Shrouds of Silence

Shrouds of Silence

I manage to smile awkwardly, then drop my eyes to the menu. Neither of us says a word. In retrospect, I think he picked this crowded restaurant because it felt like a safe place to tell me.

“Here you are, gentlemen,” the waiter says, setting down our drinks. “Would you like to order now, or do you need a few more minutes?”

“I’m ready if you are, Dad.”

“I’d like a few more minutes,” my father says, not looking at me.

“Certainly,” says the waiter as he turns away.

Without warning, my father starts.

I’m so caught off guard, I just listen. I don’t say a word.

“The last time your mother and I went to a dinner party,” he begins, his voice steady but quiet, “we were at the Hollenders’. You don’t know them—we lost touch years ago—but we were good friends at the time. There were already four other couples there when we arrived.”

He pauses. I take a sip of water and wait.

We were all seated around the diner table, wine in hand. Telling vacation stories and off-color jokes, we laughed perhaps too loudly.

He stares at the table, not really seeing it.

“Then, as if for no reason, your mother starts crying. She won’t say why at first. After a while, after much coaxing, she tells everyone the jokes are on her. That we’re all laughing at her.”

He stops again, this time longer. I hear the clatter of silverware at another table. Someone laughs.

“This was long before she was diagnosed,” he says. “So I didn’t know what was happening. I was as confused as everyone else.”

“Would you gentlemen care to order?” the waiter interrupts.

“Uh, yeah. Just a burger and fries. Well done, please.”

“I’ll have the same,” my father says. “And another Sam Adams, if you will.”

“Certainly.”

As the waiter walks off, my father picks up where he left off.

“It got worse. The more everyone tried to assure her the jokes weren’t about her, the more convinced she became that they were. That everyone was in on it but her.”

His voice is low now. I have to lean in a little to hear him.

“This went on for thirty minutes, maybe more. Then she suddenly stood up and ran from the table. Locked herself in the bathroom. We could all hear her crying. Everyone looked to me for answers I didn’t have.”

He shakes his head slightly.

“The Hollenders found the spare bathroom key. We got the door open, but it was a struggle getting her out. She didn’t want to leave. I apologized and took her home. After that... well, word got around. And we were more or less on our own.”

He finishes. I don’t know what to say. I feel like I’ve been under water the whole time.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Is all I manage.

He nods and we eat in silence.

After we leave the restaurant, I drive away into the starless night. I start replaying what he told me. The scene at the Hollenders’. My mother. The looks from the other guests. My father, helpless to explain.

I realize now, too late, we’d both been living with the same patterns of illness, carrying the same burdens of shame and isolation.

I see now that my father had waited to tell me this story to protect me. But in doing so, he’d shut me out of his world.

And I’d shut him out of mine—not to protect, but to punish. Because I thought he didn’t care.

The difference was that she did.

And now, as I write this, I see that I had not only shrouded my father in silence, but myself as well.

For fifty years, I’ve said nothing.

In writing this, I begin to lift the shroud.

But my greatest fear is that, having spent so long in silence, I may be too late to deliver the Grail.