Death of a Fisherman

By David Zailer

"How does one live with the ugly contradiction when faith is highjacked by religiosity to cover abuse? How does one grow to love the truth when truths are used to camouflage lies? David Zailer's heroic tale of coming back to himself is a wild, compelling, hope-filled ride."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Homecoming Books
• Release date: Nov 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9798218056995

David Zailer

David Zailer is an author, speaker, and the founder of Operation Integrity. He is also on faculty with The Leadership Institute, championing faith-based recovery internationally. His other books include Our Journey Home, Starting Point for Recovery, and the powerful memoir, Death of a Fisherman.

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Preface

I was eight years old when I lost my Zebco rod and reel to the bottom of a lake north of Houston. That was also the day that the little fisherman inside of me died. It’s taken a lifetime to bring him back to life.

This became especially clear a few years ago when an addiction treatment center in Houston hired me to help develop content for a series of educational videos. I traveled there four times over the next year to meet with others on the writing team. I was excited about the project because I enjoy writing. Writing for me is like finger-painting when I was a child. The process is messy and gets all over me, but I like the end result.

I am a born-and-bred Texan. I have lived most of my life away from The Great State, but I enjoy going back to visit when I can. Houston is filled with wildly diverse people full of old-school Texas warmth and charm. It is where I grew up and the memories are complicated, but even so, I wanted to go back and do the work.

I had no idea of the tests and the turmoil waiting for me there.

Prelude to a Journey

A few weeks before my first trip, I met a colleague for dinner after work. Carol and I get together once a year to renew our friendship and reconnect regarding our careers in the addiction recovery field. We always meet at the same Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles. As you walk in, the smell of warm tortilla chips lifts you by your nostrils and floats you to your seat on a rich aromatic cloud that seems to waft north from across the border. I always get there early to scarf down a basket of chips and salsa before she arrives.

There should be recovery meetings for chip eaters like me.

Carol was her usual radiant self. She’s a rainstorm of delight moving through the noisy restaurant. Carefree and self-assured, she doesn’t worry too much about what others might think. After giving me a quick hug, she slid into the brown leather booth across from me.

With mariachi music playing in the background, we ordered tamales with rice and beans, then chit chatted, catching up on life the way good friends do. Like the tiny broken chips at the bottom of the basket, we threw in tidbits of joking and gossip. I told her about my upcoming work in Houston, and I admit I was a bit smug. She smiled, then nodded and affirmed my talent just like I wanted her to. Carol has always been a great encourager, but she changed the direction of our conversation abruptly by squinting one eye and asking, "So David, what are your reasons for going to Houston?"

I thought this was a strange question, but without a moment’s hesitation, I replied, There are three things I want to do while there. I want to do good work on the videos. I want to deliver flowers to my mother’s grave. I want to piss on my father’s grave.

Carol instantly froze. She slowly set her fork down on her plate and stared at her food. It was as if she heard the ticking of a time bomb and was trying to determine its location. I cringed, wishing for a do-over to take my words back. She raised her head and sat tall in her seat, which made me sink lower in mine. She stared me straight in the eye but didn’t say a word.

We sat in silence for a while as I pushed my food around on the plate. I think she wanted me to hear the message hidden within my words. Carol and I have known one another for over twenty years. She has witnessed time polish away much of my cantankerous character. Nevertheless, she clearly would not tolerate the way anger occasionally oozed out of me through crude comments. Certainly not while having tamales for dinner.

We said goodbye at the end of the evening with a warm hug and promised to get together again soon. Yet with busy schedules outweighing our best intentions, we both knew it would be another year before we met again.

My home was more than an hour away, so I found the closest freeway on-ramp, clicked on my favorite tunes, and settled into the flow. Traffic was light, and the weather was clear. My thoughts skipped from place to place. I felt thankful for how Carol gently expressed her deep care and concern without a word of criticism. Yet as I drove, I realized I was afraid of Carol knowing too much about me. She knew much of my story, but not all of it. I thought about how I hold back sometimes because I’m afraid of what others may think, even with those who love me the most.

