Saying goodbye to Rupert the cat, breaking the cycle, and learning to forgive my father

I was at summer camp the year that my dog Bo died. While I was busy living what finally felt like a normal adolescence, telling jokes around the fire and falling in love with girls, Bo lost his final battle with the UPS truck. For years, he had valiantly attempted to protect our family from this occasional intruder, but the weight of that metal monster was too much for his small frame. My father picked me up at church, and I began telling stories of my adventures as Dad sat there stoically in the car. As we rounded the serpentine roads in the hills of Tennessee, I could see the house in the distance, and my father depressed the break just enough to slow the car, “Something happened while you were at camp,” he paused, “Bo died.”

That dog had been with me through some of the worst years of my life. He arrived just in time to be the friend I needed. We lived in a log cabin in a rural area just outside of Nashville. I was eleven years old and didn’t have a worry in the world. My life, at the time, was a pristine example of the American dream. My brother and I played in our tree house by the creek and rode bicycles down the street to play with Patty and Thomas. Then, one day, my dad arrived with a cardboard box, and inside with a little black puppy with a white spot across his neck. As I lay on the cement driveway, letting him lick my face, I asked, “Can I name him Bo?”

Before long, that dog went with me everywhere. He slept in my bed and followed along with me as I rode my bicycle. Then, when my father had to sell that house because he couldn’t find enough work to afford it anymore, Bo lived with me in the hotels and motels and eventually in our van. I didn’t have a bed anymore, but Bo was cuddled up with me anyway. I didn’t have a physical home anymore, but I had a home in him. Throughout all of the chaos of that time in my life, he was a constant. He was a defiant little devil, too. When my brother and I cut through a neighbor's farm on our way back from school, our neighbor told us he would shoot if he ever saw us again. It was Bo who took the bullet. He survived. In many ways, he felt like the only creature willing to protect me through all of the turbulence.

His corpse was waiting there under a tree. I ran my hands through his curls for the last time, and then I went to the back of the house to grab the shovel, and I dug a hole alone before laying him into the ground on borrowed land.

We were squatting in an abandoned house. Shortly after that, we moved from there, and I left the remains of Bo behind. I had always told myself that, someday, I would go back and move him to wherever would become home for me. That property was eventually razed and turned into a subdivision. But somewhere, in someone's yard, Bo is still there to protect, to guard, and to keep them safe from everything that is scary, especially the UPS truck.

That day, my father was cold. He told me he intended to bury Bo while I was gone. It was my mother who pleaded that they keep his remains until I returned. She wanted to bring him inside, but my father said no. My father wanted to call me at camp and then just put him in the ground, but my mother said no. She didn’t want these last few moments at camp to be ruined. It could wait, she told him.

I resented my father for letting us become homeless, for not being the type of protector I needed in my youth, and for wanting to dig a hole to bury Bo while I was away. Why should I have been surprised? He just wanted to make the problem go away without actually having to face it, just like he always does. 

Like most youth, I vowed that day, “I will never do this to my kids.”

***

I was on the eighth week of being on tour, traveling the country, telling stories, and slinging books. My life of poverty and homelessness seemed now like a distant memory as I traversed the land. Yet, those aches and pains of the scars left behind were right there on the surface, waiting for any exposure to the sun to begin itching again. I had just finished a show, enjoying a drink at a local dive bar, and about to leave to lie down in a motel bed, not because I didn’t have a home, but because I was doing this to continue providing that security for my own children.

My phone rang.

One of my kids was upset because the newest edition to our household, Rupert, a small orange kitten, had fallen over while just standing. She was sure that something was wrong. It was a Saturday night, but she wanted to know if he could go to the vet. I promised we would get him to the doctor first thing Monday morning. Tashina and I talked about it on Sunday afternoon. I was supposed to be resting between shows that week. After my show in Milwaukee, I planned to stay with my best friend, Steve for a few days in the suburbs of Chicago. This was the exact kind of relaxation I needed before heading out to do a live taping of my show in my hometown of Nashville. Monday rolled around, and Tashina gave me a quick call as she was heading to the vet. I went into Chicago to have lunch with some friends in the city. It was a perfectly beautiful day in every way. 

My phone rang a second time.

I could hear in Tashina’s voice that something wasn’t okay. The doctor thought Rupert had a respiratory infection so they placed him on oxygen, but that turned out to be a death sentence. He was only one year old, but an aggressive form of cancer had taken over his entire body, ultimately moving into his little lungs. They explained to Tashina that they had never seen anything like this in a cat so young; he was just a little over a year old, but he had cancer that they only saw in animals over fourteen. If they removed him from the oxygen at this point, he would have a very painful death. At that moment, she had to go from thinking that Rupert was coming home and instead holding his body while the doctor gave him one last shot then he slipped away. 

The phone rang a third time.

I could hear the sobs of my children in the background and then on speakerphone, “I didn’t even get to say goodbye!” My nine-year-old wailed. “He was my best friend!” My twelve year old pleaded. This was bargaining, this was anger, this was grief, and I was hundreds of miles away. I couldn’t wipe their tears or calm their fears. 

“I can’t do this,” Tashina said, “I don’t know how to do this.”

