Tag Archives: Forgiveness

Dead as a Doornail

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“The unexamined word is not worth using.”
—Brent L. Kendrick (b. 1947). Essayist, educator, and literary scholar, whose work explores the unexpected weight of ordinary life.

“Have you ever heard that expression before?”

I thought it might be a Southern idiom, and since Gary grew up in the Midwest, I wasn’t sure he knew it.

“What expression?”

“The one I just used. Dead as a doornail.”

“I have.”

Fine. It was settled. We both knew what it meant. Finished. Used up. Worthless.

“Well, it strikes me as one of the silliest things I’ve ever heard of. What on earth is a dead doornail?”

“No idea.”

I didn’t either.

How’s them apples? There we sat, two men who appreciate language and use it with careful precision, agreeing that we knew an expression while at the same time confessing that we didn’t understand the phrase that was central to its meaning.

I don’t like feeling as dumb as a stick, so after morning coffee, I made my way to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) like a bat out of hell so that I could learn about dead doornails.

Oh, boy. I was right. I knew in a flash that I was going to have a Red Letter Day. Lands sake alive. Dead as a doornail goes all the way back to 1350:

“For but ich haue bote of mi bale … I am ded as dore-nail.” (William of Palerne, l. 628)

Don’t worry. I’ll dress it up in some modern rags so that it makes sense:

“For unless I have remedy for my sorrow, I am dead as a doornail.”

Well, that was fine and dandy, but I still didn’t know what a dead doornail was. I had to dig more. And more, I found. Did you know that in ye olden days doornails were hand-forged, heavy-duty nails, driven through wood and then clenched—the protruding end hammered flat—making them impossible to remove or reuse. Permanently fixed, permanently purposeless, they were, in every practical sense, dead.

And right after unearthing the meaning of dead doornail, I hit paydirt. I came across an entire navigation of other things I could strut around saying. If a doornail can be dead, apparently so can a lot of other things I’d never thought about:

Dead as a stone

Dead as clay

Dead as a herring

Dead as a hammer

English, it seems, has never lacked for dead things.

And then, there’s my favorite one of all. It’s music to my untrained ear:

Dead as the diplodocus

It’s hard to laugh when you’ve got one hand stuck fast to a dead doornail and the other hand being pulled even further back in time by a giant herbivorous sauropod.

I had to laugh. One dead doornail had opened the door to dozens of expressions I use every day without ever stopping to examine what they really ask of me.

The first expression that popped into my head? “Let me know if I can do anything.” I’ve said it more times than I can count.

But what exactly are we saying? At first glance, the meaning seems obvious. Yet the more I think about it, the more I realize that the phrase carries a greater obligation than we usually acknowledge.

After all, those aren’t words of sympathy. They’re words of commitment.

The moment I tell someone to let me know if I can do anything, I’ve volunteered to do something. Maybe it’s as simple as a phone call. Maybe it’s a card. Maybe it’s a casserole. Maybe it’s sitting quietly beside a friend who has just buried a spouse and doesn’t particularly want to talk.

The point is that I’ve offered. Whether the request is large or small, I’ve just volunteered a piece of myself. My words have placed me on the hook.

How often we say those words because they sound appropriate without stopping to consider what we’ve actually promised, without fully examining the obligation hidden inside the offer?

The words are easy enough to say. The casserole takes a little more effort.

Next up was the expression, “I’m so sorry.”

At first glance, it seems simple enough. We say it when someone loses a spouse, receives a frightening diagnosis, buries a parent, or watches a cherished dream collapse.

But what exactly are we saying?

Most of the time, we aren’t apologizing. We didn’t cause the death, the disease, or the disappointment.

Yet the expression carries an obligation all the same.

When I tell someone I’m sorry, I’m not merely acknowledging a fact. I’m entering, however briefly, into another person’s sorrow. I’m saying that your loss matters enough for me to stop, notice, and share a small measure of the burden.

In other words, I’m not simply expressing sympathy.

I’m promising compassion.

That’s a weightier promise than I suspect many of us realize when the words tumble so easily from our lips.

Then came two expressions that sit at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum.

“I hate you.”

Three words.

“I love you.”

Three words.

Yet each carries enough power to alter the course of a relationship, a family, perhaps even a life.

We often treat them as expressions of feeling. But they are more than that. They are declarations. Commitments. Judgments.

To tell someone “I hate you” is not merely to report an emotion. It is to wound, to distance, to diminish, to push another person away.

To tell someone “I love you” is not merely to report an emotion either. It is to assume an obligation—to care, to sacrifice, to forgive, to remain present when remaining present is difficult.

Perhaps that is why both expressions deserve more examination than they usually receive.

They are among the easiest words in the English language to say. And among the hardest to live.

Finally, I came to a phrase that millions of people have spoken for centuries:

“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

I’ve heard it all my life. I’ve spoken it hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times.

But have I examined it? Have I truly considered what I’m asking?

The first part is easy enough. Most of us welcome forgiveness for our failures, shortcomings, and mistakes.

It’s the second part that gives me pause. As we forgive. Not as we intend to forgive. Not as we hope to forgive. Not as we might someday forgive.

As we forgive.

Those words transform a prayer into a promise, a request into an obligation.

And they leave me wondering how many other expressions I use with confidence, familiarity, and conviction without fully considering what they mean—or what they ask of me.

As I reflected on all of these expressions—seemingly light yet laden with responsibility and commitment—I came to a simple conclusion. Going forward, I intend to pay a little more attention to my Ps and Qs.

