for my mother and he gave birth to me when they were both already forty-five years old. Before I was born, I am told that my father would spend his mornings making his egg deliveries and, the afternoons he would spend at the bar of the Plymouth Bar & Grille talking about his dreams of someday being rich and famous. My mother,” Dick continued as he looked down toward Alice’s teary-eyed face, “she never complained, so the story goes, when he stumbled in each night, sometimes too drunk to even sit for the meal she had worked hard to prepare for him. This went on for nearly ten years, I am told, ten years. And then on April 25, 1925, it stopped. That’s the day I was born. From that day on until today, I have never seen my father take a drink anywhere. I am told that he had a purpose in life now that he had a son. My mother and father had been married for twenty years when I was born, and I was the first and only child. It seems, so the story goes, that my father had made a promise to God that, if Charlie and Alice Merrill could have a child, he would change.” He smiled at his mother as he continued.
“I tell you this today because the father I knew is the one I will always remember. The Charlie Merrill you have known is the one who proved to you that faith in God can do pretty wonderful things. I never knew Charlie Merrill, the drinker, and I probably would never have known about my father’s depressing past until someone sat me down last June and told me all about it. It was something I had to know. You’re better off hearing it from me, my father told me, than from somebody who’s only going to give you pieces of the story. So, Charlie Merrill sat me down on my graduation day under an elm tree in a grove at the foot of his mountain and told me what a bum he had been for years until I was born.”
“God sent me to them and now He’s taken him back,” Dick went on with sorrow in his voice, “I thank God for letting me have such wonderful parents. As much as I will miss my father, it is my mother who has suffered more over the years, the good ones and the very bad ones, than anyone else. And now, comes the cruelest blow of them all, just when they were both to begin enjoying their retirement, he has been taken from her. My father once told me, expect nothing and you’ll never be disappointed. My mother will survive because she is strong, strong in faith that God’s will must be done. I will miss you, Dad, more than you know and more than I could ever tell you when you were alive. I won’t see you for a while,” his voice began to crack and his emotion was overtaking him now, “but someday we’ll all be together again. So long, Dad, until we meet again.”
Silence. Not a sound could be heard throughout the church, not a cough, not a whimper, only to be broken by the sound of noses blowing throughout. Dick caressed the casket as he descended from the lectern to return to his mother’s side. Alice cradled her arms around Dick’s and gently leaned her head to rest on his shoulder.
At that moment she knew. Mothers have a way of knowing. Call it a sixth sense, ESP, or clairvoyance, whatever, but when it comes to mothers and their children, there is something there that telegraphs messages on things that others can’t pick up. Alice knew her son. She had seen the torment on his face on more than one occasion and she saw it again this day. This was to be no ordinary man who sat beside her. How could she have not seen it before? There was her son, majestic as could be, standing over his audience and speaking with such eloquence that people were moved to tears. It was then that Alice realized that Dick would someday become a priest, a man of God; it was just a matter of time. Dick would not return to Plymouth Teachers College.
.
CHAPTER 5
The agreement between the Merrills and Nashua Foods was finalized several weeks later. Sean Merrill had called in an attorney from Boston to consummate the transaction
“I tell you this today because the father I knew is the one I will always remember. The Charlie Merrill you have known is the one who proved to you that faith in God can do pretty wonderful things. I never knew Charlie Merrill, the drinker, and I probably would never have known about my father’s depressing past until someone sat me down last June and told me all about it. It was something I had to know. You’re better off hearing it from me, my father told me, than from somebody who’s only going to give you pieces of the story. So, Charlie Merrill sat me down on my graduation day under an elm tree in a grove at the foot of his mountain and told me what a bum he had been for years until I was born.”
“God sent me to them and now He’s taken him back,” Dick went on with sorrow in his voice, “I thank God for letting me have such wonderful parents. As much as I will miss my father, it is my mother who has suffered more over the years, the good ones and the very bad ones, than anyone else. And now, comes the cruelest blow of them all, just when they were both to begin enjoying their retirement, he has been taken from her. My father once told me, expect nothing and you’ll never be disappointed. My mother will survive because she is strong, strong in faith that God’s will must be done. I will miss you, Dad, more than you know and more than I could ever tell you when you were alive. I won’t see you for a while,” his voice began to crack and his emotion was overtaking him now, “but someday we’ll all be together again. So long, Dad, until we meet again.”
Silence. Not a sound could be heard throughout the church, not a cough, not a whimper, only to be broken by the sound of noses blowing throughout. Dick caressed the casket as he descended from the lectern to return to his mother’s side. Alice cradled her arms around Dick’s and gently leaned her head to rest on his shoulder.
At that moment she knew. Mothers have a way of knowing. Call it a sixth sense, ESP, or clairvoyance, whatever, but when it comes to mothers and their children, there is something there that telegraphs messages on things that others can’t pick up. Alice knew her son. She had seen the torment on his face on more than one occasion and she saw it again this day. This was to be no ordinary man who sat beside her. How could she have not seen it before? There was her son, majestic as could be, standing over his audience and speaking with such eloquence that people were moved to tears. It was then that Alice realized that Dick would someday become a priest, a man of God; it was just a matter of time. Dick would not return to Plymouth Teachers College.
.
CHAPTER 5
The agreement between the Merrills and Nashua Foods was finalized several weeks later. Sean Merrill had called in an attorney from Boston to consummate the transaction
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