All Is Grace_ A Ragamuffin Memoir - Brennan Manning [42]
I mentioned that I changed my name when I was ordained with the Franciscans. The brothers thought I chose Brennan after Saint Brennan, a somewhat-obscure Irish saint. In some sense that’s true. But more so, the name I chose is a sign of how much I loved that scrappy Irish woman and her two sons.
I had a dream where Ma is standing before Saint Peter, wondering if she’ll get through the pearly gates. Saint Peter steps to the side and says, “Come on in, Frances.” She just stands there in disbelief, kind of like the day I showed up in the limo, and says, “Really, I can come in?” Jesus steps around Saint Peter and gives her a big bear hug and says, “You bet, Ma!” That’s a good dream.
Frances Brennan’s death was a blow for me. Another such blow came in 1990 when death took my brother, Rob. Rob eventually became a cop and I became a priest. My father often said, “I have one son to keep me outta jail and one son to keep me outta hell.”
Rob worked in one of New York’s precincts, known there as he was known in our neighborhood—for being tuff. He was decorated countless times for gallantry in action. I was invited once to speak at the precinct’s annual Communion breakfast. I waxed eloquent about all the ways those men selflessly served the people in our community, emphasizing their redemption of the word pig—pride, integrity, guts. I have to admit, I thought my speech was brilliant. After I finished, Ralphie Coen, captain of the precinct, stood up, looked at my brother a moment, then stared at me and shook his head. “My God, not from the same womb.” Ralphie obviously knew a dreamer with soft hands when he saw one.
But my brother ran into something tuffer than him—cancer.
My mother had at first refused to visit Rob in the hospital. I’m not entirely sure why; she just wouldn’t go see him. I was summoned from New Orleans to Rob’s bedside and dropped what I was doing and left.
I stopped by my mother’s house and informed her, “I’m not asking. We’re going to see Rob tomorrow.” All I got was an “Oh, all right.”
We went to the hospital, and my mother, who had walked with ease from the house to the car and from the car to the hospital door, suddenly needed a wheelchair. I wheeled her into Rob’s room, and she began telling him all of her woes. Rob looked at his wife, Celie, then at our mother and me and said, “Get her outta here.” I had grown to love Celie as much as I loved Rob. She looked me in the eyes, and I could interpret her request: “Please, Brennan, do as Rob asked.” So I took my mother and we left. I drove her home, and my brother died two days later, August 8, 1990.
My parents had loaned him four thousand dollars for the down payment on a house. As I drove my parents to Robert’s wake, my mother whined, “Well, Emmett, I guess we can kiss that four thousand dollars good-bye.”
I turned around and screamed, “That’s enough, Mom!”
We drove the rest of the way in silence. One of Rob’s fellow officers approached me at the wake. “Your brother was the most fearless man I ever met. My wife would be a widow and my kids would be orphans if not for your brother. He was a true hero.” I said, “Yes, he was mine too.” As we grew up, I adored Rob because he was my older brother. Rob did everything before I did; he was born first, left the house first, went to Korea first, got married first, had a career first. But I never thought he would die first.
Rob and me on confirmation day
I was there for the funeral of Frances Brennan, as I was for Rob’s. But I missed another that was very important.
Before I tell that story, I want to share something with you. It is a list from a journal I kept during another alcohol-rehab treatment following my divorce from Roslyn. Each item on the list is a self-description. I wrote the list in an attempt to once more get honest about my condition. I believe the items reveal the kind of man who would miss his own mother’s funeral.
1. Being smug, superior, arrogant. I constantly name-dropped—Burl Ives, Amy Grant, Mike Ditka. I hated this