Another Excerpt from Upcoming Book - Chapter 8 - "My Very Long Vacation from God"

            I sat in church unable to cry the day after the funeral.   The church was empty, and I sat, three pews back, staring up at the 12-foot hanging crucifix and following the details of this statue with my eyes.  I gazed for what seemed like hours at the thorns digging into Jesus’s skull, the drops of blood running down his calm face, the cloth sheath that only covered his genitals.  I noticed the forgiveness in the eyes of this man-made sculpture.  I wished I could talk to Jesus in that moment because I had so many questions to ask him. 

Earlier that morning my Mother asked me to go to the store and get some milk.  She told me to grab five dollars from her purse.  As I shuffled through the papers and such I came across the letter I wrote to Dad, unopened and forgotten.  I flipped out; this was my only means of saving him last week.  The letter clearly told him to listen to the doctors and get to Mass General and I believed in all of my innocence that I failed to save him.  Of course I blamed my mother for this too—if only she’d listen to me.  This was my first encounter with true powerlessness.  I trusted God for all of this time and look what happened.  It all went wrong and I made a vow to myself while staring at my mother’s illness muse—Jesus Christ—that this would never happen again.  I changed that day in the empty church.  “Free spirited Stephie” was now “Don’t fuck with me Steph.”  It took some time to take this persona on completely because I had to retrain the world.  She eventually succeeded in taking over.  She was controlling, vengeful; she was in a personal war with life and ultimately God.  She was too young to understand she was really at war with herself and herself only.  Little did she care—the chip on her shoulder was enormous and she would fill that baby with enormous amounts of food and abuse. 

  My father gave me purpose.  I wanted to make him proud.  He was far from perfect, but in spite of his deep dark shadow, he was my support system and all I felt I had.  I knew I was going places when he was alive. 

I was an avid pray-er up until my Father’s death.  Every night I prayed and was filled with such love because of it.  The Lord’s Prayer, Hail Mary and the Act of Contrition each night like clockwork.   Then came “please bless…” and the list went on for 20 minutes.  I had to include everyone; I slept best when I remembered everyone.  Along with my loved ones, this also included all “the poor people, homeless, sick, well, etc., all people I didn’t know and just to cover my ass “anyone I’d forgotten.”  Then I brought it home with “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”  My relationship with God was beautiful.  It got me through the nightmare, all the episodes with my Mother, and the abandonment from her and my Father when he would leave us to go to the bars and then come home drunk and violent.  I knew God was there for me.  I was nicknamed “The free spirit.”  My family knew better than to ask me to be organized and practical.  They saw the budding idealist/optimist in me, and I wouldn’t let them touch it, and Dad was around to make sure it wasn’t touched.  I felt protected when he was alive.  I overlooked his flaws and he was my knight in shining armor.  And then he wasn’t. 

I saw them take the suit out of the house on the day of his wake.  The handsome pin striped suit and blue tie and wing tipped Italian leather shoes right out my front door.  The clothes that were filled with my father’s form just a couple weeks earlier at a family wedding.  I saw them hold the suit that would now be his burial attire, and it broke me.  What God would do this to my family and me?  How will I ever go on?  How will I live, how will I thrive?  “Daddy come back—this God you taught me to believe in has betrayed me.”