https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3as3H8YvyrprVz3LrCrmSr?si=3afdb3f6544f4721
Hi. I’d like to begin by thanking you all for being here. It means a lot. Dad always loved getting everyone together but often complained that he couldn’t make it happen at one time in one place. He’d be tickled to know it was his wake that finally got it done. Again, and on his behalf, I thank you. I’m pretty sure you all know me. For those who don’t, I’m Howie’s son, David. As is customary in both the Jericho house and Olive Gardens alike – When you’re here, you’re family. So please, know you’re welcome and do make yourself at home.
Speaking of, I’m sincerely happy to see you all taking advantage of the open bar. Especially you, Father Anthony. If he were here right now, Dad’d be shuffling up to each and every one of you, discretely jingling the keys against the change in his pocket before whispering, “help you home when it’s time?” Because that’s the man Alan Howard Jericho was. Didn’t drink a drop. Never raised his voice in anger. Always looking out for his people. Dependable to a fault.
So dependable in fact, it wasn’t five weeks ago when he looked at me and said, “Davey, I don’t think I’ll see out the month. Might be time we get ready.” And here we are, exactly a month later, gathered just as he’d like us to be. He passed peacefully, knowing he was loved. The people who gave him solace and joy in life were there to usher him home in his final moments.
Howie died as he lived – quietly. He never made any bold moves. Never left unfinished business. He moved like a tide – slow, plodding, always getting there. Before you knew it, Howie had done something extraordinary and unexpected right in front of you. This remained true up to the end. Even in death, Dad found ways to be silently surprising.
As you know, it’s only ever been Dad and me. I never knew my mother, who herself passed shortly after I was born. Dad never married. Never even dated. I once asked him why he didn’t try to find love. He just smiled in the subtle way he did and said, “I’ve found the love of my life. It’s you.” I never inquired much about my mother. For as quiet as he was, Dad always got doubly so when I did. I felt like I was intruding on sacred ground. He seemed like he wanted to answer my questions but didn’t know how to, and the sadness he felt over that was palpable.
So, it was both extraordinary and unexpected when, a few weeks ago before going to bed, Dad pulled out an old shoebox and handed it to me. By this time, the cancer and his medications had taken his voice. With sadness in his eyes, he mustered his subtle smile and nodded stoically at me before turning over and falling asleep.
Within the shoebox was a journal from Dad’s time at school, as well as letters written between him and a woman named Melody Vincent – my mother. They met at school and had a short but intense relationship, something I didn’t know my father had a capacity for. When Dad handed me this box, I knew it contained the answers to the questions I stopped asking years ago. Answers that he just couldn’t bring himself to give. If you’d be kind enough to indulge me, I’d like to share with you the story of my parents, Howie Jericho and Melody Vincent. I know this is what Dad wanted – for my benefit, for yours, but also for hers.
Before you, Mel, there was nothing but silence and hues of grey. Now, everything is awash with color. Because of you, I can hear music for the first time.
Who knew Dad had that in him? Howie and Mel met at Notre Dame. Howie was in the engineering program, of course. Melody, as far as I can tell, was in the studio arts program. They ran in very different circles. They both lived on campus. There’s no record of how they met, or why they started corresponding via post. I like to imagine that their first meeting was awkward. That Melody at first simply pitied my guileless father but Howie’s quiet tide eventually washed her away.
Their early correspondence is sweet and exploratory. Melody was an open book, which was written beautifully. She laid it all out there – happily sharing details of her life, her dreams to someday curate art for one of the big museums in Chicago, her passion for all things bright and imaginative. A true aesthete. Dad, as you can imagine, could only do his best to keep up. His early letters were far more reserved. In fact, he took pains to write an entire letter explaining that this was all very new to him and asking Melody’s forgiveness if he seemed too stuffy or dispassionate. He needed to temper his emotions because he just didn’t know what to do with them.
Dad was a quick study, though. He took cues from Melody’s passion, and he soon opened up. It wasn’t long before their letters went from sweet and exploratory, to flirty and fun, to… to downright horny. Hooo boy! Of all the surprising things to learn about my father on his death bed, I never thought his capacity for writing erotic missives would be foremost among them.
But they were young and hot and falling in love, and you could tell why my father was so very charmed by Melody. Her letters paint a portrait of a woman anyone would fall in love with. She was passionate, wise beyond her years and wickedly funny. As their correspondence progressed, though, a sense of dread began creeping into Melody’s writing. For as full of life as she was, Melody was also a person with a capacity for infinite sadness.
