IT’S AN IMPOSSIBLE task to write and offer a eulogy for one’s father. When a father dies — especially a good one — it’s like mountains crumbling, the sun going out, like a tsunami. There is life after all these things — but essentially a world is ending. It is catastrophic.
And yet. We also hold the ancient wisdom that we are made of ash and the breath of God and to ash and the breath of God we shall return.
John Henry Berger, son of Catherine Helena Gingrich and Henry Joseph Berger, has returned to ash and the breath of God.
While sorting through my Dad’s den, we found one file folder marked “funerals.” In it was a copy of a scripture passage that he had starred and highlighted. It begins, “Happy the one who has found a woman of worth. Her value is far beyond rubies. Her husband trusts her judgment; therefore he does not lack income. She brings him profit, not loss, all the days of her life.” In it we hear his humor and his wisdom. Even when he wasn’t acting out of his best self, he knew he had married Barbara Ely Bird, a strong-willed woman of worth, warmth, wisdom, and humor, one whose value is far beyond rubies or precious jewels. Dad loved Mom.
He met my Mom in South Louisiana in 1959. She was beginning her work as a speech therapist in Sulphur, La.; he was in the Air Force as a navigator in an air refueling squadron at Chennault Air Force Base in Lake Charles. He “courted” her by stationing himself at a traffic light she passed every morning on her way to work and handing her a Tootsie Pop sucker. They have been married for 62 years of love, devotion, challenges, Vatican II, fights, commitment, children and grandchildren, laughter, crazy adventures, travel, careers, retirement, losing their own parents, and reading the daily newspaper together. Now, at 91, Mom must learn to live in a new way.
His love also manifested in his work for justice: A quick glance through his file cabinets includes folders on racism, women in the church, LGBTQ+ inclusion, Japanese internment camps, Pope Francis, religious life, Merton, censorship, how to “savor,” Fulbright programs, solar panels, farmworker justice, education and the arts, and labor union organizing. He loved profligately.
I found some prescient notes in my Dad’s handwriting. He wrote this to me and my siblings in our own voices:
The days after the funeral. My God! Why did Dad keep all this stuff — rocks, bricks and cement blocks and plastic pipes and wire and stuff and stuff? Well, because his Mom and Dad were Depression Era parents and farm children before that. For Catherine and Henry, it was 5 ½ miles to the nearest store for every little thing and there was no money to buy it anyway. And in the den! ... His files and boxes, all the family stuff. History snippets of the Gingrichs, the Bergers, the Birds, the wars, the migrations. Well, it’s all that stuff and more that made Dad who he was.
He continued: Such a rich history and legacy from ordinary people who became extraordinary in their survival, gifts, memories — so colossally extraordinary! ... Making time and life sacred was important. Like the ordinary gifts of bread and wine, grain from the field and fruit of the vine — all these made sacred, made eucharist, that’s why he kept all that stuff!
John Henry Berger — ¡Presente! Thus lives on the communion of saints.
Rose Marie Berger, a Catholic peace activist and poet, is senior editor of Sojourners magazine. She is author ofBending the Arch: Poems.
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