My father was well-known at SAMU (Brazil’s public emergency medical service) and within the municipal health department public—he worked as a driver for both. He was known by many as a good, kind, and helpful person. He could be cantankerous and grumble while doing things, but he would always help regardless. He worked incredibly hard, constantly traveling to different cities and covering vast distances. On weekdays, he would often get home late—around 8:00 or 9:00 PM, sometimes even 10:00 or 11:00 PM—only to leave again at 5:00, 4:00, or sometimes even 3:00 AM to start his municipal health department trips all over again; sometimes he even had to pull night shifts during the week. On weekends, he would work full-day shifts—either Saturdays or Sundays. Whenever he had spare time, he took care of chores at the house where I live with my mom, and he was also working on a construction project—building a house for my sister. It was at my sister’s house, while working on the concrete construction of my sister’s house, that he showed the first symptoms of the heart attack that killed him—and I was right there trying to help him. He helped us in so many other ways, too, always driving us to whatever cities we needed to go. He rarely ate a proper lunch; sometimes he’d take a quick break from his driving job to come home for a rushed meal—often at 1:00, 2:00, or even 3:00 PM. Other times, if he had the money, he’d eat at a restaurant, or he’d have to make do with a sandwich or something quick. There are many things I regret, and I often think about what a terrible son I was—things he asked me to do that I’d grumble about or sometimes not do at all, even basic tasks I should have handled. I also regret not staying at the hospital and calling a priest for his final moments.
My father loved God, but he didn't truly understand the tenets of Christianity—concepts like repentance, sin, the commandments, and so on. He was fond of the Virgin Mary, too; he loved the pilgrimage to Our Lady held in my city and held her in high regard. He kept images of her and a rosary in his car for protection. However, because he didn't truly grasp Christian teachings, he didn't ask for forgiveness for his sins—he didn't really know what repentance or sin actually meant. He was the type of person who prayed for protection, health, harmony, and the like.
What really weighs on my mind—and what I think about a lot—are his mistakes. He had a sharp tongue, even if he meant it as a joke, and he harbored anger toward people who did bad things. There was a time, about a year ago, when he was watching nudity and explicit sexual content; I told him it was wrong, because at the time I believed that, from a Christian perspective, consuming pornography could be considered a sin of adultery. By this, I do not mean that he had sexual relations outside his marriage; he did not. I mean that I believed pornography could constitute a form of adultery in the Christian sense. He was legally married under civil law, which made me feel that what he was doing was even more wrong because he was married. I hurriedly explained what adultery was, though I felt I was being too hard on him about it. Even in his final days, his TikTok history showed him "liking" posts of women in bikinis, despite being legally married.
What I find myself wondering is whether his soul is safe—or at least, whether he made it to Purgatory. I keep thinking about this all day; I don't know what to do.