March 4, 2016 was a sad day for me. On that date, I learned that my favorite author, Pat Conroy, had died.
Mr. Conroy was seventy years old. In January of 2016, he announced that he was being treated for pancreatic cancer. To me, all cancer is evil. But, pancreatic seems to be extremely cruel.
At times, the world might have been extremely cruel to Mr. Conroy. Yet, he always seemed to persevere. His luck ran out with the destructive pancreatic.
Here are some instructions for my children, grandchildren, and beyond, my Pat Conroy books are not to ever leave the family. Sorry to dump that on you, but Mr. Conroy’s books touched my soul. They might just touch yours too.
When I see old book tour itineraries, when Mr. Conroy was close to Richmond, I still curse myself for not making the trip.
Only one book is missing from my collection and that is The Boo. I’ll read it before I croak.
Out of all if his books, I keep coming back to My Losing Season. That book is about his senior year of playing college basketball at The Citadel. My Losing Season is my favorite book to pickup for the purpose of re-reading a page or two or three. Sometimes, I can’t put the book back down.
With this book, Mr. Conroy’s gifts as a writer made me laugh, cry, and ponder.
I laughed at the room checks on road trips as the coaches checked for females in the rooms of players.
I cried when I read about Mr. Conroy’s teammates, Al Kroboth and Joe Eubanks, as they served America during the Vietnam War.
And I pondered, the difficult decisions that Mr. Conroy and his classmates had to make while serving on the Honor Court at The Citadel.
Woven into the book are the ups and downs of the season, the psychology of dealing with Mr. Conroy’s difficult father, and a demanding coach.
We learn about his teammates in the real time of the season, but we also learn about their post Citadel lives as Mr. Conroy finds and interviews each one of them.
I love the self-talk Mr. Conroy has with himself after a rare but exhilarating win:
“I needed time to memorize what happiness felt like because I had experienced so little of it. Looking up into the night sky, I saw the Milky Way. I instantly thought of God and how I was afraid I was losing my faith in him and the immensity of the fear and cowardice I felt when I thought of facing the world without Him.
I was receiving the Eucharist every day of my life and fighting this war with faithlessness with every cell of my body, but I could feel the withdrawal taking place without my consent.
On the causeway to Lady’s Island I prayed out loud, ‘O Lord, please hear me. I thank you for this year. I thank you from my heart. I needed to be a decent basketball player in college, Lord. I don’t know why. But, I needed it. We both know I’m no good, but we sure are fooling some people. Aren’t we, Lord?’(Pages 275-276)
I love the honesty of that passage.
I love it because I have been there.
I have felt and experienced that same tidal undertow of my faithlessness to God being pulled away too.
And I’ll carry that faithlessness further, it is still alive in me today when the discouraging headlines in the news overwhelm me. My fearful soul cries out—God where are you?
Like many scriptures found in the Bible, Mr. Conroy references being afraid with fear at the prospect of attempting to live his life without God’s presence. I know that fear too. It is with me everyday.
But there is another honest lesson about acknowledging life’s disappointments in the epilogue for My Losing Season.
Mr. Conroy writes: “There is no downside to winning. It feels forever fabulous. But there is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss. The great secret of athletics is that you can learn more from losing than winning.”
He continues: “The word “loser” follows you, bird-dogs you, sniffs you out of whatever fields you hide in because you have to face things clearly and you cannot turn away from what is true. My team won eight games and lost seven-teen—losers by any measure. Then we went out and led our lives, and our losing season inspired every one of us to strive for complete and successful lives.” (Pages 394-395)
Pat Conroy’s final game as a player for The Citadel was in the 1967 Southern Conference Tournament. They lost to the University of Richmond in overtime 100 to 98.
The next morning in the Charleston, South Carolina newspaper, The News and Courier, Citadel coach Mel Thompson said this about Mr. Conroy’s play: “Pat Conroy gave another great performance. That kid gets more mileage out of his talent than any player I have ever coached.” (Pages 340-341)
Those unexpected words of praise from Mel Thompson were used by Pat Conroy to inspire and shape the rest of his life.
I don’t think my old heart can ever let go of Pat Conroy’s books.
Maybe this is why my soul will always hang on to him and his words: “It was the year I learned to accept loss as part of natural law. My team taught me there could be courage and dignity and humanity in loss. They taught me how to pull myself up, to hold my head high, and to soldier on.” (Page 400 Epilogue My Losing Season)
That is a powerful lesson.
No matter how bleak, frustrating, and uncertain this world can be, you, me, we, us must soldier on by pulling ourselves up with courage, dignity, and humanity.
God bless and rest your soul Pat Conroy.
might be baloney 