There’s a moving tribute to fathers in First Things that’s worth considering — whether one has enjoyed the granitic love of a father or not. Francis X. Maier achieves a memorable reconstruction of his own dad — one spare in speech and rich in generosity so similar to my own father — and also succeeds in outlining the selflessness in such a way that we might feel called to replicate it. His is no small feat, adroitly universalizing the personal experience.

Maier writes:

Maybe all young men are selfish. It’s tied up in our drive to be independent, to succeed. Maybe without that selfishness, or at least some of it, the world wouldn’t work. But God has a funny way of catching up with you as the years go by. Sooner or later something happens that provides a key to understanding. And once it occurs, the way you look at everything changes.

For me it was the day my mother died. I was alone with her in the hospital; it was my turn on the watch. She’d been sick for several years, and eaten up with illness. My emotions were bone-dry. I assumed the rest of the family felt that way, too: It was time for her to let go, and she did. She slipped away as I sat there beside her. I telephoned my father, and he arrived in fifteen minutes. I waited in the corridor while he went in alone. When I looked inside a couple of moments later, my dad — the big, strong, inarticulate guy I had spent most of my life misunderstanding — was down on his knees with her hand on his face, weeping. I had never seen my father cry before. I never saw it again, ever. But nothing has ever affected me the way that moment did. We too often take for granted the love between our parents, and so we never fully appreciate it.

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