I was
sitting by his hospital bed. He was dying from a painful cancer of the mouth,
after years on chewing on cigars, the hall-mark of the vaudeville performer of
his era. He was my father, Morris, the
eldest son of Schmule and Hannah Rosenbloom, who had come from Bialystock,
which was Russia or Poland, depending on which country held territorial possession in the ping-pong political
world of the late nineteenth century. They came here for many reasons and many
hopes, one of which, I fantasize, was a
desire to practice their Faith freely, to be “free at last” from the brutal repressions of the Mother country,
I, the
Catholic priest, deeply committed to my
own religion with full belief in its
claim to be the unique and fullest
expression of God’s self Revelation, had
assisted many of my flock to die.
I had offered the comfort and courage of the “Catholic” Christ to those leaving
this life for entrance to a “better place.”
But none of these Catholics came close to the love I had for my father
whom I could not help as I had the others. I could not help him. He had, in one
of those bedside moments, told me that he wished he knew the answers of life.
And I, the articulator of meaning, the Guru, the psychologist became the
essence of frustration. I was blocked. What was so clear to me was not so to
him. I could not reach that area of his
soul.
He had married and adored his bride, my Irish
Catholic mother, who was pretty, lively, laughing, gregarious whose every wish
he strove to fulfill. Except that he join
us in our attempts to live what
we saw as the godly life. They were
show biz people. She, starring for
years in the Broadway ginmill, the Metropole as a popular singer of the Ethel Merman
style, with a huge memory, featured in the Bob Ripley “Believe it or Not”
column, and he, a novelty dancer capable of
doing the impressive and difficult “Buck ‘n Wing” which always brought “ down the house.” He had done Shakespeare and slapstick and
straight man/ comic and even had been invited to be the partner to Gracie
Allen. B. G.—before George. He did it all with gusto and abandon all the way to
his old age.
He had met
many of the priests whose community I would later join, good men of
intelligence and integrity. None made any impact on his thinking. His
strong willed stance was beyond Catholic logic and mysticism. There was
something very powerful at work in his psyche,
outside our ken. One of my brother priests asked him directly as he lay dying “Would you like to become a Catholic?”
and my father, ever the independent thinker,
said: “ No. My wife and children are Catholics and I am glad that they
are happy in it.” This was his honest position.
So, when
some well meaning but poorly informed, if not stupid, priest, in response to my
mother’s tearful lament that Morris was not Catholic, surreptitiously baptized
my comatose father. Oafishly, he
squeezed water from a face cloth upon his forehead and mouthed the words of
Baptism.. When I heard of this, I lost my calm and exploded. I felt this was an
attack on my father’s personhood and an enormous disrespect for his conscience.
Not only did this cleric brutalize my father but he actually trampled on his
own Faith by knowingly (he couldn’t be
that ignorant) administering a Sacrament, invalidly. Still,
I suppose, it is kinder to say that he acted out of stupidity or misplaced zeal
and not malice.
As I sat by that bed, I was 53 years old with a very heavy
heart, flooded with images from the past. I saw him playing catch with me on 61st street near San Juan hill and teaching me to box with huge 16 ounce gloves gleefully taunting me to try to hit him and
giving me the dime to make the
movie before one o’clock. I saw him teaching me how to study and how to do
research. I saw my rebellion against him when he made me perform on stage in
theatres. He made me dance an Argentinian tango, with my sister, costume and
all, in a comedic, mimicking rendition of his classy, authentic one with my
mother which “wowed” the house
immediately before. And I was 5 years old
and my sister was all of seven! I hated it!
I saw how I hid under the bed at show time to escape my
vaudeville chores in the Borscht circuit where we spent summers as the “Social
staff.” He made me dance on stage and
take part in skits and Bingo-like evenings for fat, old ladies and balding gents
in funny looking shorts who patted me on the head. Here he taught me the
vaudeville dogma: The Show Must go on! It doesn’t matter how you feel.
Top of the world or flat in the dumps. Like it or not, put on a smile,
get out there and do your job. He taught me that life is not a silver platter,
that we work for what we get. In a sense, he echoed S. Freud who argued that
the meaning of life is work and love.
When I was
twelve or so, caught in the romanticism of the priesthood, like many a Catholic
kid, I wrote on my copy book, Father James Lloyd. He saw it and
went into a frenzy. He had always been
extremely gentle with us. I had seen him deck an offensive loudmouth backstage
with one punch but with my sister
and me, he was tender and gentle, no
matter what we did. Strict about “bad”
language yet he would hardly raise his voice to us. But here he screamed and shouted as he almost violently erased the
scribble from my book. I couldn’t understand his reaction. Why? What had I done to open his fury? It took me years to understand, even
superficially.
