Sal Esposito: Father and Husband

A Reflection on the Occasion of a Memorial Service for Sal Esposito

January 26, 2018 All Saints’, Southern Shores, Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

1^st Corinthians 13 John 14: 1-6

Sal Esposito, Father and Husband

Let me speak as the father of a grown daughter and a grandfather and husband; it is hard to know if we make right choices in our lives. There are days when I feel an absolute failure in any or all of those jobs, and other days when I look in wonder of how proud I am of the choices made by the people I love. I look back at my father and what a pain I was to him and how his love never died even when his body did. There was emptiness when I realized that I would never be able to talk with him about the choices that I would be making in the future. Would he be proud of me? Would he approve?

There were many things I did during his lifetime that I know he did not approve of, but I never felt a withdrawal of his love. He would say to my mother, his beloved wife, “Making mistakes, this is the way he will learn.” As with all parents, my father saw as his job getting me, my brothers, and sister to a point where we could live without our parents’ guidance. In a world that makes sense, parents will die before their children, and we will not be able to run the full marathon of life with our children.

I wanted to be perfect and never need to learn the hard way, but over the years I had many opportunities to learn that way. Over the years I kept hearing my father’s words come out of my mouth for he was still alive in my heart; my father had daily been preparing a place for me and my sense of character in this world that would be there long after he died.

My father loved his wife, and what we do in marriages is to love each other until death do us part. That last line is hard to hear, but the reality for many of us is that we will be left alone by a spouse. For almost 50 years after my father’s death, my mother still felt my father’s presence so much so that she had to stop herself before she said out loud, “I need to share that with Bill.” They shared all of the rest of her life and in my theology they are still sharing. Bodies die but love does not.

We chose the lessons for today from First Corinthians to remind us that we can accomplish all sorts of things, have all sorts of gifts, but if we do not love then it is all a waste of time. This reading is usually read at weddings to remind the couple that love has to be addressed every day of their marriage because that is what gets you through - getting through having fights with each other, getting through moving away from home, getting through having kids and that responsibility, getting through the demands of work on the family, getting through meeting all the financial needs of the family with never enough money, getting through meeting all the emotional needs of the family with never enough time, getting through losing friends, getting through moving, getting through your kids telling you what you did wrong, over and over again, getting through parents getting older and dying and getting through retiring. You name it, life is rough, and without love it is impossible. It is then that we find that love is never earned, only given as a gift.

When my daughter was born I held her in my arms and, for more than a few moments, I felt completely inadequate. I did what I could do and failed in what I could not do, but I did love her as a gift and she forgave my failures and loved me as a gift. She grew up to give love to another person as his wife, and their sons’ mother, but she has never stopped loving me, nor I her. When love is freely given the exponential growth is not an arithmetical series of 1+1 =2, 2+2=4 6 8 10 12 but a geometrical series 1x2=2 2x2=4 8 16 32 64 128 256..

In the lesson from the Gospel of John, Jesus is referring to his death and promises that he is preparing a place for them, for as he says “In my father’s house there are many rooms.” We tend to think that he is talking about heaven as a place up there somewhere. But as in so much of the Gospels, there are deeper levels. “My Father’s house” can mean right here and right now on this earth; God built this house, the blue marble on which we live as a gift for all of God’s children to share. The “preparing the room” in which we will dwell is to be built in love here, so that we might build other rooms of love for others. To follow Jesus on the road on which he is going is not just about getting to heaven, but to live as if heaven was on earth so that the words of the prayer, that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, will come true.

Sal’s daughters and grandchildren, I want to say you were loved and beloved by Sal. To Audrey, I want to say you were loved and beloved. To friends he welcomed in his house for martinis and food, you were loved and beloved. He prepared rooms for all of you out of love. I never met Sal in this life, but I have been welcomed into the rooms of love he prepared for others.

There is a poem which I did not write but I wish I did, by Raymond Carver called Late Fragment

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

Today you have heard stories about Sal told by people who loved him. Sal Esposito was loved by others and beloved by God and others: everything else is just a footnote. Please join us at the club for lunch to tell stories about a man who was loved and was loved geometrically.

Sal Esposito, Father and Husband

Sal knew the pride a father grows

about seeing his children strong,

independent decisions made wrong

or right, claim the ones they chose.

We do not live by making excuses

and blaming others, but listening

and learning seeing truth glistening

for loving forgiveness to have its uses.

The days ahead will not have sounds

of words coming from his lips anew

but there will be a heart energy true;

for the love that cannot die abounds.

Roses are given as an outward visible

sign for a love that was never invisible.