The Prince of Tides

by Pat Conroy

As a boy I was embarrassed by the undiluted ardor he brought to worship. As an adult I would envy forever the simplicity and grandeur of his vision of what it was to be a complete and contributing man. His whole life was a compliance and a donation to an immaculate faith. When I wept at his funeral, it was not because of my own loss. You carry a man like Amos with you, a memory of immortal rose in the garden of the human ego. No, I cried because my children would never know him and I knew that I was not articulate enough in any language to describe the perfect solitude and perfect charity of a man who believed and lived every simple word of the book he sold door to door the length and breadth of the American South. The only word for goodness is goodness, and it is not enough. Amidst the shouts of “Hallelujah” and “Praise be the Lord” six men with newly made wooden crosses began thumping the bases of the crosses against the wooden floor of the church as a gesture of homage to my grandfather. They drummed the crosses in unison, creating a palsied, unfathomable tattoo, the dark music of crucifixionists. My father rose up with Tolitha leaning against him and he walked his mother down the center aisle, where she faced Amos for the last time. In the open casket, with his hair swept back in a pompadour and a slight bedeviled smile on his face (indelible signature of the undertaker, Winthrop Ogletree), Amos looked like a choirboy gone to seed. A white Bible was opened to the page ...