The Death of a Priest

A priest’s name popped up in my social media feed, and it rang a distant bell. The post shared that the priest had died, apparently by suicide.

Oh, no. How devastating for his family and for his community. Losing someone you love to suicide brings so much pain, so many questions.

Something else was bothering me. Why was the priest’s name so familiar? He wasn’t local. He lived down in New Orleans. I found myself digging back through my emails, trying to find an exchange with him, wondering whether I had a connection. Nothing rose to the surface, and I hoped maybe I was wrong. It might just be a common name.

But a few days later, I made the connection. I had interviewed him back in 2020. It was a piece where I had been assigned to ask people to share their Christmas memories, and I was given his name and phone number.

Being assigned that kind of article might sound unimportant. “A fluff piece,” some would call it. But talking with people and drawing their memories out for a story is one of my favorite tasks as a writer and storyteller. When you interview someone about something personal—a piece of their past—you form a connection.

I can’t tell you about everyone I have ever interviewed, but for many of those interviews, I can bring to mind their faces, their laughter or sadness, the way they found themselves recalling moments with newness and clarity even as they spoke the words.

I found my mind going back to the conversation with this priest back in 2020, how he kindly took my call but admitted he didn’t think his Christmas memories were anything extraordinary.

Then, with his words, he took me back to his childhood in Brooklyn, to the pies his mother baked, to the tripe he tried and didn’t like, to the annual family trip to midnight Mass, and to the wonderful Christmas surprises that appeared each year under their tree. One year, his uncle arrived and gave him a dog. We marveled at the wonder of that gift together, even years later, long after the dog itself was only a memory.

I don’t know this priest beyond that conversation, though the stories I have been reading over the past few days make me wish I had. But I find myself carrying the memories he entrusted to me in a special way, in a careful way. He casually—and kindly—shared pieces of himself with me for a simple story.

I find myself holding those memories up to the light, looking at each one with care, thinking of a man who gave his life to the Church, a man who was so much more than one conversation, a person who was valued and loved. What a hole he has left in his community, and in the world.

When people pass on, all we have left are the memories of our time with them. But those conversations and experiences change us. They make us different people. Sometimes we can’t even say why or how we are affected, and sometimes we can name it loudly and clearly. There is a loss. And there is something we gained too, something we will carry with us forever—whether consciously or unconsciously.

What a gift we can be to one another. And what a reminder to me to be that for someone today.

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