At the reunion, Zach could have confronted me and told me how the wounds I inflicted on him healed, or did not heal, with time. He could have stuck to the dutiful small talk and perfunctory questions that so often characterize reunions and related functions like weddings and funerals. Zach could have ignored me altogether, very much like I might have ignored him if he had not pointed me out and called me by name.
But Zach chose to show me mercy.
The reunion continued with the whole class gathering round in a circle—it was time for awards: furthest distanced traveled, most times married, life of the party.
I stood shoulder to shoulder with Zach—we didn’t win anything this time either.
What Zach did was merciful because he canceled a debt that I owed him. But he also did something more: he focused on our relationship—not just as we experienced it back in third and fourth grade, but also as we were experiencing it then and there. The mercy was a prelude to reconciliation, reestablishing a bond that was broken decades ago.
As the evening wound up and then wound down, I found myself circling back to Zach many times. We talked about work, about our families, and we mourned recently deceased classmates from our elementary-school days. Throughout our talks, Zach never mentioned once that I had bullied him.
Part of reconciliation is letting go—and I suppose Zach thought it was bad form to hold onto something negative about me from a time when we were kids. But there is something about the way we behave as children that prefigures the way we behave as adults. Our childhood cruelties often fester and metastasize into wounds or cancers that never fully heal. That’s one reason I felt so guilty and ashamed about my treatment of Zach—it pointed to the person I could become with a drink in my hand.
So, I have to confess that I was glad that Zach didn’t call me out for being a bully. I felt relief, and freedom. And I sat back and rested in that experience, letting it wash over me.
“Mat, it’s Zach.”
Zach had taken the initiative to call me. A couple of weeks earlier, I sent him an e-mail and apologized outright for bullying him in third grade.
It had been eight years since the reunion.
Mercy—like sin—is a funny thing. It also has a long half-life.
I’m not against apologies—I offer them quite liberally, actually. But I didn’t apologize to Zach when I had the chance at the reunion. Being shown mercy is humbling; it exposes you and reflects back your vulnerabilities. I think I was feeling a little too exposed and vulnerable at the reunion to take the step that I should have taken in apologizing to Zach.
Apologies often cannot undo pain; but they can acknowledge it. Part of the cruelty of bullying is that the bruises it leaves are on the inside—it’s a hidden form of violence, shrouded by shame. At the reunion, Zach showed he overcame his own shame and vulnerability—and his mercy to me finally proved stronger than the shame and vulnerability I carried inside myself. Reconciling with Zach meant that I had to reconcile with my own self by taking responsibility for my actions, even though many years had passed. Mercy and reconciliation can lead to freedom and to new beginnings. But that freedom and those new beginnings do not include a free pass to forget.
Face to face with Zach once again—albeit virtually, on the telephone line—I repeated my apology: “Zach, I just wanted to tell you again how much it meant to me that you reached out at that reunion where we met a long while back. You apologized to me for giving me a hard time, when I should have been apologizing to you. I’m really sorry that I was such a bully.”
“Well, you know my grandmother always taught me to turn the other cheek,” Zach said, and then he chuckled. “If my grandmother had been allowed to be a priest, she’d have been the pope.”
I laughed. Then I asked, “Do you remember running for president together back in third grade?”
“Oh, now you’re really asking me to clear the cobwebs,” Zach said, neither confirming nor denying my memory of things.
“We’re much older now, Zach, aren’t we?” I said. “Time is passing.”
“It’s the moments that matter—not the hours or the minutes,” Zach reflected.
There was a pause and Zach added, “Back in third grade, I knew I could always talk to you.”
Another pause. “And you’d listen—sometimes.”
I laughed again.
“Just remember, I’ve always thought of you as a friend,” Zach reminded me.
I smiled to myself as I hung up the phone. Zach’s number was displayed on my handset—I made sure to write it down.
Suggested Questions for Discussion
1. What mindset and emotions can lead to bullying?
2. Do you agree with what Zach said in apologizing? Do you agree with him not calling the author out as a bully?
3. What do you think about how the author handled his meeting with Zach and why he acted the way he did?
4. How can mercy enable reconciliation between two people?
Suggested Questions for Private Reflection
1. If you were bullied as a child, or can imagine having been, what would it mean to bring mercy to that experience?
2. If you were a bully, or can imagine having been one, what could you do to reconcile with those whom you bullied?
3. If you were both bully and bullied—or again, can imagine such a situation—can you reflect on the relationship between the two?
Chapter Three
Mercy and Letting Go
“Let’s get the story straight,” I said.“The night of the salmon burgers.”
I’m not a handyman.
My older daughter, Veronica, can tell you that.
I tried fixing the toilet one time in our 1950s Massachusetts cape. As five-year-old Veronica supervised, I was able to remove the valve without much trouble, but I forgot to turn off the water. A waterspout shot up, almost hitting the bathroom ceiling. The cascade caught my left ear with a gurgle and whoosh, and drenched Veronica’s pink sweat pants. She screamed and ran out of the bathroom into the waiting arms of her mother, my wife, Caroline, who had just navigated her way through the piles of clothes and books I had left on the stairs.
Veronica and Caroline then collapsed on the couch, shrieking with laughter.
“Oh, Daddy! Thank God it was clean toilet water!”
They laughed because I’m not a handyman.
To which my younger daughter, Joy, can also attest. I managed to slice and dice her yellow-flowered flip-flops when I ran them over with the lawn mower—luckily, she wasn’t wearing them at the time. When she discovered the evidence of my misdeed, Joy gave me a pouty look and tears welled up in her eyes.
But she eventually forgave me because she realizes that I’m not a handyman.
Last and, of course, not least, Caroline can and certainly will tell you that I’m not a handyman. She’s dreamed many dreams for me: from romantic imaginings of building a