Easter, 2021

A priest and an atheist walk into a bar. 

No, that’s not what happened.

A priest and an atheist walk into Peggy’s bedside. (I prefer the word Humanist which is closer to my belief than Atheist which refers only to what I don't believe.) The man of the cloth is Father Patrick Comerford, hospital chaplain. Whatever gold dust he carries is exactly what Peggy has reception for. Her own resources are sparked. His simple presence mends bones, quiets a clamorous heart and recharges her cells.

We talk about pubs in Dublin, the poet / priest Gerard Manley Hopkins and his sister, Irish writers, the history of Trinity College, his days as a tennis champ, his brother the taxi driver, Vin Scully……. everything, thank God, but religion.

Father Paddy could have come out of central casting with his ruddy face, shock of white hair and County Cork brogue. In my early days I remember Hollywood’s Pat O’Brien playing the priest as he walked that last crooked mile with Cagney on the way to the electric chair. Later, came Barry Fitzgerald, with the black gown and the amiable voice bending his elbow with a wee bit of the drink and a well-delivered bit of blarney. Patrick has them all beat.

Miraculously, it was Easter Sunday when he popped in to resurrect Peggy’s spirits. I was to witness a secular mass, no wine nor wafer. Yet she was lifted. Maybe it was the synergy between Father Paddy, Peggy and me. Without prayers or blessings something sacred happened. Humanists, too, work in mysterious ways. There is a spiritual dimension in the moment, quotidian and secular. The sublime hides in the ordinary. 

Our conversation (communion?) ended when the priest got a call on his cell phone. He said it was from the man upstairs.

If the pagan spring festival got folded into the Christian myth, let seasonal renewal and transformation have its way. Let my people go. While April blooms let Peggy have her exodus out of St. John's Hospital.

(Peggy lived to blow out 100 candles a few weeks after this. And on until mid-August 2021. She lived her hundred years plus hundred days, finding the juice even in parched times. There was always a stream, and we rowed together, oar to oar.)