I paused and smiled.
“Those were some really great weeks. There were plenty of other times, actually, when he shouted at me and cursed me to the devil for trying to help.”
I laughed nervously and the audience laughed with me. The double doors at the back of the church opened. A petite blonde woman entered, and some of the standers parted to let her by. She held the hand of a little red headed girl with long braided pig tails. All my nervousness dissipated.
“But he had a good side. A great side really.” I smoothed my hair behind my ears and grabbed both sides of the podium to steady myself. “Mr. Dunn—”
My heart twisted in my chest.
“Frank was a person who made great mistakes—too many mistakes, and he knew it. He was also a man who crumbled under the weight of tremendous grief.” I took a deep breath. “But only because he had experienced tremendous love. When you experience a love as great as he did, it’s easy to let the sadness and anger consume you. It’s easier to turn away from those you still have left and give yourself over to the numbness. He invited the pain in because it helped him remember, and he numbed it with whiskey when it all became too much. He once told me that he was afraid he would forget what Marlena and Mason looked like if he ever tried to move on. Sometimes, he talked about them as if they were in the very next room.”
Everyone knew who I was talking about.
“Now, y’all have had your own experiences with Frank. Some good, some bad... some God awful.”
More chuckles from the congregation. The blonde woman walked up the aisle and sat herself and the little girl in the first pew. Her bright smile urging me to continue. I smiled back at her.
“I can only tell you about the Frank I knew. He was a man who put a roof over my head when I didn’t have one. He was truly the only person besides my grandmother who never judged me and never assumed the worst of me. He never made me explain myself, even when I owed him an explanation. In his own quiet way, he accepted me into his life without question. In some ways, I think he was trying to make amends. He saved me because he couldn’t save his wife and son from death, and he couldn’t save his relationship with his living son. Frank never asked me questions he knew I didn’t want to answer.”
I took a deep breath, my eyes filled with tears as the memories started to flood into my mind of the last four years.
“But his tremendous love wasn’t gone. It didn’t die with his wife and son. It survived, in the way he felt about the son he pushed away, and in the way he cared for me…for us.”
There was a shuffle in the back of the church when the doors briefly opened behind some standers, but I continued on.
“His biggest regret was not the loss of the dead, but the loss of the living. Frank loved his son, Jake, but pushed him away because he reminded him of his loss, and he didn’t know how or where to channel all the pain.”
I held in the tears. These people needed to know about Frank, they needed to know he was a person who should be mourned in death, not made into a freak show legend. My voice was raspy, but I pressed on.
“I’m not making excuses for him, and I’m certainly not saying drinking himself into oblivion was the right way for anyone to handle anything. But, it’s what happened. It’s his truth. Frank died full of regret but certainly not alone. He was a man that you may have known as Ol’ Man Dunn or Mr. Dunn or Frank... or even ‘Bubba’, for those of you who played football with him in high school.” More laughs. “In the end, though, you didn’t know him at all.”
I noticed that some of the church ladies were pressing their hankies to the corners of their eyes, their tears looked real. I was glad to see I’d gotten my point across.
“Franklin Dunn was a troubled man who lived a troubled life. To me, he was a friend, a father figure in his finer moments, and someone I wanted to help when he was in the throes of his agony.”
I paused for a breath.
“I couldn’t save him,” I said. I was holding back the sobs that threatened to come out after every sentence. “But, I like to think I offered him some sort of comfort in these last few years because he sure as hell gave me the same.” There were a few gasps at my use of the word “hell” in church. But most people seemed to understand the point I was trying to get across.
I looked again toward the little girl who was beaming in the front pew, her coppery red hair swinging over her shoulders with ever move of her little freckled head. Her sundress was the same coral color as mine. After I had gotten dressed, she’d insisted we match. “Actually, I like to think we offered him some comfort.” I looked directly at her.