(dearest Flannery O’Connor: One Heart now)
dad once wrote in, gave them my address,
requesting one of those ‘calling you
back home’ videos. I wasn’t interested.
like a dog, I was chasing girls, not church
dogma. But I held unto it anyway.
some years later, I did come back to
church, strong. Though it turns out dad had turned
away, didn’t like the ‘new’ Mass, wanted
things like they used to be, and just stopped
going to Sunday services. My eldest
brother felt the same way, wound himself
so tightly to anti-Pope Internet
people, he ended up leaving it
all together, making his announcement
right about when my dad laid down to die.
my younger brother had also gotten
out completely, a good while back,
a born-again evangelical now
or something like that. funny, how
all three of us were altar boys growing
up, going to Mass every Sunday
like ‘good Catholic’ people do.
I don’t know what happened to us but
only it’s a suffering I now offer up.
I phoned for a priest who visited
my dad, watched him receive Viaticum and
what would be his last Holy Communion.
Gary Edward Geraci