• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 519 0

of the most challenging experiences in all my life, and many times I didn’t know if I had the strength to face it. But I did face it, albeit imperfectly. In addition to being a dreamer, I was a survivor, much like my mother. I could grit my teeth and make it. My mother left her bruised decade, got the education she needed, and worked hard to succeed. I followed that same approach and began writing in earnest my life’s message of grace. My mother also found someone to marry after her bruised decade. Like my mother, I did too.

Roslyn and me

12

I’m sure you’ve gathered by now that I live with plenty of regrets. But my greatest regret is that I did not know how to be married. Remembering that time in my life, even now, feels like touching a tender wound. I have not written about those days—they have not been the stuff of conference talks or books. But I will write about them now.

As you know, I was raised in an Irish-Catholic family. Even with the difficulties I experienced with my parents, my decision to enter the priesthood was met with great approval. It was not a lateral move in my family of origin but a vertical leap. I moved up in my parents’ estimation. And in binding myself by the Franciscan vow, I was unable to contract a valid marriage. To transgress this vow in any way would be a grievous sin. I was bound by the choice I had freely made.

After I left Hazelden and began taking speaking engagements, my star began to rise. At the time, a priest willing to talk about his alcoholism in one breath and God’s unconditional love in the next was out of the ordinary. I was being invited to speak more and more. One such request was for a weekend retreat in Morgan City, Louisiana.

The town slogan of Morgan City was “right in the middle of everywhere.” At the time, I had no way of knowing how much that slogan fit my experience there. But now I do. It was there that I first met Roslyn, right in the middle of the everything and everywhere of my life. I was in my early forties, and I felt clean and hopeful, like anything could happen.

The retreats I spoke at usually kept to a structure: After the formal time of speaking, attendees were offered an opportunity to visit for a bit of pastoral counseling. People lined up to chat with me.

Roslyn prefaced her time slot with, “I’m not sure why I’m here—I really don’t have any problems.” But as I soon learned, she was a mess, just like me.

I gave Roslyn the name of a prayer group that met in New Orleans with the feeling that it would be a good group for her, a place for support and guidance. I knew some of the members of the prayer group; I trusted them and met with them when I could. By that time I had relocated to New Orleans, having always loved the city.

In those fifteen or twenty minutes together with Roslyn, I learned that she was a single mother with two daughters, that she had been raised in a Baptist-Catholic home, her father the former, her mother the latter. She had one brother two years older, Michael, whom she dearly loved and who was killed in 1969 while flying a night mission in Laos, a tragedy she’s understandably never gotten over.

After our brief conversation, that was it; she walked out and the next in line sat down. The next face could have been Hank Aaron’s or even Gerald Ford’s, but I wouldn’t have noticed. My head was filled with the shapely form of the runner-up to the Miss San Antonio pageant of 1962, better known as Roslyn.

Back in New Orleans, she joined the prayer group that gathered regularly. She met friends of mine, and they met her. About a year later, Roslyn invited the prayer group to a crawfish boil at her home. She thought to invite me as well. It’s possible I recommended Roslyn to that prayer group because I thought it might mean seeing her again. I really don’t think of myself as that suave, but it’s possible. One of Roslyn’s gifts is hospitality. She knows how to host well, and as such, the evening turned out grand. Whether by my offer or her request, I found myself helping her clean up after dinner, carrying some things out to