Father David E. Noone – pronounced “noon,” as in the apex of a day, passed away on June 15 at the age of 83; appropriately, I suppose, on Father’s Day. He was my priest, boss, mentor, and friend. I found out he died a few minutes before driving to another former boss & friend‘s funeral…bizarrely terrible timing.
He wrote his own beautiful obituary, but I had the wisdom not to read it until I was back home again, for I couldn’t have handled it just then.
For several years (my mid-20s to early 30s), I worked as church secretary at St. Francis de Sales Church (now called Christ Our Light) where he was the pastor. When I got the job, I think I was 25; he would have been 52 or 53. It was a parent-child age difference, so it made sense when eventually I came to love him almost as a daughter loves her dad.
We clicked right away. He was kind and curious, interested and interesting. We had the same sense of humor and laughed together a lot, and he managed the office and its workers well. He made me want to do a good job. I took care to deliver his phone messages quickly and always ensured he had Equal for his coffee. I attended weekly (sometimes daily) Mass, admittedly a lot more than if it had been any other priest presiding.
As a priest and a person Father Noone was welcoming, humble, God-loving, and moral. A man of integrity, he spoke thoughtfully and listened with real empathy. Every week he worked hard on insightful homilies, then delivered them with a storyteller’s skill.
I admired his spirituality and his diplomacy – the impressive way he interacted with all manner of people who crossed his path on any given day. Father saw people on the best and the worst days of their lives, but he showed up in a special way for the really hard stuff. Because he was so gifted at helping people through grief, they often called him immediately after a death – sometimes even before the police, coroner, or family members. More than once he was first on the scene, post-suicide. Tragic accident. Fatal heart attack. He never complained about what he witnessed or how it must have affected him, but I think it carved a tender place in his soul that ached sometimes.
He moved through this world like he truly cared about all its inhabitants, as evidenced by everything about him, all the lives he touched through his churches and his work with Friends of Fontaine, Unbound, and more ministries and work I never knew about. Work, probably, nobody ever knew about. He was never one to brag.
Father was one of the only people I ever truly confided in about a lot of things, and I was especially grateful he allowed me to open up raw and painful conversations about Jonah. He married Andy and me and baptized Boo, so he knew our story from its inception and he watched it all fall apart. He did not berate me for despairing, nor encourage me to look on the bright side, nor offer any platitudes. He knew when to be silent and when to speak, what I needed to hear and exactly how to say it.
And when we spoke for the last time about a month ago, it was only after he listened to my problems that he admitted his own. He knew he was probably dying, and he told me so. We both cried and we talked about all kinds of things, and I told him I loved him. “I love you too,” he said. I’m so grateful for that conversation.
I’m so grateful for his presence in my life.
Goodbye, dear Father. I will miss you always.
The Never Normal 