Remembrance: Fr. Gabriel DesHarnais, Assistant Pastor, St. Matthew's Episcopal Church

Gabriel as a young man

Gabriel as I knew him

Eulogy, by Gabriel's son, Armand:

Most of us here today know that my father, in the last years of his life, struggled with Parkinson's Plus, and Dementia with Louie bodies, and finally Corticobasal Degeneration. Those are things that go wrong with the mechanism of your brain, just like I have a thing that goes wrong with the mechanism of my shoulder. It was a physical problem, we all know that. But if it was just a physical problem, then why do I see not an interruption, but such a perfect trajectory through all the years when I knew him, even the last ones?

When I was a little kid my dad was at his absolute best as a father. He was all heart, and a glance at any picture in any of our albums tells you it was no more complicated than this: he was happy and he was proud. As we got older and it came time to connect through words and thoughts rather than just grinning at each other, things weren't so simple. My dad was a high-brow guy and there isn't much on this planet lower-browed than little boys like my brother and I. My relationship with my dad in those years can be summed up in the phrase, 'He wasn't really into baseball'.

When I was a young adult my dad and I were able to have deeper conversations, sort of. He would talk about St. Augustine, Huguenots, the silver age in Latin literature and I would... pretend to understand. Sometimes I would try to actually understand by asking him questions, but the interruptions would put him off the scent of the game he was tracking, the trail that linked ideas across centuries, languages, continents. So I stopped interrupting. It was more important to catch as can and let him chase his ideas than it was to know if we were talking about, say, ancient Rome or Canada. Still, I think of those times as connections. Connections can be based on a mutual agreement to ignore misunderstanding.

But all this time there were also connections on another level, which I'm sure my dad would never have thought of as important at all. I've said my dad was a high-brow guy, but there was always a big exception: comedy. You'd be hard-pressed to find a joke so dumb it wouldn't crack my dad up. Airplane, Police Academy and Mel Brooks would completely slay him. I think laughing at the same thing is one of the most immediate close connections people can share, and my brother and I always had that with him. My dad never outgrew Mad magazine or limericks. Throughout his life he was a man who secretly wished more things rhymed with toilet.

So, we have a man with his thoughts in some pretty lofty, airy realms and his sense of humor in let's say an 'earthier' place.

Let's look at something even more basic and vital than laughing: eating. When I was a kid my dad ate like it was a job. He was not one to linger at the fridge door, because, how long does it take to grab whatever's oldest? He ate what had to be eaten, and if that meant putting a couple smoked oysters on the spaghetti or a crusty slice of chocolate cake and the last of the yogurt in his oatmeal, that was just a good day's work.

But well before any diagnosis was made this was an area of immense transformation. He was still an indiscriminate eater, but now also an extremely attentive one. If, when he was a young man, the fork's roundtrip from plate to mouth and back again was a seamless circular motion like the firing of a piston, and if at the end his eating was more like a sleepy koala absorbing a small handful of eucalyptus, let's remember that the progression was not just gradual, it was continual. I remember very clearly noting that my father was paying much more attention to his food in 2000 than he did in 1990. And I remember thinking that was a good thing. I don't know why but there's something I like about seeing someone taste. Or even just chew. But the progression continued past the threshold of diagnosis: he was paying even more attention to his food in 2010, or even 2014, than he was in 2000. So maybe the threshold he had crossed was really, to some extent, a threshold within ourselves: he was now paying too much attention to his food to be normal; chewing too long, moving too slowly, and losing awareness of the conversation that swirled around and always over his head while he indulged in this

physical act.

And this was a general progression. You never saw anyone wash a dish slower than my dad in 2005. What was he thinking while he rinsed off the last bubble of soap with that absurdly tiny trickle of water from the tap? Either he wasn't thinking anything because he was sick, or he wasn't thinking anything because he was busy watching the water, the soap, and the dish. I'm not trying to glamorize a degenerative disease. I'm saying yes, my father's days of chasing ideas through forests of reference materials were gone, but I'm not convinced he missed them.