It was
centuries of genes speaking and history
and discrimination and injustice and disrespect and frustration and a kind of
tribal loyalty erupting from years of repression. It probably enmeshed a huge frustration
that he, the father of two children, had
little to do with their spiritual
formation. He shared a railway flat with
six Christians where he was overwhelmed with (to him) their strange practices. There was no way, as
a child, I could understand the dynamics of this complex matrix. I, thoroughly
frightened by his a-typical behavior, took my little kid spirituality and
buried it deep within my own soul. So, my sister and I continued to luxuriate
in our rosaries and holy water and holy cards and signs of the cross and
jangles of medals lapping around our necks. We never asked questions but simply
followed the mores of our circumscribed society.
But the ultimate
jolt to me (and him) was when I, at 21, told him that I was entering a seminary
to “try it out.” He virtually exploded! He previously had assured me that he
could get me an Army commission even with my limited ROTC training. When I
persisted in my intention, he thundered: “You are no longer my son.” I was
shattered and devastated-- over and above my then insecurity and doubt. But,
somehow, I went ahead. I emotionally revisited this pain years later when I saw
Tevyev in Fiddler on the roof shun his own daughter for marrying a Christian
“out of the Faith.” My personal experience had all the dimensions for such an explosion.
Ironically,
I was doing what he taught me to do. Think my own thoughts. Make my own
decisions. Follow my own star. The
psychologist in me says that I had ingested—unconsciously—his own independence
and stubbornness. A strong “something “
in me—I call it the “Call from the Lord” Himself-- kept pulling at me. God’s grace coupled with the Morris
Rosenbloom syndrome made that Call irresistible.
How it must
have hurt and confused him! Now, I, in my dotage, can ask, did we, especially
me, unknowingly flood him with guilt and self recrimination?
Morris
Rosenbloom was a good and sincere man caught between two Goods which he
cherished, one, his ancient Faith which paradoxically he, under the seductions
of the theatre, had abandoned at 21 years of
age, and, two, his deep personal
love for his own wife and children. His resolution of the dilemma, i.e., to permit
his children to be Baptized and raised as Catholics, was made, no doubt out of love
for us. It, nevertheless, must have brought him profound inner turmoil and some
deep sadness. Viscerally, had he violated
some deep and ancient loyalty by marrying a Shiksa? Had he, on some deep level,
played the traitor to his own Tribe?
His hidden
inner tension must have generated deep pain which he masked with his theatrical
skills. How could he give up his family of origin? Something of his very
identity. Yet, how could he give up his little family which he loved intensely?
Yet he did give his progeny over to a religion some of whose vicious members
historically practiced so much repression and injustice on his people. That his
children were Christians was difficult enough but that his only son would
become a priest!
This was
intolerable! Psychologically, how could
he, how did he survive this balancing act? This series of contradictions and
antitheses. Whichever decision he made would carry sadness and perhaps even regret.
But, I know he had a very strong basic ego with strong insistence that one
should follow his own star—not someone else’s. He ,alone, made that decision.
In any event, the Rosenbloom family, with good
intentions devised some kind of shared conspiracy by telling my very Orthodox grandparents
that Morris lived in a club for theatre
people similar to the Friars or the Lambs where he supposedly lived to be close
to his business but would return home for the weekends. When he would go back
to the “Club” after a Sunday Rosenbloom dinner, Hannah would maternally slip an
orange into his pocket and remind him to
be careful crossing the street. (The
source for these tidbits is my cousin David Chotin whose family shared the
apartment of the senior ones.) It needs no psychological training to sense that
such a situation would breed dynamics so painful that they would seep into
lives of others, like my sister and me.`
Meanwhile,
he lived with a group of good, if simplistic, hard working people. They were devout Irish Catholics who
were seemingly unaware of his conflict. They were generous people who laughed
through their days with their “Catholic
sunshine.” They enjoyed his good humor as did most people he met. But he had to
feel a kind of existential and painful loneliness. My Irish grandmother doted
on him so much that when she died, Morris who hid his emotions so skillfully,
uncharacteristically, had an extremely difficult time dealing with this loss.
So seriously
did the Rosenbloom family pursue the whole fiction that my 22 year old mother,
pregnant with me, was approached by the elder daughter of the clan with a
strong “hint” that for everyone’s benefit
the “bump” should be removed at their expense. She would always refuse
to discuss this with me while my in formation was gotten from my Jewish
cousins. Regardless, as might be expected I am eternally grateful to that
simple Irish lass. It is patent why graphs and statistics and psychology are not the reasons I am Pro-Life. I have
enjoyed 92 years of joy and laughter and experience. If I had been “terminated”
as activists like to euphemize this gruesome procedure, I would have missed a
great life. In this case, the anecdotal example is more persuasive to me than
statistical studies
For years, I
struggled with my own resentment at being denied knowing my grandparents. Who was to blame? My father?
My mother? My Jewish family? The era? Who knows? The French adage says that to know all is to forgive all. Without knowing “all”,
consistent with my own Faith. I pray for grace to forgive while at the same
time pray for the energy to be thankful for the marvels which have entered my
life.
