A Eulogy
Listening to the tributes at his funeral yesterday, I finally got a handle on the memories that I had struggled to summon of my uncle Michael. People spoke about a modest and hard working man with a mischievous sense of humour. A caring and gentle man without an ounce of judgmentality. At the time of his death, just over a week ago on Easter Sunday, I had not seen my uncle in about 4 years. We had not had a conversation in many, many more than that. In truth, I had known him, through the years, as I had known most of my Mothers family, through listening to him interact with others rather than having a direct conversation. My memory is not sufficient to recall humorous anecdotes of those interactions. I can tell you though that he made me laugh. The sparring and teasing between he and his younger brother Barry were legendary and dominated most of the family gatherings that became my chief source of memories attached to my mothers family. I remember his cheeky smile most of all. He did indeed always seem to have a glint of mischief in his eye.
When an old family friend at the funeral, a contemporary of my slightly older cousins, began to reminisce about how he had frightened her by sneaking up behind her when she was involved in an act of honey theft and shouted “Whadda ya think your doin?” I was instantly transported to similar encounters involving that exact phrase. “A big man” she had quipped, “But he could be surprisingly quiet”. His anger was only mock anger, played straight. You would find him him chuckling to himself seconds later, when he was no longer able to keep the mask up.
There was a time in my life when I knew him a whole lot better than that. A time when my dealings with my mothers family were far more frequent, not resigned to annual events and get-togethers. Michael lived up the road from my Grandma, the road where the whole family had lived together for many years. I spent a great deal of my childhood on wilding road, going to and fro, from Grandmas to Michael and Marina's house. My cousins and I were extremely close. I loved them all dearly. Long summers spent, seemingly endlessly eating lollies on the witches hat roundabout, and the rich pungent malt smell from the ABM malt factory permeating all my memories. But a few events saw the end of all our closeness, none so prominent as the death of my Grandma. The family all seemed to dissipate then.
The death of my Grandma affected me greatly but, as you can imagine, it did not have a fraction of the impact on me that it did on my mother. Grandma was the second parent she had mourned. My mother lost her Father when she was just four years old. My Uncle Michael must have been about 12 at the time.
Whilst listening to the testimonies of Michaels charitable activities, which seemed to have been immense, I was starting to think of him in a light that I had never quite thought possible. As one of his friends from the disabled ramblers association asserted, Michael was a “good man”, a lot better than I remembered , in fact. Not that I had any bad memories of him. I did not. Just that, as you would expect at a funeral, his better side was occupying all of the brush strokes being used to paint him. I suspect that though not balanced, this portrait of him was thoroughly accurate and founded in truth.
And then the testimony that had the biggest impact on me came. A former colleague of his started to wax lyrical about his driving skills and how early on he had acquired them. When he was 14, just a couple of years after losing his father, Michael apparently worked as a drivers mate to a driver who delivered beer for a brewery. It was customary to have a pint at each pub they delivered to and so Michael, at 14, often found himself, the driver being inebriated, having to drive the lorry home home himself. Michael, though not as big as his brother Barry was a sizeable man. The lady describing him said that he was a “Bear of a man” but a “gentle giant, incapable of hurting anyone”. It was at this stage that the feelings I had conveniently placed to one side began to wonder back onto the stage. She went on. “He must have been extremely strong, even at 14. Because he had to lug those barrels all by himself”.
It was at this point that I was overcome by a mental image. One I had not wanted to entertain. That image was of my 14 yr old uncle, with his enormous strength pinning down his 6 yr old sister, my mother.
You see, for my mother, one of the effects of my Grandmothers death was that of the unearthing, literally the rising to the surface, of buried memories. Technically they are called suppressed memories. Memories that are so painful and traumatic that the subconscious relieves them from your consciousness and hides them from you. Given the age of my mother, those memories would have been sketchy anyway but one can understand why her sub conscience had done its best to bury them, as her older brother systematically sexually abused her over a period of time. I imagined his bear like paws, clamped down over my mothers mouth.
I do not write this to dishonour the memory of my uncle. I have no wish for this writing to ever find the eyes of his children nor tarnish his memory for those who were close to him. But the biting irony of my mind starting to canonise my uncle as a “good man” only was not lost on me. It is never that simple.
