Father Gregory

I am not a Catholic so please excuse me if there are any errors I have written in this story regarding that church or how it operates. I'll start by saying I'll admit to being on this earth for over sixty years. In my younger years I liked the girls and they seemed to like me, even if I didn't look anywhere near the guy that the girls took second looks at. This story is fictional and based on two girls I knew in my past life. They were the inspiration behind me writing this story so here it is.

I like the constructive criticism comments I get back from readers because I learn from them. The slash and burn comments will be deleted as soon as I see them because they are meaningless and a waste of time both yours and mine. E-mails are welcome.

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Father Gregory.

I admit my mind was blank as I was sitting there in an almost catatonic state. I came out of my stupor when some alter boy in a white robe shook my shoulder and asked If I was OK. My mind was jumbled for a minute and I had to look around to get my bearings. When I realized where I was I was more than a bit baffled because I found myself in a vaguely familiar catholic church by the name of St. Mary's.

As the organ played in the background I found I didn't know how I got to be in the back row of pews of this religious place. The last thing I remember was standing on the sidewalk outside, looking at the church and thinking how it hadn't changed over the years. The Pew I was sitting in was also familiar to me, and I did feel some forgotten emotions sitting there. I looked around and noticed the congregation was filing out, so I figured the service had to be over. Some of them were looking funny at me wondering who I was, which was to be expected I guess what with having an alter boy asking me questions.

The alter boy in the white robe spoke again, "Could you come with me, the Father wishes to have a word with you."

I was still a bit confused but robotically followed him to the basement of the church to a small office.

"The father will be with you shortly," was the next thing he said, and I sat in a chair wondering why a priest would want to see me.

As I looked around I realized I had been in this office more than a few times in the past, and there had been a lot of changes. The desk was more scratched up, there were a lot more book shelves and they were all full of books and the walls had been painted a different color with more religious type things hanging on them.

About ten minutes later, in which time I had cleared my mind and been doing a lot of reminiscing, a nun pushed a wheel chair into the room and positioned it behind the desk. I looked over at the occupant of the chair and recognized the priest. With a smile on my face I said, "Father Gregory it's a real surprise to see you again. I figured after all this time you would have gone to meet your maker."

We shook hands and the Father replied, "I hope I didn't keep you to long, the churches business takes me longer to do now than it did in my younger days. And yes, I'm still on earth. I may not be as spry as I was, but god must like what I am doing since he hasn't decided I should join him yet." He then said, "It's been a long time since I saw you and I have to ask why you are sitting in my church. I thought you had moved on."

I recalled a lot of my past life and my involvement with him as I spoke, "For your information when I left here I moved south and wound up on a ranch, so yes, I did move on, but me and my wife have been in this city for a while now and settled in quite nicely in a nice house in that senior community overlooking the river a few blocks south of here."

I added, "The reason we moved to this area is to be closer to our kids because over time for one reason or other, all our kids have moved into this area. Another reason was my wife and I wanted to be closer to the grand-kids, but the main reason is we had a deal from a big developer fall into our laps for our ranch we just couldn't say no too. That deal allowed us to retire so here we are."

We carried on conversing about this and that, until the alter boy knocked and stuck his head in the door and said, "Excuse me father, but there is a group of people out in the foyer looking for a guy that I think is your guest."

"Oh really... Seeing as this room is a bit small could you send in just one of them please, and we will figure out what is going on."

Shortly a good-looking older woman, who was my wife entered the room and upon seeing me gave me a stern look. My wife did worry over me like crazy and I must admit I did on occasion give her just reason to do just that. Because my wife was known for letting everyone know exactly what she was thinking I was bracing myself expecting to get an ear full. I confess the cause of the dressing down I knew I was going to get was my fault. I was supposed to meet the family earlier at the United Church down the block and never made it there. The worst thing was, I never told anyone where I was going to be. So, resigned to my fate I sat back and waited for it to come.

As predicted she started with, "So, this is where you got too. Me and the family have been worried sick about you when you didn't show up." The rapid-fire questions then started with, "Why are you here? Who is this? Why didn't you call? Are you OK? "You're not hurt, are you? The rest of the family is upstairs waiting to find out if you are indeed in this church." She finished by placing her fists on her hips and with a scowl on her face said, "I should have known when you said you wanted some exercise and were going to walk to church and then sent me off with Chuck and his wife something like this would happen."

I asked her to stop her tirade and turned to Father Gregory and said, "Father, as you probably surmised if not for the temper this is my beautiful, wife, Hallie, and as you can see she is upset that I didn't meet them in church in what is our usual pattern for Sundays. Oh yeah... When I say meet them in church that would be the United church north of here."

I then introduced the two of them to each other. With the formalities out of the way I then tried to settle the dust by not giving Hallie the chance to start another tirade and said to father Gregory, "I think it would be nice if I could introduce you to my family, I would like them to meet you. Is there anyway you could join us at Lou's restaurant? I will even l buy you lunch. We always go there after church and Lou always has a section set aside for us every week."

