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By Root 527 0

Alabama. I was still intent on playing defense, but Paul surprised me with an offensive play that won the match. He told me he wouldn’t retract any of his concerns, but despite them, he did not want to lose our friendship. Now, probably those words by themselves would have been enough, but Paul’s words were bathed in tears, a man’s tears. Most people don’t know what to do with a man’s tears. I’m still not sure I do. Despite all our efforts at honesty, men are still expected to be strong, competitive, and in control. Tears are, unfortunately, not on the most-wanted list. But there are rare misty-eyed men who in the largesse of God’s grace happen to befriend us and reveal to us a different way of living, one fiercely tender and loyal. Such a man is Paul Sheldon, and on that day his tears stanched a wound that I could have let fester for years.

I wish I could also report that his tears stopped the flow of my drinking and exaggeration and anger, but that wouldn’t be true. What they did do was heal a friendship that would still suffer but would be stronger than before.

People talk easily of wounded healers, as if they are everywhere walking among us. I don’t know about that. I do know that I know one personally. His name is Paul, and he is my oldest friend.

Notes

1 Michael Yaconelli, Messy Spirituality (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 16.

2 Stephen King, “Frey’s Lies,” Entertainment Weekly, www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1155752,00.html, par. 4 (accessed June 3, 2011).

3 Robert A. Johnson and Jerry M. Ruhl, Balancing Heaven and Earth (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 173–74.

17

Now I want to shift my focus to three people: Frances Brennan; my brother, Rob; and my mother.

Frances was my second mother, so to speak; Rob was and will always be my hero; and my mother was, well, my mother. What’s common about all three is the degree of influence they had on my life and the fact that all three have died. I had lost Joey when I was a little boy and then Dominique when I was a Little Brother, but it had been years since death had visited me so closely. I had forgotten just how much it stings.

The little-known Greek word hetaira refers to that rare woman who can be a companion to a man—not a sexual partner or wife but a woman who provides a grace and charm highly valued by men. Our current language comes up short in finding a word for this capacity in a woman; modern examples are rare. If pressed for such a word, I would say Ma. To me, Ma was Frances Brennan, the perfect hetaira woman to me. Her son Ray was my best friend from the Marines. He died of smoke inhalation in a five-alarm house fire in Chicago, and after his tragic death, I adopted his mother as my second mother. I was not able to visit her as much as I would’ve liked, but I tried to check in whenever possible.

Ma was the epitome of a feisty Irish woman. On one of my visits with her, I called in a favor through a mutual friend and showed up at her house in a chartered limousine. She stood on the porch and shook her head back and forth. I stepped out and announced, “Get dressed, Ma, we’re going to the Ritz-Carlton for lunch.” I might as well have told her we were going to the moon, but she got dolled up and off we went. “Ma, you’ve got to get the shrimp cocktail, its outta this world.” I think that menu item was probably around fifteen to twenty dollars in those days, enough for her to protest: “Absolutely not! We can’t afford that!” I kept insisting it was my treat; actually it was my pleasure, something that brought me great joy. Ma reluctantly agreed, and after the waiter delivered it to our table, she wolfed it down, then leaned over with a grin and asked, “Can we get another one of those?” I think I was as surprised at her question as she was about the limo. I couldn’t help but laugh and said, “You bet, Ma!”

“You bet!” became an affirmation between the two of us, a phrase that meant much more than the words themselves. We repeated them to each other often. I believe they were a blessing, much like a priest might say, “The Lord bless and keep you.”

There