worthy of the gospel.” But I had no idea how Andy, the big bear of a daddy, would feel if I went to the jail and offered forgiveness to the person who changed our family forever.
I wasn’t even sure if I could say the words, but I knew—at a very deep level—it was true.
“I’m going to see Conor tomorrow.”
“Really?” Andy said.
“I want to see him before Ann dies,” I said. I definitely didn’t want to be the one to break the news that his fiancée had died. “I think it’d be simpler.”
Andy nodded.
“Is there anything you want me to tell him?” I asked hesitantly.
“Actually, yes,” he said, looking at me. “Tell him I love him and forgive him.”