There was a smile on Father Gregory's face as he said, "Ahhh a free lunch. I haven't eaten in Lou's for a long time and what he serves is a lot tastier than soup and a sandwich that is waiting for me. You go and console your family and I will meet you there in a bit, so we can talk some more."

As Hallie and I went back upstairs to meet the family she was giving me the evil eye, "Just what are you doing here? This is so unlike you to go off on your own without letting someone know where you are. I was worried to death something had happened to you. If Mrs. Carter hadn't told us she saw you come into this church we would still be looking all over the place for you."

We approached the family and of course the questions started all over again. I stopped all that by telling everybody, "Lets go to Lou's and I will explain everything there."

Let me tell you I got lots of funny looks as we walked to Lou's. About the time we got seated Father Gregory came in the door in his wheel chair pushed by a nun and space was cleared for him and the sister. I amused myself watching the family as they pondered this new development.

I introduced everyone in the family to Father Gregory. The main characters in the introduction were Alice, my oldest, Beth the second born, Chuck my son, and Diane, the youngest. Then there were the spouses and ten grand kids.

Lou had our regular order all cooked, and three pans of the best lasagna made on earth appeared. I told everyone I would explain everything after we ate. I then asked Father Gregory to say grace for us which got some more strange looks from everyone because Hallie usually said it."

We had our lasagna and when the tables were cleared my son asked the first question, "Ok dad what's with this going into the Catholic church? As far as I know you have always been associated with the United Church."

Everyone was looking at me waiting for me to respond so I gave them one, "Well Chuck the simple answer to that is when I was younger I was affiliated with the United church but almost switched to become a Catholic at one time. Father Gregory here, was the one that was instructing me in all the ins and outs of how to switch religions, so today when I stopped to look at the outside of the church I guess my mind just took over with memories of the past. I think I got caught up in those memories and without consciously thinking about it I had to see if the church was the same as it I remembered it and I wandered in there."

I could see this was surprising news to everyone because everyone was frozen in place and staring at me in disbelief, so I added, "It's true, at one time I was quite serious about being a catholic and in the past have been in that church more than a few times."

That started all the questions from the kids about why? How come? etc, etc.

Father Gregory cleared his throat and that stopped any more questions. He then said to me, "If you don't mind I would like to give your family my version of what transpired over forty-five years ago."

"Go right ahead" I said.

He then said, "I still remember the day I met your dad. I was just a young guy. The seminary wasn't to far in my past and I was assigned to my first church, that being Saint Mary's, where you found your dad today. One day I was walking about the church checking to make sure everything was in order for the next days service. I noticed a young man who I had seen in the church in the past walk in and look about like he was lost."

"That young man was your father. He wasn't shy and when he saw me he approached and came right out and asked me what was involved in switching from being a Protestant into being a Catholic. Now that was a question I had never had thrown at me before and had me puzzled for a bit, but I could see he was serious. We sat in the back pew for a long time and I asked him a bunch of questions. Why do you want to do this being the main one?"

"He informed me that he was very serious with a girl who was a devoted catholic and once school was finished and he got a stable job he was going to marry her. As you probably know at that time my church frowned on mixed marriages where a catholic married someone from out of the church, so because she was catholic he was going to become one, so she could remain a devoted member of her church. I could see he was serious about things, so after a bunch more questions by me, I agreed to set things in motion and instruct him in the ways of being a Catholic."

Diane broke in and looked at me and stated, "Dad you never once mentioned you wanted to marry some other girl besides mom. What gives with that?"

"I guess I didn't. Your mother always knew there was someone before her, but she never pried because she knew without question I loved her like no other. After I got to know your mother I guess it was something I just shelved in the back of my mind and never thought about."

Beth then asked, "Who was this person and what happened that you never married her. It sounds like things were serious with the two of you?"

I thought for a bit and said, "That time of my life isn't something I think about, so I guess it's one of those things that my mind has blocked out. I can see you are interested in knowing the facts, so I guess I could tell you."

After a bit of a pause to collect my thoughts, I started by saying, "There was this girl I met named Jessie. We met at a beach at the end of grade ten and we found we had a connection that grew stronger the more time we spent together. We spent every moment we could with each other and the two of us connected so much everyone thought of us as a confirmed couple. Half way through grade twelve is when Jessie and I seriously thought about getting married after school finished."

"Jessie loved her church, and because she attended every Sunday I started to attend with her. We always sat in the back pew in the far corner, just so her father wouldn't make a scene. I should add that from the word go her dad didn't cotton to me. He reluctantly tolerated me only because I was dating his daughter."

"One day after some serious discussions with Jessie where she told me her future kids had to be christened in her church I knew if I wanted to be with her I would have to switch to her church. That is when I met Father Gregory."

I looked at the priest that was sitting beside me and told the rest of them. "Over some time, when our schedules allowed us to meet, he instructed me in the ways of his church and I have to admit along the way we became good friends."

I stopped there, and Diane, who was always the impatient one spoke up. "Well don't leave us hanging why didn't you join the church and get together with this Jessie person?"

