Eulogy for Da
By Niall Twohig
Delivered at my Da’s (Padraig Joseph Twohig) funeral 19 November 2019
“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.” - Saint John
It’s fitting we’re in this place – St. Patrick’s Church, or St. Paddy’s, as Da would call it.
Inevitably, every 17th of March, Da’s co-worker, Kevin Dillon, would have a question for him:
“Paddy Man, is it true your Saint drove all the snakes outta Ireland?”
“It is. It is,” Da said. “But poor ol’ St. Paddy… he forgot the snakes of the two-legged variety.”
Da, Rebel and Revolutionary
Da was a priest. But he was also a rebel. He had anti-Imperial blood, after all. His grandpa, Commander Breen, was thrown in prison for taking part in the Easter Rising.
That rebel blood doesn’t sit easily. It stirs across generations.
It stirred Da to take a rifle to an IRA rally, to fire a round up in protest. Seemed like a good idea until the Irish Garda were chasing him back to his flat. Lucky for Da he had a less rebellious brother, also a priest, who used his heavenly ways to talk the Garda down. “It was just low-blood sugar that pulled the trigger.”
An Irish story. Guilt-ridden. Humorous. Empowering. The kind of story an Irishman hides away from his wee son, secretly hoping he’ll recount it at pubs and funerals.
It’s a good story. But it’s not the story of Da.
For Da, the radicalism of the gun was outweighed by a more revolutionary quality:
He saw God in all.
In poor barrio kids. A young girl, starving, who confessed to stealing bread.
In the Navy boys of Subic Bay, who’d seen too much, done too much.
In street kids steered toward prison, crime, addiction, disease.
He saw God in them. He loved them.
His was a powerful love, a priestly love.
But what made this love revolutionary was that it extended to all, even the two-legged snakes.
My Hate, His Love
Those snakes. I saw them whenever I visited Da—on CNN, FOX, MSNBC—whatever channel he was glued to. When I came in, he’d fumble with the remote, mute them, and greet me with a kiss. “Ah, Niall. Ah, Niall.” We’d chat for a few minutes.
But the snakes drew him back.
“Ah, poor so and so,” he’d say as their faces flashed across the screen. “Poor Bush, poor Madoff, poor Trump. Poor Clinton.”
Poor?! How could he say poor?! These were the bad guys: the imperialists, the capitalists, the crooks who created the poor, who sent young soldiers to death, who steered young kids to crime, addiction, prison, disease.
“They’re not poor,” I told Da dismissively.
“Ah, Niall. Ah, Niall.”
Poverty
I’m starting to see what he meant by the word. Poor. Those snakes of a two-legged variety may have great wealth and power, but they’re impoverished in a deeper sense. They lack what Da had in abundance.
He was, of course, poor in a material sense. He died with $3,000 in his bank. But he had a priceless and infinite gift, tucked away in his broken vessel:
Agape, the highest love. The Love that binds us to one another, to all things. The unconditional Love that threads us to all creatures, great and small. Even to the snakes who divide us, who conquer us, who kill us.
He felt sadness for those who didn’t have that Love, those whose vessel was filled with hate, for they lived in the outer dark, on lonely islands, separate from the luminous reality he touched through God, through Love.
Why call them poor, Da?
“Well, that’s your brother,” he told me on another occasion, “you can never lose faith in him, even if he’s forgotten you.”
Gold in Memory
In the end, I saw Da stare upon his riches.
As the Epistle of John says: Love is God.
And that God, that Love, didn’t abandon Da.
It took away all his guilt and pain. He sank into it.
Leaving behind the world of things.
Leaving behind the thing he called himself.
To take a nice dip back into the Ocean.
Memory floods back now, day by day, from that Ocean of Love.
I’m in second grade. It’s evening. I’m seated at Da’s writing desk, my pen waiting on his words. He reclines in bed, a short ways off. He looks so tired, yet so happy to be there with me.
He begins with a word: “Patrick; P-A-T-R-I-C-K.” My hand moves to transcribe each letter, to form this word.
He continues: “St. Patrick was a slave. S-L-A-V-E.”
I’m a slow learner, but I’m starting to see the magic of these letters moving from Da’s mouth to my hand to the loose-leaf page. I see the magic in the words forming the sentences.
Word by word, we finish my six sentence report for St. Paddy’s day. An hour maybe.
Then the fun begins. I draw my cover for the report: St. Patrick decked out in green, with a gnarled staff, and snakes slithering away in fear.
I staple the cover to my six sentences. I carry the report, proudly, to Da’s bedside.
“Ah, it looks great Niall, but ya forget something… the two legged snakes.”
I see them now, Da. I haven’t forgotten them.
I’m in on the joke.
I’m in on your Love.