That’s when I noticed the music had begun to sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. I turned it off and drove in silence as the miles clicked by past Manhattan Beach, Long Beach, and into Orange County. I thought of Houston as I drove and the work waiting for me there. I was excited about the opportunity, but I also felt overmatched. I felt anxious about Houston and was afraid to face the music that played there.

For decades I kept a family photo album sitting on a shelf in my living room. It was a large, heavy book with a drab seventies-era, paisley-brown cover. My father didn’t want it and passed it down to me after my mother died. I would pick it up on occasion, searching for happy memories. Each time I held it, I was always shocked by its bulk and weight. The irony of heavy memories is never lost on me.

In one photo after another, there I stand with my family. My father, Lew Zailer. My mother, Polly Haines Zailer. My sister, Debbie Zailer. And me. We pose and smile in many different settings, just like you see in every family album: family and school portraits, photos of extended family members, snapshots with neighbors, and vacation photos. Conflicted feelings of love and shame stir inside me whenever I look at these photos. Sometimes I’ve even felt sick to my stomach. For many years I’ve done my best to bury my family memories deep, orphaning them as dead and gone forever, but to no avail.

Shame hides within the pain of my family memories. It is a hungry jackal that sneaks back in the night to scavenge the rotting carcass of my forgotten soul.

As my first trip to Houston drew near, I decided to take another look inside the photo album. When I did, I immediately noticed how my family posed in the photos. We looked stiff, dated, and dusty, like unwanted window mannequins stored away and forgotten decades ago. Without thinking much of it, I peeled back the protective cellophane of the first page that kept the photos stuck on the sticky cardboard backing.

Dang, what am I doing? I asked myself.

For reasons I can’t explain, exposing the photos to the fresh air felt good, like the first cool breeze of fall after a long hot summer. Mindful of how old and delicate they were, I carefully peeled each of them from the sticky cardboard. I handled them gently, as if they were newborn kittens, setting them on my kitchen table with great care. I removed every photo from the first page, and in so doing, I began to set my family memories free.

I paused for a moment and took a long look at the photos on the table. Suddenly, family history became very much alive in my mind, though fragile. Imagine newborn kittens mewing and wiggling in search of their mother’s milk. I wanted to respond somehow, but there was no one there to help me. I was alone with all these photos. What was I to do with the burden of my memories?

All I could think was: They deserved better, and so do I.

I turned to the next page and did the same thing. Once again, it felt refreshing every time I removed a photo and set it on the table. I moved on to the third page and then to the next. Finally, every picture was freed from the album and staring up at me. Here we were, me and my family memories, as if gathered for breakfast together.

With the photos removed, I saw the old family photo album for what it was — heavy and empty!

I don’t want to suffer this anymore, I thought.

I don’t want this weight on my back any longer.

I took the empty photo album outside and threw it into the trash can.

I slammed the lid shut. BAM!

Should have thrown that out years ago, I muttered as I walked back inside.

Back in the kitchen, I looked over the photos once more. Some were taken at the first family home where I grew up — a small, white house on the south side of Houston. I thought of this old house every time I had returned to Houston over the years. I wanted to drive by and see it but didn’t know how to find it. However, with the photos no longer stuck to the album pages, they had more to say. My mother had written simple notes on the back of some of the photos with the date and place and short descriptions like Debbie loves to feed the ducks, David really likes puppies, and Lew looks so handsome in his green shirt.

The notes she had written gave each photo a specific memory, most of which made me smile. Lo and behold, one of them had the address of the old white house on Glenlea Street — a street name I then remembered — with a note asking that the photo be returned if a stranger ever found it. Finding this note from my mother felt like finding a hidden treasure. It showed the way to find my old house!

