Jacqueline Orsi is a development consultant in the nonprofit sector, a writer, a political activist, a dog lover, and an avid gardener. With her husband, Tom, she successfully raised and homeschooled two free-thinking daughters.
Dad, born in 1915, was raised a Baptist. His boyhood soprano voice was so good that the Episcopalians across town paid him to sing in their choir. Like most young people in the class of 1932, Dad got nothing more than a high-school diploma and unfulfilled dreams. But, as his youngest child, I knew his intellect and his independent search for rational understanding of the deepest questions. My lessons at his knee were both simple and hilarious. He’d say, “Can you imagine what it smelled like on Noah’s ark?”
While Mom would march us four children to church on Sunday, Dad would sit home. Mom sent me to Sunday school; Dad unraveled all the dogma Monday through Saturday. By third grade, I was a holy terror for my Sunday-school teacher, the bewildered wife of our town’s garbage collector. I distinctly recall running her ragged with my questions and critiques. By age twelve, I was in full rebellion: Mom could no longer get me out the door on Sunday morning. Dad always told us he would never allow himself to become a nursing-home patient. Wracked by chronic osteoarthritis and deep into alcoholism, he put a gun to his head. No one in our family was much surprised, really. We met for a memorial service: my mother, my siblings, their spouses, and three grandchildren—just ten of us. (I spared my husband and children from attending what I rightly expected would be an ordeal.)
We met first with the two pastors of my mother’s church to plan the service. My brother-in-law, who is also a minister, was also there. They outlined the hymns, the prayers, the scripture readings, and so forth. At one point, I spoke up and said that Dad would find it quite ironic that there would be three clergymen conducting his service. Everyone thought that was a howler. Then they went back to planning.
The service was bizarre. Dad’s life was rewritten entirely. I sat there thinking, “Who is this guy they are talking about?” My family spoke about a person who found God in nature, whose hours on the back porch were when he communed with God. Aw, come on, people! Dad sat on the back porch drinking sherry until he got hammered. That wasn’t religious ecstasy—that was booze!
A few weeks later, my sister sent me an audiotape of the service. It went from the envelope to the trash can in a split second. Dad would have given me a wink and a nod for that move. Thanks, Dad, for teaching me how to use my powers of reason.
CFI SUMMIT
OCTOBER 24-27 2013
TACOMA, WASHINGTON
Joint Conference of the Council for Secular Humanism, Center for Inquiry, and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
The transnational secular humanist magazine
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