Going To Mass With My Dad

​This week my family attended mass with my father for the last time. A life-long catholic, during the last decade of his life my dad went to mass every morning. He didn't talk about it a lot. He had been adamant that he didn't want us raised catholic. He had too many issues with the politics of the catholic church. This wasn't the life he wanted for us, so he went every Sunday of my childhood to my mother's church where we attended as a family. Yet it was that church which held his path to God, which spoke the language of his heart. As I got older I would sometimes make an effort to go to mass with him when I visited. I would sit in church, unmoved by the ritual and formality of the catholic mass, and pray my own prayers, separate from what was going on around me. Afterward, he would introduce me, always  proud, to those he knew. I think it meant a lot to him to have me there. So I went.

Last Monday I went again. This time dressed in black and with my whole family beside me. This time I didn't sit beside my father. He lay in a box near the front of the church while we sat in the pews. The priests recited the rituals. The deacons sang a prayer. It was not the kind of service we would have chosen for ourselves. The prayers were not our own, there was very little personal about it. They didn't let us speak about him or share our own thoughts. It wasn't the kind of goodbye that we usually experience at funerals in our mother's tradition. But that's okay.

We said goodbye the night before at the visitation when dozens of people filled the hall, telling stories about him and sharing their love for him. We said goodbye after the service when the family took up two large tables at a local restaurant and talked and laughed and told stories about his life. Monday, the catholic service, wasn't my good bye. It wasn't comforting in the way funerals usually are for me. Instead it was a chance, one last chance, to honor my father and this path that he loved, to stand beside him and pay tribute to something which was sacred to him. It was my chance to attended mass with my father, one last time.