Why Do You Weep?

I want to know why I wept for Phil.

Phil died on Friday, February 18. Phil was Sally's husband. I met Sally when I went to work for the Dean's Office in 1999. She came to be a good friend and confidant. She and Phil loved good music, and came out two or three times to hear Sarah and I perform. Phil was very supportive and enthusiastic.

I went to their house a few times, to teach their daughter Lindsey how to play the guitar. Phil would walk through the house, smile with twinkling eyes, and we'd exchange maybe five words.

Not exactly a profoundly deep relationship.

Yet, last Wednesday, when I asked the rosary group to pray for the repose of his soul, my voice cracked.

And I was weepy several days following.

When Phil married Sally, she had two children from a previous marriage: Lindsey and Robbie. Robbie was three when Phil and Sally married, so Phil was the only father he knew. And although Lindsey still had memories of her birth father, she still thought of Phil as “dad”.

Phil was a respected psychiatrist, who specialized in working with ex-convicts re-integrating into society. He was also diabetic. And an alcoholic.

Those last two can be a lethal combination. While Phil was working, he only had (at most) one drink a night. But when he retired, almost two years ago, his drinking increased.

Phil was not a violent drunk. So far as I know, he never raised a hand — or his voice — to Sally. But she could not endure watching the man she loved slowly kill himself, so she asked him to move out. Which he did, being a decent man.

Because she still cared for him, she would stop by his apartment about once a week to check up on him. Last Friday, she and Lindsey found him dead at his apartment.

Robbie took his death especially hard.

Those who have read this space attentively and on a regular basis are likely to draw some parallels.

Although Phil died sooner than Padre, it would be fair to say he committed a form of slow-motion suicide.

Robbie was a mirror of the grief I experienced when Padre died.
And, all this has come on the heels of my doing intense work (as part of the “Rosary” series which ran in early January) on my father. And that was being done around the anniversary of Padre’s death (he died one week after his 65th birthday).

Yes. Yes. That must be why I wept.