Almost 29 years ago now, after I delivered the
eulogy at my mother’s funeral, and I was heading back to New York City, Dad
drove me to the Route 128 station, waited with me till my train pulled in, and
then when we hugged goodbye, he said, “You did her proud. I hope you can do the same for me when the
time comes.”
Well, the time has come, Dad, and all I can say is:
you did us proud.
There are all kinds of luck in life. Ours was in having Norman Joseph Wells as a
father.
If you were never lucky enough to meet him, but you
met one of the five of us, then you met Dad.
He was a handsome devil with a room-filling laugh, a scholar who taught
himself a language so he could translate a book, a father and a grandfather who
wrote out his cards and letters with a calligraphy pen, a guy who could correct
a test and watch a Bruins game at the same time, and a dimly-seen figure
sitting on the edge of my childhood bed reading Treasure Island to me
before I went to sleep.
It’s always dangerous to simplify, but I think it’s
safe to say that, at heart, my father was a teacher. Which is not what I ever said when people
would ask me what he did.
When people would ask me what my father did, I would
either tell them the truth, and say, “He’s a professor of medieval theology at
Boston College;” or I would tell them the truth, and say, “Dig up twenty people
who died before Thomas Aquinas, and he could talk to all of them.” And, with the possible exception of Aquinas,
win an argument with every single one.
He taught for over 40 years at BC, and because every
professor in the department was required to teach the equivalent of Philosophy
101, football players and classics majors and pre-law and pre-med students were
all lucky enough to get a blue book back with impeccable Palmer Method notes in
bold red ink detailing errors in spelling, grammar, sentence structure, and—oh
yes—philosophy as well. This is why
everyone in our family has had the experience of a total stranger coming up to
us and saying, “I knew your father; he taught me Descartes.” And, because Dad also taught at St John’s Seminary, sometimes
that total stranger would have a cassock and a collar. We’d be at a wedding, a christening, a
confirmation, or a funeral, and there’d be the priest, or the Bishop, suddenly
acting like an 18-year-old and saying, “Dr. Wells—how are you?”
That’s what happens when you’re a teacher. No matter how old your students get, they
always look up to you as someone to respect, to emulate. Especially when you’re a good teacher.
Now, if I said, “Good teachers make good fathers,”
Dad would say I was writing a Robert Frost poem. But it would still apply.
And if I said, “A man’s
life is lived forwards but only understood backwards,” Dad would tell me that
I’m misquoting Kierkegaard. But it would still apply. In the end, the tranquility of
his acceptance, not just of his own personal condition, but of the condition to
which we all are subject, was nothing short of angelic.
But if I said, “Even
when you’re lucky enough to get to know somebody inside and out, there are
still so many places inside that can surprise you,” I don’t think he’d give me
an argument.
For instance: I said five of us earlier. Actually there were six. Mom had a preemie—a premature baby—between
Kevin and David, a baby who lived long enough to be baptized with the name of
Joseph, and then died. I remember her
telling me once, while the two of us were drinking tea and smoking Larks in the
kitchen, that she had asked Dad one night, out of the blue, “Do you ever think
about the baby we lost?” “Every day,”
Dad said. And that’s all he ever
said. And all he ever had to say.
In the movie Amour, which just won the Oscar
for best foreign film, you watch a husband caring for his wife as she slowly
deteriorates before his eyes. And
notable in its absence, the title of the movie, the word love, is not spoken
once in the entire film.
It doesn’t have to be. You see it in action. I was lucky enough to see it in action when
Dad was taking care of Mom, almost 30 years ago. And anybody who watched my sister and my
brothers take care of Dad in the last few years saw it in action as well.
That stuff doesn’t come out of nowhere. It gets passed on. Jenna, Eric, Dennis, Alyssa: it’s in you
now. Pass it on, you guys.
Life is funny.
If you’re lucky, you get to live long enough to become an orphan. And if you have siblings and you’re really
lucky, then you get to live long enough to become an only child. It’s a bitter gift, but Dad was lucky enough
to be both. He embodied, in the best way
the words of Descartes when he wrote: “To know who people really are, pay
regard to what they do, rather than what they say.”
That’s how Descartes would describe Dad. Here’s how I’d do it. Because I am who I am, and who I am is my father's son, it’s in the form of a sonnet--a sonnet I wrote on the train ride here
from New York. It’s titled “Philosophy.”
Philosophy
It’s not what you believe;
it’s how your life
Embodies your beliefs—not
quotes or facts
You weaponize while
fighting with the wife,
But offhand comments and
impromptu acts.
It’s what you do because
it just makes sense;
What gets said when your
inner-you voice talks.
It’s who you are when
there’s no audience
But God, that stern gent
in the upper box.
Show me a man who lives
his life like that
And I’ll show you my
father—someone who
Has so much going on under
his hat
And in his heart, that
what else can he do
But laugh, and roar, and take great care, and give;
And, if you’re lucky, teach you how to
live.