I lowered my voice and told them, "As in most stories when things are going well that's usually when the bottom drops out of everything, and that's what happened to me. I graduated and was thinking about getting baptized in the catholic church when my dad got a call from his sister. My uncle and aunt had big farm in eastern Saskatchewan and he had been hurt badly. They were wondering if I could go there and help my younger cousin with their farm until my uncle was better. My cousin could do most everything but was just to young and small to handle a lot of stuff, plus it was harvest time and they needed the extra hands. I soon packed my things, said goodbye to Jessie and headed six hundred miles from my home in central Alberta to the far side of Saskatchewan."

"Jessie said she would wait for me and eagerly would wait for my phone calls, but I soon noticed when I called she wasn't around much, and when she was the calls seemed to be unwanted. A few times her dad answered the phone and as much told me to quit calling. Well seven months after I left home, my uncle was well enough to work around the farm again, so I headed home. When I got home, Jessie hadn't been taking any of my calls for the past month or so, and I couldn't locate her anywhere.

"I soon found out why I couldn't find her. A few friends informed me she had been seen around town a lot with another guy. To make a long story short I did some investigating and found her. When I finally caught up with her, she was parked with another guy in the park where we usually had gone. That's where I saw with my own eyes she was heavily involved with that guy. The part that hurt the most was they were involved in things that Jessie had been adamant not to do until after she was married. I never found out why she did what she did, but in the grand scheme of things it really didn't matter because the damage had been done to my heart."

"I had all the usual feelings after a seeing something like that and at the top of my list was being rejected by the one I loved. I decided I would head off to greener pastures to get away... I have to admit I was running away... I packed up my things and I went touring."

Father Gregory stopped me and said, "I had more than a passing interest in you two and I always looked for the two of you from the pulpit to where you always sat in that back corner every Sunday. When you disappeared, that spot was always empty after that. I had always been curious about what happened between you two and asked some of the parishioners what was going on. I found out that when you went to Saskatchewan, Jessie's dad was happy you were out of the picture and worked hard to set Jessie up with a family friends son. Jessie did go out with this guy, probably to get her dad to stop bugging her, and they connected. It was a short time after that when she soon stopped coming to church. I heard through gossip that about the time you came back home she was with child. Both her and her parents were embarrassed about that and they all stopped coming to church. I guess when the boyfriend found out he was going to be a father he disappeared and hasn't been seen since."

"Today when I saw a stranger sitting in that back corner I was curious, and during the service I kept an eye on that spot. I didn't recognize you at first because you just sat there like a statue contemplating your shoes and not taking part in anything. Eventually you glanced up, and even though you have aged I knew it was you. When the service was over I sent one of the alter boys to fetch you to my office."

Beth then inquired, "So dad, you got dumped by some girl and took off for in your words greener pastures. Where did you go, and what were you doing?"

"Well it was winter, and I just went on an excursion. If the road was clear that's the way I went traveling from one place to another, plus doing a lot of thinking whenever I stopped. I found winter is quite relaxing in its own way... Believe it or not there is a lot to see in this province if you look for it, and I was never more than four hundred miles from home, but it seemed like I was in a far-off land."

Alice, who was sitting across from me got my attention and asked, "So you traveled around for a while, just where did you end up?"

"Well the short version of that is I ultimately ended up at the ranch where you were conceived and grew up, but that is another story."

"OK dad, enough teasing. Spell it out for us. I just have to hear how you got to the ranch." Beth proclaimed.

I could hear Father Gregory give a small chuckle and he told me, "I can see your kids are determined to get the full story out of you and I'm sure if you don't tell them they are sure to bug you until they get an answer. My opinion is you should answer their question. Besides I'm interested too."

I just raised my hands up in defeat and started my story. "One day I think I subconsciously realized I had enough traveling and sight seeing for a while and wanted to rest for a bit. Even if I still didn't want to head home I found I was starting to slowly head in that direction."

"It was spring when the snow was starting to melt when I stopped at a store on a country road. The store was deep in the foothills and I bought a few small things for lunch and went to sit in the warm sun at a picnic table in front of the store to enjoy the fantastic view of the snow covered Rocky Mountains. I don't know how long I sat there with my mind wandering, but my thoughts were interrupted when a cute girl sat down beside me."

She opened a conversation with me in that sing song voice she had, "Beautiful view isn't it? I never get tired of looking at it."

"I turned to look at her and replied with something like, it is surely one of gods finer works that's for sure."

"You're not from around here, are you? What brings you to this neck of the woods?"

I then informed the family, "That was the start of a conversation that went on for a goodly while. I don't know why, because I had just met this person, but after chatting for a bit I gave her a reader's digest version of the happenings in the last year of my life. I did manage to find out her name, and with her being so easy to talk to it was an enjoyable time. As you can probably surmise that was my introduction to your mother."

I continued with the story by saying, "At some point or another in our conversation she asked me if I was looking for some work. Seeing as I was running low on funds I told her yes. At that time her mom came out of the store with her purchases and Hallie informed me, as well as her mother, I was going to follow them home and was going to be the new hired help around the place."