Writer Alison Smith reconnects with her estranged father after he develops Alzheimer's disease. 

Alison Smith is a writer and performer. Her writing has appeared in Granta, McSweeney’s, The London Telegraph, The New York Times, The Believer, Real Simple, Glamour and other publications.  Her memoir Name All the Animals was named one of the top ten books of the year by People and was shorted-listed for the Book-Sense Book-of-the-Year Award. Smith has been awarded Barnes & Noble Discover Award, the Judy Grahn Prize and a Lambda Literary Award. The grand-prize winner of 2017’s Ko Festival Story Slam, Smith portrays Jane Jacobs in the Amazon series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

This story originally aired on June 8, 2018 in an episode titled “Forever.”

Story Transcript

So my father woke me up every morning with the bones of St. Gerard and the bones of St. John Neumann.  They were relics.  They were discs of copper about the size of a half dollar and they had little glass plate on the front.  Underneath the glass there was a little pile of white powder.  The white powder, the pulverized bone of the saint. 

These relics lived on my dad’s bedside table in my parents’ unheated bedroom.  This was upstate New York so it got cold.  I woke every morning to the feel of ice cold metal on my forehead and my father’s mumbled prayers.  If you can guess, I was Catholic.  It wasn’t science or facts or information that shaped our world.  It was God.  

But there are a lot of ways to be Catholic and we weren’t so much like Pope/Vatican Catholic.  We were in the Church of Dad.  And in the Church of Dad, the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, they were kind of like this goofy group of people who loved to do pratfalls and tell off-color jokes.  They were like a religious Three Stooges. 

And in the Church of Dad, all of The Bible’s stories had their own special kind of twist.  My brother and I loved that.  Our favorite story that we always asked dad to tell us was The Wedding at Cana.  Anyway, that is when Jesus performs his first miracle. 

This is how it goes in the Church of Dad.  Mary and Joseph are invited to their neighbor’s daughter’s wedding.  And Joseph hates weddings so he pretends to have a cold and sneaks off to his workshop and whittles on something.  Mary looks at Jesus and says, “You're going to be my plus-one.” 

So they go to the wedding, Jesus hooks up with his buddies and proceeds to get stinking drunk.  Like they drink so much they drink the entire supply of alcohol for the reception.  Mary finds out.  She is pissed. 

She goes to Jesus and she said, “Look what you did, you bum.  You and your no good friends drank all the alcohol and now there's going to be no party.  I can never show my face in this town again.” 

And Jesus thinks, “Oh, God.  I really effed up this time.  She is never going to let me live this one down.  I got to do something big, really big.” 

So he turns water into wine, and he saves the reception.  That began a very famous career that ended very badly for Jesus. 

You see, because in the Church of Dad’s version of the life of Christ, the reason Jesus started performing miracles and thereby garnered some disciples and a bunch of people started following him, and because of that the local authorities were looking at him then he was ultimately crucified, it’s because at a party he needed to get his mom off his back. 

So you can imagine as a kid we were like The Bible is just so cool.  My brother and I would run around after my dad and be like, “Tell us another one.  Tell us about the lady who got stoned.”  Which, by the way, was called in the Church of Dad, “What to Do When You're About to Get Stoned.” 

So it was really just idyllic.  My brother and I we just believed so deeply.  We felt that we were carried in the hand of God and we had an unshakeable faith. 

Then something happened, something so heartbreaking that my faith was gone in an instant.  It’s 1984.  I’m fifteen, my brother Roy is eighteen.  He gets in the family car one morning and drives off to work, and he never came back.  Roy died that morning in a car accident.  My faith was gone. 

It wasn’t like I said, “I can’t believe in You if You would do this.”  It was like I heard music.  There was music all around us.  My whole life, the song my dad had been singing to me since the day I was born, it just stopped.  There was silence.  A silence so vast and terrifying I was afraid to speak of it.  But I began to change. 

Two years later I fell in love with a classmate at my school.  But it was an all-girls school.  I fell in love with a girl.  I was gay. 

When my parents found out, they were furious.  I mean, look at it from their point of view.  They were desperately trying to keep this heartbroken family together and they knew one thing.  We were going to spend eternity in heaven together.  We would be reunited with Roy there and then look what I did.  While they were in heaven with Roy, I would be in hell. 

So they raged and they threatened and they bargained.  Then they sat me down and they gave me an ultimatum.  They said, “You can be in this family or you can be gay, but you can’t have both.”  And when I said, “I can’t help who I am,” they disowned me.  For a long time, I didn’t have any contact with my parents, and the silence just grew. 

Years passed and then I got a phone call.  My mother was dying so I went to see her.  I said, “Mom, now, could you accept me?”  She couldn’t.  And she died. 

More years passed and I got another phone call.  My father had Alzheimer’s so I went to see him.  “Hi, Dad.”  And he just looked at me from my feet up to my head and back down again. 

Then he said, “Where have you been?  I've been looking for you for years.”  Because it turned out the silver lining of Alzheimer’s was he forgot he was homophobic.  But he didn’t forget God or anything, he just forgot the fire and brimstone part.  So we were together again. 

For four years, my dad and I, we had the best time.  We had like a million ice cream sundaes and we went for endless walks around the nursing home where he lived and we went shopping.  He suddenly loved shopping for clothes, like men’s clothes, women’s clothes.  He didn’t care anymore.  He loved it all.  He wore it all. 

Best of all, he loved my partner, Cindy.  He couldn’t remember her name, but anytime she left the room, he would look around and he would say, “Where did the other one go?” 

So since he was so devout, I made sure that he could go to church every day, and when I could, I took him.  It was so remarkable to see him in church because as soon as the liturgy started, he sat up straight, his cloudy eyes got really clear, and he followed and gave every response letter-perfect on cue.  It was like his faith was stored in some other more robust part of his body than his brain. 

One day after mass, we go shopping.  I take him to the department store and we pick out some shirts.  While we’re in line ready to pay for them, this crazy storm blows into town.  It’s summertime and it just rains like cats and dogs.  Even though we’re inside, we can hear the thunder.  Through the glass doors, we can see the sky get dark and it starts flashing with lightning. 

I look over at my dad and his eyes are huge.  He drops the shirts, he starts shaking, and then he starts pacing around like a caged animal.  I realize he doesn’t know that this is just weather.  He thinks this is the end of the world. 

And everyone is looking at me like, “What’s up with that guy?” and “You better fix it,” and the store is about to close and it’s dinnertime and I got to get him back to the home.  So I have no choice, I pay for the shirts, I grab his hand, and we walk together through the automatic doors out into the storm. 

It’s worse than I thought.  It’s like one of those crazy summer storms that really kind of is like the world is going to end for a couple of minutes.  I mean, the sky is pitch black and the rain is coming down so hard it’s kind of like they're just dumping buckets of water on us.  But we started so we’re going to keep going.  I hold him tighter and we go straight for the car. 

We get halfway there and there's this huge crack of thunder.  My dad, he lets go of my hand and he just starts running out away from me and then into the traffic. 

I’m like, “Dad, dad!  Dad, come back.  It’s not funny.”  He doesn’t understand and he starts going even further.  The cars are whizzing by and I’m like, “Dad, it’s just rain.  Please, Dad, please.”  And he's not listening to me. 

I just think, “Oh, my God.  I can’t lose you again.”  I close my eyes and I say, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…” and when I open my eyes my dad has stopped. 

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.” And he turns around and he looks right at me. 

“Blessed are you among women.” And he walks over and he stands right beside me.  I get his hand and we make it to the car. 

Thank you.