Rosary tied to box spring
beneath where my father slept.
God, have mercy on him.
He did not worship You,
but lived You in relationships.

I was taught Papal invincibility
as priests preyed on youth.
They forgave others
behind confessional screens,
required rosaries for penance.

My father,
God rest his soul,
more a father than them.
He didn’t need a rosary,
but many of them did.

Explanation: When I was away in college, I received a phone call from my mother. They’d just had a new mattress and box spring set delivered. And the strangest thing, she said. When they went to remove the old box spring, they found a rosary entwined in the bottom of it. Did I have any idea why it was there?

And then I remembered. When I was in Catholic grade school, learning my catechism, I feared my father wouldn’t go to heaven because he didn’t go to church and he wasn’t a Catholic. So I sneaked into my parents’ bedroom, crawled under their bed and tied a rosary to the boxed spring, on the side of the bed my father slept on. Imagine the indoctrination that happened to make me think that and go to that extreme to save him. I was probably in third or fourth grade when I did this. I just couldn’t understand, I suppose, how such a good man as my father, wouldn’t be allowed in heaven.

Image by Richard Revel from Pixabay