I feel like I'm chasing an idea of my own, and the quarry is pulling away fast so I'll take a shot at it from where I stand. I think my father's illness was a migration of awareness from thought to feeling, and from head to heart. The final steps on that journey are an exit from the world of facts, details, even the names of those you love. And it is a loss. But I believe that something else was gained.

The night my dad entered the nursing home one of the medical people assessed his cognitive whatever with a series of questions, the first of which was "What's your name?" My dad said 'Schlabotnick'. Whether he knew the right answer or not is sort of beside the point in my opinion. He got a laugh with that dumb joke, from me and from the medical person, and the medical person liked him and I liked the medical person and I stepped out of the room knowing that he was in good hands.

And still I feel I'm nowhere near the mark. He could have been anyone at the end and he would have been forgiven. Emerging from the chrysalis of a lifetime of worries and responsibilities, he could have been angry, lost, hurt, bitter, and we all would have understood. But he was kind, and he was funny. That's what he was at the deepest level, when all the layers of identity were stripped away. He was a happy man.

And I can't think of a better definition of success than that.

***

Dear Janet,

Gabriel and his twin brother, Gaston -- French Canadians by birth -- were Catholic priests.

Gabriel left the Catholic priesthood to marry a nun named Mary whose life/mission was so intertwined with Gabe's that they were customarily referred to as an indivisible union - "Gabe and Mary" or "Mary and Gabe."

In subsequent years, Gabe became an Episcopal priest and later served as assistant pastor at St. Matthew's Church in downtown Hillsborough. http://www.stmatthewshillsborough.org/stmatts/AboutUs/ClergyandStaff.aspx

Gabriel was linchpin to the creation of St. Matthew's prison ministry, a redemptive mission that went "all the way to the roots."

Eight "redeemed" prisoners -- all of them from heavy-duty, violent/murderous backgrounds - spoke with naked emotion at Gabe's memorial service.

One "ex-con" remembered Gabriel as his "Jesus," describing him as unstintingly generous and eagerly sacrificial.

***

I remember the event that "launched" the documentary film which tells the story of this extraordinary "work of mercy." 

At the movie's debut, both ex-cons featured in the documentary gave transfixing testimony.

Here is an online video clip from "Against The Tide: A Film About Re-Entering Life."  http://www.imdb.com/video/withoutabox/vi330210329

Love

Alan

PS Gabe and Mary kindly gave me a DVD of "Against The Tide." Let's watch it on your Thanksgiving visit!

***

Gabriel DesHarnais Remembrance

I met Gabriel 16 year's ago in my Monday night Spanish class.

He and a small group of Orange County adults wanted to learn Spanish in order to welcome the surge of Hispanic farm workers fast becoming linchpins to North Carolina tobacco farms, dairy farms, chicken and pig farms. 

I cannot think of Gabriel without seeing his smile. 

I see it more clearly than I recall a single facial feature of any other person.

Gabriel was wide open, constantly cheerful, always looking to serve, eager to say "Well... Come!"

In Hinduism, there is a custom called darshan in which teachers and their disciples gather mostly for the joy of being together.

From the disciple's point of view, a friend once described darshan as "getting a spiritual sun tan."

People wanted to be in Gabriel's presence, wanted to see his sunny smile, wanted to be reminded of the undying light - so bright in Gabriel's life that it was always visible, always giving us hope to pass it on.

I have one more reflection.

A few days ago, I read an article about Charles Bukowski, an author I find rather unlikable but whose frequent insight I value.

Bukowski said: "If you want to find out who your friends are, get a prison sentence."

It was Gabriel's grace that he sought out people with prison sentences, that he became, providentially, a friend to the friendless.

If, as I imagine, we find our way to the heavenly mansion by virtue of our ability to make harmony with the peace therein, Gabriel's journey will, I trust, always be deeper in and farther up.

Love

Alan