I was delighted with this discovery but I also felt conflicted. Since burying old memories is second nature to me, I did what was familiar. I scooped up all the photos, put them in a manila envelope, and set them on the side of my desk. That’s the place where I put things I’m not ready to work on yet. Several days later, I picked the manila envelope up again and went back into the kitchen to lay the photos out on my kitchen table once more. I was more organized this time and laid the oldest first and the newest last to show a timeline of my family’s life together. Looking at the photos, a hidden memory rose to the surface of my mind.

I was a boy of five or six, sitting in church next to my mother and sister. I was praying, asking God for a different home. I was pleading to go live with someone else.

As I scanned the photos more, my attention was drawn to my sister’s face. Debbie was two years older than me. She was pretty, with copper-blonde hair and light-brown eyes. She always seemed more poised than most children her age, as if she had nothing to run or hide from. I stood beside her in most of the photos, doing my best to behave, but that was difficult for me. I was a rowdy, rambunctious boy with too much get-up-and-go. One photo shows Debbie and me at a petting zoo on a summer outing with our mother. I am standing behind her with crossed arms and an angry, scowling face, impatiently waiting my turn to pet the animals. It was obvious I wanted her out of the way. Big sisters lead the way for younger brothers, whether we admit it or not.

My mother was the photographer in our family. She often carried the hip camera of her day: a Kodak Instamatic. Snapping photos was one way she tried to hold us close, preserving and protecting her family the way good moms do. In almost every photo, she has her hand on my sister or me. Her hands exude warmth, always making a connection and giving us reassurance. I thought my mother looked pretty in the photos. She worked so hard to keep a smile on her face, always doing her best to make others feel at ease. I didn’t understand it then, but it was her way of saving us from what was consuming her soul. Over the years, however, a deep furrow formed across her brow and cast a shadow over her beauty. The photos showed the pain in her face, which became more evident as time passed. My mother had the face of a woman suffering dark secrets that she kept to herself.

My father? He looks the same in all the photos. He has but one expression on his face. Polite disinterest.

Maybe he was hiding his embarrassment, as if tolerating us was the best he knew to do.

Polite disinterest?

In every photo?

Spread over all the years of our lives together?

Whatever my father’s expression meant, he is not here now for me to ask. If I could ask him, I doubt I would get a straight answer because straight answers were not how he handled life. My gut feeling was that my father simply did not want to be with us. He showed this to me in many ways over the years. You don’t put memories like that into a family photo album.

My mother and father married in West Germany in 1955. He had been drafted into the U.S. Army and served there in a military office following World War II. They met just before his deployment, at a revival meeting where he played the piano and organ. He was something of a religious rock star back in the day and made a big impression on my mother. They got engaged by letter, and my mother traveled by ship to join him in Heidelberg, where my sister was born. After my father’s military service, this young family of three returned and settled in Houston. My mother went to work as an executive secretary for an oil company. My father began teaching music in public school. He renewed his musical performance career by playing the organ at a big, popular church downtown.

I was born in Houston in 1958, two years after my sister. My parents carried me in a basket to church with them from my first week. When I was five, the church gave my mom my Cradle Roll that documented perfect Sunday School attendance since birth. Yes, we attended church as if our life depended on it, which it did because our family needed the paycheck my father earned for playing the organ.

We drove to church in my father’s faded blue Chevrolet Biscayne. The floorboards in the back seat had rusted almost entirely away. As we drove down the freeway, I liked looking down through the holes to watch the pavement pass under my feet at sixty miles an hour. None of us thought it was a problem, so long as nobody outside our family knew about our rusty floorboards.

On the outside of the church hung a colossal neon sign as big as a car — JESUS SAVES! Inside, the auditorium was filled with plush, leather-cushioned seats with rounded seatbacks, varnished and polished to a high-gloss finish. (God forbid anyone might be uncomfortable in church.) Down front, there was a semicircular stage painted ivory white and