Not because I suddenly care more about manners. But because I have been reminded that words matter.

They always have.

Whether I am offering help, expressing sorrow, seeking forgiveness, declaring love, or reciting a prayer, I owe those words more than familiarity. I owe them thought.

After all, the unexamined life is not worth living.

Perhaps the same can be said of the unexamined word.

A Wardrobe of My Own

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Love sacrifices all things to bless the thing it loves.

Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803 -1873; English writer and politician)

Somehow, as my 75th birthday gets closer and closer, I rarely think about myself as the baby of the family.

But I am. And trust me: the youngest in the family–at least in mine–is always the baby.

Aside from the dubious distinction of being the baby, I’m not sure that the status ever included many other benefits.

Well, maybe one. When I was born, my oldest brother and sister became rocking rivals:

“It’s my turn to rock Brentford Lee tonight.”

“No, it’s not. You rocked him last night.”

I was rocked a lot. My oldest sister still reminds me.

And, on reflection, maybe being the baby came with a second benefit. My middle sister pretended that she was my mother. I had double doses of motherly affection. She still reminds me.

What sweetened my baby-of-the-family deal, though, was the simple fact that I was born smiling. “Little Mister Sunshine” became my nickname.

Naturally, the twofer combination–baby and smile–came to mean one thing and one thing only: Brentford Lee could do no wrong.

I am certain that I was capable of doing lots of wrong. More, I could have done so and gotten away with it easily. But, by and large, during my childhood–and continuing thereafter–I tried my best to do no wrong. When I did, I tried my best to right the wrong as soon as I could, especially if the wrong had been prompted by anger. My mother taught me and my siblings to not let the sun go down on our wrath.

Once as a teenager, however, my anger caused a great hurt–to others and to me–and I did not make amends before the sun went down.

I remember that fall day as vividly as if it were yesterday.

It was at the start of my freshman year, and something happened in school that ticked me off. Whatever it was had to have been of no real consequence. I can’t remember the details at all, not even one.

But I do remember that the short walk from the bus stop to my home was not long enough to soften the sharp edge of my anger.

As I approached the house, I saw on the front porch a brand new, light brown, faux-wood, metal cabinet. It had two doors that opened out from the middle, and it was about four feet wide and six feet or so tall.

I went right past it, deliberately banging the screen door against the wooden frame as I walked inside. My mother was standing at the kitchen stove with a big smile on her face, not to be undone as I slammed my books on the kitchen table.

“What is that ugly thing on the porch?”

My mother looked at me and started to respond, but my ongoing rant gave her no chance. She kept on cooking dinner.

“It’s hideous, just hideous.”

My mother remained silent, as I marched back out to have a second look, banging the screen door, going out and coming back in again.

“Who’s it for?” I asked, showing an unbecoming attitude that still makes me cringe.

My mother’s “It’s for you” hung in the air, echoing against itself over and over in my mind. “It’s for you. It’s for you. It’s …”

She smiled softly as she kept on cooking.

“Your dad and I thought that you might like to have a wardrobe of your own to keep all your new school clothes in.”

I had always loved clothes, and now that I was in high school, I loved them even more. Sweaters. Slacks. Socks. Always matching. Always the best that my summer yard mowing jobs could buy. Always bought on lay-away at the best men’s store in a small city nearby. My mother took great pride in how I dressed, and she took even greater pride in knowing that I was known as the best dressed kid in school.

“For me? I don’t want it. That wardrobe is so ugly. I’ll never use it. Never.”

My mother looked away and didn’t say another word about the wardrobe. Her face was still. Her smile, broken. Her joy, gone.

And that ended it. My dad put the wardrobe downstairs. I don’t remember who used it. It didn’t matter to me that it was a wardrobe of my own. What mattered to me was that I thought it was ugly. What mattered to me was that I vowed to never use it. What mattered to me was that I never did.

The wardrobe was still downstairs when I graduated from high school with honors and went away to college.

It was still downstairs when I graduated from college with honors and moved to our Nation’s Capital.

The wardrobe was still downstairs when I started working at the Library of Congress.

When I came back home for visits during those late teenage and early adult years, neither my mother, my father, nor I ever mentioned my wardrobe. It was as if it had never entered our home. Yet it had entered, and it remained.

And then the day came when the wardrobe of my own rose up from afar, right in front of me, right before my very eyes.

I was struggling with my monthly budget. My handsome salary as an editor at the Library of Congress had an equally handsome competitor: the high cost of living in D.C., combined with paying off student loans. As I did my math, I suddenly realized that I just couldn’t have everything that I wanted. I had to make hard choices. I had to make painful sacrifices just to make ends meet.

In a flash, I realized that when my parents chose to buy me a wardrobe of my own, they chose to make sacrifices. My mom chose to do without her new dress. My dad chose to do without his new shoes. My siblings who were still at home had no choice. This time my parents chose to sacrifice for me as they had chosen to sacrifice for all of us, all down through the years.

Immediately, I picked up the phone and called my mom and dad. We had a long, long conversation about a wardrobe of my own.

I don’t know when “I’m sorry” brought forth such joyful tears.

The tears could not undo that teenage day when I was so lacking in gratitude. But my mom and dad let me unburden my sorrow, and across the miles and across the great expanse of time, they washed it away with their unconditional love.

Seven years had passed, but, finally, the evening sun went down on a wardrobe of my own.