Yesterday my dad celebrated that he'd lived a day longer than his own father. My mom served pork chops, the meat that had accompanied special occasions in my dad's childhood, maybe on nice plates that were otherwise stored, the possession of which — along with the space to store and rarely use them — were evidence of a newly suburban Midwestern family who were at once unfathomably rich in the scale of human history and quite modest indeed as the post-war Ponzi scheme shone more luminously on other families who moved to other suburbs. Because of this latter fact, that is, the relative modesty, pork chops for my father in his early life were rare — not undercooked, but uncommon. And they were thin.
Now in his dotage, my father is constrained not by cost but by custom, the traditions and rituals that draw all of us nearer to that faint and far-off Beauty. Pork chops, of course, are no Eucharist, but I'm certain my dad was grateful for the thick seared vertebral loin cut from some fattened, ancestral, unblemished pig. In his understated manner, he reported today that, "It was good" — echoing our Creator's response to fields and rivers, plants and animals, Heaven and Earth, and Man himself. My father has walked far further than I on the path of humility trod by St. Joseph, and though he has now outlived his father (who outlived his own father), my dad's life is more easily measured in acts of service than years, for he has carried out his life with dishes and sweeping and gardening and eBay auctions for obscure Midwestern Christmas village accoutrements beloved by my mother and round trip flights to Los Angeles and back side-by-side with me for no other reason than that I was afraid to go alone and Bible studies and soccer tournaments and endless prayer (for Jack, for me, for the whole church) and indeed the things he went without though he could've had, like a job title more prominent than father or a devotion to the things of this world rather than the next.
My father's life, I sense, is nearly bereft of disappointment, though I know I've failed him in at least one way: I never watched as many episodes of Star Trek as I ought to have. Sure, I've seen a few of the classics and can identify their concomitant ornament on my father's top-to-bottom Star Trek-themed Christmas tree: I've had my fair share of trouble with Tribbles, one might say. But in that byzantine labyrinth of stardates and storylines and Section 31, I have but scratched the surface of the D'Arsay Archive, so to speak.
Still, there's one episode I shall not forget, whose prominence grows and gets a greater hold on me as my own life approaches its margins with a rapidity that feels increasingly like warp drive. "The Inner Light," an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, opens with Captain Jean-Luc Picard struck by the beam of an alien probe, knocking him unconscious. He wakes up disoriented in a rustic village on an arid planet, lurid with golden light. A woman addresses him as "Kamin," and she purports to be his wife, Eline. Though he at first holds dear to his previous reality as a Starfleet Captain, Picard eventually relents and accepts his humble life as Kamin. What other choice do any of us have, after all, than to become who we are?
Kamin conforms his will toward the communal good, sharing his knowledge and wisdom for the benefit of his adopted people. He becomes a father to a daughter, Meribor, and a son, Batai, named after his first friend on that harsh planet when Kamin was still a stranger in a strange land. And as he pours out on his wife and others, he finds meaning in solitude playing on his Ressikan flute, a melody at once melancholic and hopeful, an expression of joy amidst suffering.
The planet that Kamin lives on, Kataan, is on the verge of destruction as its once benevolent sun is transforming into a red giant whose heat and radiation char the desert people with no regard for culture or continuity. In a final effort to save a shred of themselves, the doomed people launch a probe into space that synecdochically holds the collective experiences of eons and generations in the mind of a single man: Kamin. Picard, who was struck by the probe at the episode's onset, has lived in a few minutes unconscious the entire life of a fated man who wanted to preserve for eternity the humble love and service owed to one's wife, one's children, one's family, friends, and community.
What would I see if I could witness the whole of my father's magnanimous life instead of its dim edges and faded stories? A portrait of a man devoted to his wife, his children, his family, his friends, his community, and his church. A man uncomplaining in his duties and labors. A man committed to his faith. A man unbothered by a death that has been defeated. A man who emits toward others his inner light, that is to say, Christ's light.
Jean-Luc Picard plays his Ressikan flute, reflecting on a life well-lived.