I got the phone call as we were sitting down to dinner.
It had to be a matter of life and death, because I can’t remember my Dad’s sister ever calling me on the phone.
“He’s in the hospital, dying, and he says he has some unfinished business. I think you are that business and you should go see him if you can. You know, let bygones be bygones.”
I thought through the 27 years since I had last had contact with him. I had been seven-years-old.
“I’ve forgiven him, Aunt Kay, but he’s a pedophile. It’s not like I can have a relationship with him. I have to keep my own kids safe.”
“I know, I know, but you might consider going out to see him.”
That night I booked a flight to the other coast to see him.
It was the first of two visits I was to have with my Dad before he died.
I stood by his bedside during out last meeting, surrounded by statues of Hindi deities who ruled his hospital room. It was the night before the ventilator was to be turned off. He was conscious.
“Dad, I know you were Catholic once. Can I put my scapular on you?”
He looked at me, the silence punctuated by the mechanical hiss of his lungs inflating and deflating.
Then he nodded.
I untangled it from my shirt and put it over his head. He felt hot and sticky.
I stood by his bedside, cradling my baby and praying the rosary. He dozed peacefully.
At 11:00 PM, a nurse came in to give him some medication. A change stole over his face. He looked at me with anger and suspicion.
“Stop it!” he yelled suddenly at the top of his ventilated lungs.
I put down my rosary and looked at him.
“Go home!” he gasped, inexplicably furious.
His paralyzed limbs prevented him from hurling anything at me, but I saw the look of impending violence I recognized from my childhood.
“Okay, Dad. Goodnight.”
He rolled his eyes at me and muttered between mechanical breaths, “Get some sleep.”
The next day he died, unable to breathe without the aid of the silenced ventilator.
The nurse took out the tracheotomy tube. My relatives straightened his body.
“What’s this?” asked one of them, gingerly fingering the square of brown wool.
“My scapular,” I said.
“Do you want it?”
“Yeah.”
They took it off over his head, cold and waxen, and handed it to me.
I matched the cloth squares and stared at the embroidered picture of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel giving the scapular to St. Simon Stock while I wound the strings around it.
“Mother,” I prayed silently, “please remember your promises. Bring this man to heaven.”
I stuffed the scapular in my pocket and left the hospital.
It was the feast of St. Terese, and the wind was blowing.
“Little Flower,” I prayed, buckling the baby into her car seat, “please send me a rose when he gets there.”
I thought about his life. I wondered about the state of his soul. I drove away.
Three hours later, a friend handed me a single red rose.
And I knew then the scapular isn’t just a symbol.
It’s a promise.