So, I was
ordained a Catholic priest which
ceremony, my father refused to at tend. He did see me off when I left on a tiny
freighter bound for Capetown where I spent seven exciting but difficult years.
On my return as a weather beaten, tough missionary. I found things very different. He had softened. He would
carry my picture in his wallet to show the guys who hung around the Palace
theatre on Broadway. He would brag about Father Jim ( that was me!).He and I
would go for late night walks after I finished at the Information Center for an
ice cream soda. He so relished this relationship that he quizzed my Mother why
we didn‘t do this before?
When I was
meeting with an Orthodox Rabbi and his two rabbi sons after I had baptized his
adult Jewish daughter, all my confreres were awed by my bravery, but it was my father who stood outside the
Conference room should I need any help! Not
confreres but a religious outsider. Was it not ironic? My Jewish father joined
me, his Catholic, priest son in an alliance against what he would have seen as
his own very ancient tradition? How does one explain this? Isn’t there a deep
and powerful drive of a parent for his child which trumps everything else? It isn’t who is right or wrong. It is the profound
call related somehow to one’s own DNA .
Our rift was
truly healed when I joined him in some show biz gigs. I had hosted a television
show on WNBC for years and somehow persuaded the big guys at NBC to do a
Christmas show starring my mother and father. My mother, called the orig inal
Strawberry Blonde from the popular
Metropole Cafe on 7th avenue and 49th street and her
husband Morris the old time novelty dancer. I threw in a few ringers each year
to placate the “Upstairs guys”, like
Florence Henderson and Cyril Richard and Johnny Desmond but I was really
bringing back the old Vaudeville team, Lloyd and Ardell (Mom and Pop). My
father, with the inevitable cigar stuck in his mouth, floated! He even joined
us –on set—singing Christmas carols.
Our
relationship became so close that twice
without invitation or suggestion he came
up to me when I was saying Mass and received the Eucharist from me. I
made a rapid consult with the Holy Spirit wherein I decided Morris would get
Communion unless the Lord Himself shouted a negative order. There were many
others there to see this and I would not for any earthly reason deny him.
But wait!
What happened to all that anger and fury and isolation? I can only guess. Apart
from the proverbial powerful grace of a loving God, it was the profound natural
love of a father for his only son.
By some kind
of strange osmosis, I absorbed some understanding of his earlier
disappointment. It was Names. I had no recollection of being James Rosenbloom
since our name change came when I was 2 years old. I was always Jimmy Lloyd. By
a curious twist of things unforeseen, I
was the only one who could pass on my father’s name, Rosenbloom or Lloyd.
Through my progeny. This was his chance for immortality.
Further, he
was upset that I would be excluded from marriage which was itself a tragedy for
him. That I would never experience the joys of sexual love with a woman seemed
utterly sinful to him. A viewpoint highly consistent with the ancient Jewish
way. So it seemed to him that I was not only stupid but selfish and brainwashed.
I would never enjoy my own children and simultaneously deprive him of
immortality and deny him the joys of grandchildren with his name. So he blamed
my Church for it all. It was a very dark time in my life.
But sitting
at that bedside though full of` sorrow and much regret, it still somehow came together
for me. He forgave me my insensitivity and self absorption, even warning me to
avoid the modern “stuff” going on in the priesthood. “Stay where you are,” he
said, noting the priests of that era who were abandoning ship. In fact, he was
very astute. Priests, some
unbelievably immature, others acting as
adults sought what grass seemed greener on the other side of the fence. In
the end he was proud of his son, the priest. He wanted me, as his son to be the
priest.
So, I and
brother priests whispered into his ear:
“God loves you, Morris, God loves you.” And so he died. We gave him a
spectacular Funeral with scores of priests, nuns and Brothers and many laity,
his friends, and whatever family could attend. I had asked a Rabbi friend of
mine to attend and say some Jewish prayers in the big Paulist Church for Morris
Lloyd Rosenbloom. He reluctantly had to decline because in his mind Morris
became a Catholic when he received the Eucharist from me. While I was initially
disappointed, a strange peace hit me. My brother cleric, the Rabbi, had somehow
assured me of something I had long prayed for---Morris, like me, felt and
accepted the great tug toward God.
The irony
and mystery of it. The young Jewish tap dancer dies in the embrace of the
loving God. He had been the rebellious acculturated finger snapper who made fun
of religion and piety. But nonetheless, God was there for him in his final
trial. It is so obvious to me. Anyone of good will, Morris and Schmule and
Hannah and Flanagan and tucci and Lopez and the Hindu and follower of Mohammed,
anyone can expect the flow of eternal love from the Lord. All that is needed is
the good heart, as we saw in Morris--------the determination to do “the right
thing” in whatever way one sees “good”
and true and beautiful. The subjective “right”
thing.
In my own old age as I face crossing the Great
Dark River myself , I, Jim Lloyd (nee
Rosenbloom) priest and psychologist, the
one with the yiddisher kop and the Irish heart proclaim to my world my gratitude to my
God for so, so many things, one great
one of which is th