If he were, despite all his good deeds and kind nature, and yes, even I can testify to his kind nature, only defined by this one element of his life it would be equally as unbalanced as his funeral eulogies. Is a man ever “only” a paedophile . I know very little of this aspect of his life. It would seem that this had just been a phase. I do not justify his actions but there are a great deal of contributing factors, not least of which were his age (sexually mature but emotionally immature), his complete lack of accountability and supervision (He and his older sister were largely left to their own devices whilst my newly widowed Grandma went out to work long shifts to support her 5 children) and the grief that must have shaped his adolescence. When my mother, as a grown woman, confronted Michael about what he had done he did seem to express guilt and regret about his actions as a teenager.
I never judged Michael. I wasn't much younger than 14 myself when I found out what he had done to my mother. You see, some explanation was needed because for months and months she was falling apart before our very eyes. Bursting into tears, seemingly unprovoked and struggling to face the daily responsibilities of parenthood. I speculate a little, but this is the way I remember it. At 14 I knew just HOW rampant sexual desire could be, as I spent, as I am fairly reliably informed most teenage boys do, nearly all my waking life thinking about sex and sexual outlets. There were things I had thought about which were equally shameful to the actions of my uncle. But, thank the grace of God, I never did. But I knew that I could not judge him. Like I say, there but for the grace of God, go I.
But Michael is by far the most significant member of my mothers family in my life. What he did back then has affected everything. My mothers emotional stuntedness and her partial dislike for physical affection caused her to behave in certain ways which have had a far reaching consequence on the development of my personality. I cannot directly attribute my marital break up to Michael but my own lack of ability to be physically demonstrative certainly played a part. I was described as distant and cold. I take full responsibility for my own actions but I was shaped by the environment I grew up in. Of that there is no question.
So when at his funeral I find, and a funeral is no place to contradict, that he is painted as a good man, a find this a bitter pill to swallow. Theologically I believe in the doctrine of original sin. But if asked If I think humanity is essentially evil I would have to say no. I believe we are inescapably evil but essentially good. Was Michael a good man? Yes he was. His work on the behalf of disabled people proved it, his gentleness and good humour testify to it. His weeping children and grandchildren declare it. But I believe sin is a tainting presence in all things. I can do nothing without sin being present. Sin and not my uncle Michael, is the real enemy. Sin took advantage of the opportunity afforded it, when a 14 year old boy, grieving and confused and lustful walked into his little sisters bedroom. And sin wants to spread its cancer. It wanted my mother to become embittered, it craved to claim the lives of her and her offspring, to insinuate its putrefying effect into their lives and the lives of their children. Thorough, inhibition, unforgiveness, fear and repression. My mother broke the cycle though through the power of forgiveness and by the inner healing that belongs to all the children of God.
The sins of the Father will no longer be visited on their children. Jesus came to break this cycle. St Paul said “when I wish to do good I find that evil is there, present with me” and he cries out “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” He seems lost in his fight against sin and his will power which seems inescapably enslaved to his carnal desires. But then the light comes, he says, in answer to his question “Praise be to God, through Jesus Christ”.
Later in his letter to the Galatians he reiterates, the power of sin over human nature is broken by Jesus forever for those who he has set free. Paul declares, “It was for freedom that Christ has set us free” and he commands us “Do not let yourselves again be burdened by a yoke of slavery”. Paul is talking here about rules but the freedom he describes is a freedom from law and from sin. It is the “Law” of love. It is love that frees us from the rules because we, by nature, (our new nature) now long to do those things which please our Father. It is love that frees us from sin because it displaces sin with its greater passion for holiness and the Fathers delight. It is love that frees us because it is Love that became flesh, paid the ransom, walked us out of Jail. Love is the greatest.
Michael never knew this love. He rejected it when he saw it. The characteristic of sin is to hide itself in the presence of light. And so those who do this never see the expression of love on the face from which this light radiates. Poor Michael. The thing that could have saved him from the guilt he carried for a lifetime, he kept at arms length. I conclude that although he was good and bad, as are we all, a mixture of conflicting motives, he was ultimately lost to his own fear. My mother knew the power of love to heal, the power of forgiveness to release freedom in a soul. And though it was sinister and painful to be reminded of those life altering events I thank God that it reminded me that we all need saving, that the forgiveness that saves me I extend to my Uncle, even now. And freedom comes with that.
25th May, 2013