But I did. I had served as a chaplain at a funeral home for most of my career as a priest and even a few years after I left the priesthood. Tashina shouldn’t have to do this because this was my wheelhouse. I knew how to handle all of this, but I was far, far away. I needed help, so I called my father.

“Hey, Dad, something has happened, and I’m really far away. Rupert had cancer…” and I told him the whole tragic tale. I asked him if he could go by the vet and pick up the remains, then get Tashina and the kids so they could have a burial out on his farm. I was too far away; there was nothing I could do. I needed my dad. I needed help. Everyone tells me I have to ask for help, and here I was doing it.

“I’m a Lowes with your brother right now,” My dad said coldly, “Your mom is at the school right now; she’s closer. Call her.”

Goddamn it, you son of a bitch. I had forgotten. Suddenly, I was flooded with memories of losing Bo and that fucking shovel and burying him in the cold ground alone. I didn’t need him then and certainly didn’t need him now. I could do this alone, just like I have had to do with everything else. I had dug myself out of poverty and homelessness and out from under his long shadow, and damn it all, I could do this myself too. I didn’t know how yet, but I would find a way; I always do.

Just before midnight on Rupert’s death day, I opened a discount flight app on my phone and found a surprisingly inexpensive last-minute round-trip ticket. I would be back with Tashina and the kids for less than 24 hours, but it would be just enough time to fulfill the promise I made to my wife and kids before I ever even met them, “I will never do this.”

I texted Tashina: I’ll be there by 2PM to handle everything

Exhausted, early that next morning, Steve drove me to the airport, and I boarded the plane. When I arrived, I went directly to the veterinarian's office to pick up Rupert’s cold little body. I brought him inside so that the other cats could say goodbye, and then the kids said goodbye, and then Tashina said goodbye. I took some scissors and clipped a piece of his fur to place on Tashina’s altar with all the other mementos of the people we had said goodbye to over the years.

***

The kids still wanted to bury Rupert on Grandpa’s farm, “Now we can visit him anytime we go to see the grandparents.” 

Reluctantly, I called my father, “We will be there around 4PM. Please leave a shovel wherever you want us to bury him.”

For most of my adulthood, I resented my father for not doing things as I would have. In contrast to what I had always perceived him as being weak, so I became strong. To juxtapose his lack of protection, I grew up to be a fighter. I was the defender of my family. If anyone needed anything at all, they would call me to jump into the ring. I would be whatever he wasn’t because I didn’t feel he gave me what I needed. I needed him to be less stoic, and I needed him to have taken Bo inside and not leave him by the tree. I needed something else. So I hated him for all of the things he didn’t do the way that I would have done them. In that rage, my fifteen-year-old self dug that hole alone, thinking I had been abandoned. Eventually, just like Bo, I became the type of person who couldn’t tell the difference between a farmer with a gun and a UPS driver; I would just attack.

Filled with rage and old wounds re-bleeding, I drove my kids out to the farm. We parked in the driveway and made our way out to the field behind the barn. My father was standing there holding a shovel, and there was a hole in the ground.

My friend Landis has this phrase he loves to use, “You can’t be mad at a donkey for not being a horse.” 

I had asked a lot of my father, but I had never asked him to dig a hole.

There was a lot he couldn’t do, but he dug a really great hole. He was there to do the most difficult part. In all my years of working in the funeral homes, the morticians, funeral directors, and clergy were always thanked. Yet, standing over in the far corners of the fields where we bury our dead were men in overalls holding shovels, waiting for everyone to leave. Those holes didn’t show up in the ground by themselves, but it seemed like magic: you arrive to place the one you love into the ground, and then leave for a while only to return to find they’ve been buried. The grave diggers have the most thankless, invisible, and humbling task. It’s the part that no one wants to do, the part that is too difficult, too much work, and breaks your back.

The hole needed to be widened ever so slightly, “Can I do it?” My son asked.

I took the shovel and showed him how to hold it and where to place his foot. I showed him like my father showed me and his father him and my great-great-grandfather did before realizing that the land in Ireland would no longer yield and placed his family on a boat to the Carolinas. I handed that shovel to my son so he could dig, and then he handed it back to me, and I turned around to hand it back to my father.

“Thank you,” I said to my dad.

“Of course.” He smiled back.

The following day, I was back on a plane, flying hundreds of miles from my kids again. But I hadn’t missed the moment; I kept my promise. What I didn’t realize until my late thirties was that so had my dad. 

We didn’t bury Rupert on borrowed land. We placed him on family land. Yes, we had become homeless, and that was my father's fault, but he didn’t run. He could have easily made an early exit or just walked away, leaving us behind. Plenty of fathers have throughout time. Instead, he woke up every day, picked up a shovel or paintbrush, or used his voice to sing. He journeyed, he fought and he worked. 

There might be a day when I learn my children resent how I handled this situation, even though I thought I handled it correctly. Was I kind enough at dinner that night? My son did want to go with us to the veterinarian, and I said no. Any one of those points may have been the moment of hurt, and I just missed it. I sometimes wonder if we can’t really see our parents until we are the right height to look them eye to eye

I hope I don’t have to see that shovel again for a long, long time, but I’m sure glad my father taught me how to use it so that one day, when my kids call me, I’ll know how to dig a hole.