I feel like Baby Face in “O Brother…” (“O Brother, Where Art Thou” is movie they both adored and referenced often in their letters. The lullaby my father sang to me every night as a kid comes from that film. Discovering its genesis through these letters and why he sang it to me every night introduced me to an entirely new brand of sorrow I hadn’t known existed, but I digress.)
I feel like Baby Face. I know there’s a way out of this (depression) but I just can’t find it. I feel like Baby Face. I just want to walk off into the distance.
But Howie never wavered and never asked her to “cheer up”. He did what Howie would do – he listened. He was present for her. His quiet steadiness anchored Melody, who wrote:
I was falling into a deep, dark place. Sometimes I always feel like I’m falling into that place. But you didn’t try to stop me. You didn’t ask me to climb out. You laid out a mattress and gave me a soft place to fall. You are a blessing for someone like me. You are a gift.
I’d like you to keep in mind that all of this occurred in the span of only a few months, during the spring semester of their second year in college. There’s no indication in their letters how much they saw of each other, save for their lamentations that it was not enough. I got the impression that, because of their studies and the circles in which they ran, their paths rarely crossed. That the bulk of their relationship was fostered in their correspondence.
Which is probably why Dad jumped at the opportunity to go away with Melody over spring break. A group of her friends had rented a farmhouse in Glendora, Michigan wine country, and she invited Howie to come along. I can’t imagine Dad in that setting. Well, I can, but it’s just so awkward to think about. Regardless, the exuberance with which he accepted Melody’s invitation was boyish and uncharacteristic and so joyful, it’s hard for me not to laugh at the thought of it.
Unfortunately, that’s the last time Dad’s and Melody’s letters show any kind of joy. I don’t know what happened during their time in Glendora. The essence of it is that Dad had discovered, possibly through less-than-ethical means, that Melody had been in a long-term, long-distance relationship with a man in her hometown, and that she was engaged to marry him. This clearly broke Dad’s heart, who only sent two more letters to Melody. The first of these was written with an engineer’s stark and cruel precision, outlining precisely how devastated he was and how he wished never to see or hear from Melody again.
Melody, however, sent over a dozen letters of varying tone and intent, ranging from contrite to outraged. Some of those letters were never opened. Dad hadn’t read them. I think he couldn’t bear the pain or regret. I think he just wanted it all to go away.
Dad did, however, write one last letter to Melody, before her final letter to him. Perhaps it was the separation. Perhaps the letters he did read struck a chord. In it, he recounts how their lives seem more worth living together than they do apart. He appeals to her to leave her fiancé and be with him. If she cannot do that, he begs her to do what she can to forget him – for that is what he needs to do for himself. That is the only way he can continue on.
Melody didn’t respond until nearly a year later, when she sent her final letter to my father. In it, she apologizes. In it, she says good-bye. In it, she introduces my father to me.
In the shoebox Dad handed me was her obituary. The obit doesn’t mention a cause of death, as is customary with suicides. Shortly after giving birth to me, Melody fell into that deep, dark place and my father was not there to soften her landing. I think that was the source of Dad’s sadness whenever I asked about my mother. Why it took so long for him to share her with me. He couldn’t talk about her because he blamed himself for her own sorrow.
In that final letter, she never asks Dad to take part in my life. She doesn’t ask him to raise me. She simply tells my Dad that she’s had his son, laments that she won’t be there to raise me, and thanks Dad for sharing himself with her.
You have a cold light about you, Howie, but you still have a light. And it is wonderful to behold. Thank you for shining it on me for the brief time you did.
And so goes the story of Howie Jericho and Melody Vincent. One that I heard for the very first time only a couple of weeks ago. One that I know Dad would want me to tell you. I’d say it ends there, but it doesn’t. The rest of it involves Howie finding me, proving his paternity and then, of course, raising me to be who I am today. He wasn’t tasked to do so. Nobody showed up on his doorstep with a bassinet and a court order. He did it because it was the gentle thing to do. Because it was the penitent thing to do. Because it was the Howie thing to do.
I don’t know what other traits I’ve inherited from my parents. Certainly not Howie’s quiet certainty. Definitely not Melody’s passion and verve. I do know for a fact now that I have inherited their ability to love recklessly, breathlessly and without reservation. A trait I intend to pass on to my own children, who I will tearfully sing a lullaby from a movie this evening as I put them to bed.
Dad didn’t believe in the afterlife. Neither do I. But I do like to think of him and Melody resting together, forever entwined in an embrace. The soft Michigan sunlight streaming through a farmhouse window, outlining their forms during a time when they were young and hot and falling in love.