One year.

When I was in tenth grade, the confirmation into the Catholic Church that I'd managed to fight off for a year came around, and this time my mother insisted that I had to do it. I didn't believe in it, but I was 15 when the year began and few people think a 15 year old knows anything about what she believes; the feeling I got was that my mom wanted us all seen that far through our Catholic indoctrination so that she could say she had raised us Catholic. I could be doing her an injustice there, but then again, in our arguments about it, she never articulated a different or better reason.

So I had to go to weird CCD with the only other older kids who had for one reason or another not made it through in ninth grade like everybody else. And while I resented it mightily, the classes themselves were fine; I was a good student and could answer questions about the reading and doctrine. No one asked if you actually believed anything under discussion. Instead I would argue--not angrily, not even emotionally--with my father most weeks as he drove me to class. He didn't let me out of it, but he never dismissed me as some smug teenager who was just being spiteful.

Toward the end of my sophomore year, it was letter time in the confirmation process. We had to write letters to the monsignor about why we felt ready to join the Church as adults; we would in turn receive a letter from a parent and our confirmation sponsor when we went on a Saturday retreat in the church basement.

To show how Just Plain Off we often were in my family:

* My letter to the monsignor, which to my knowledge no one but he or I ever laid eyes on--assuming he actually did dutifully read the flood of Why I Am a Good Catholic essays he got--was all about my sincere doubts in Catholic doctrine and my growing feeling that being confirmed would be a form of serious disrespect.

* I didn't have a letter from my sponsor because my mom overruled my sponsor choice (my sister Jonna, older than me by one year) and we didn't rope my uncle into it in a timely manner.

The one good thing to come out of this is the letter I have from my father. Because we are Iaconos and that means we never have band-aids, juice, or stationery like normal people, it is handwritten on loose-leaf and folded inside a security envelope, an item that to my mind still always means "Dad". Despite being a horrifically messy person, I have held onto it for over a decade now. I can't reproduce it here verbatim, because it's too much my own. But it begins with him acknowledging and respecting that I didn't believe I should be there. Just taking me seriously, which means a lot at 16. He then said a handful of very kind, very loving, very wonderful things that were impossible to believe about myself at that age and are still not easy now. And lastly, and in perfect balance to the opening that treated my beliefs and feelings as real and worthy of respect, he ended it, "You'll always be the baby."

A short time later, I was confirmed. I have not gone to a mass since apart from weddings and funerals. The basic beliefs I had come to at 15--that I do not believe in a god that involves itself in our daily lives, that there is no afterlife and we are consequently obliged to make this one as just and humane as we can--have not changed. It is a year today since my father died, suddenly and without a goodbye, and the letter has been much more of a comfort than the well-meant assurances of others that "he's still here" or we'll meet again. I do not believe he is still here; I believe that the fact that he was here has to be enough. He was a very loving, very gentle, very funny man, and we were incredibly lucky to have had parents who never once made us question our importance in their lives. It's more than a lot of people get, and in this last year when I have cried more than I knew possible, I have kept trying to remind myself of that.

It hasn't always worked. I can remember vividly the first time I returned to my apartment after his funeral; there was a street fair going on and as I carried my bag of black clothing from the subway I wanted to punch everybody I saw in the face. (I didn't.) For the past year I've felt like I had no skin; like every breeze blew over a wound, like everyone knew just by looking at me that I was wrong, like every handshake was dangerous for me and unpleasant at best for the other person. As someone who is usually reserved--who updates this page so infrequently precisely because of discomfort with the world at large knowing too much about me--it's been strange, painful, and occasionally liberating to be so fucked up I can't contain it anymore and to realize that, even at this level of internal chaos, even feeling so itchy and clumsy and trapped, I still haven't done anyone harm or made too many excuses or seen the world end because people knew I had a problem.

To return to the sort-of point, I still haven't traded in my old beliefs. As comforting as it would be, I do not believe in a great afterlife where I will get to hug my dad again. I do not believe there is a silver lining to death. There are things to hold onto in the flood and things to learn. I'm holding onto what my dad was, what he taught me, how he radiated love for us from his every pore. I'm trying to learn how to live in such a way that people who meet me will know just how wonderful my parents were. (Progress needed.) And I'm trying to forgive this indifferent universe for the small, sharp pains of this loss (chief among those: my having had to ask the presumably well-meaning doctor "Is my father dead?" before she would finally tell me) as well as the great ones (just being without him, and him never knowing the grandson he would have loved so much). One forgiveness I was able to find: for our archdiocese, which stupidly and offensively no longer permits family members to eulogize in church. There's no good reason for it; certainly no doctrinal one or it wouldn't vary from region to region. Our priest's allowing my uncle to say a few impromptu words at the cemetery was kind, but not enough. But this church, which I fought not to join, did give me the letter. It's not my dad. But it is in his hand and his words saying how much he loved me. It may be as much of him as I'll ever have again. For that I thank them.

Posted by Adair at May 7, 2006 11:51 PM

Posted to best-of