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by Megan Phelps-Roper

  Given all the harm Gramps had sown during his life, I knew that many would find an end-of-life change of heart to be too little, too late. That if they could witness his devastating end, some would rejoice in it the same way that he had done to others for so many years. They would see my family’s cruel treatment of him as righteous recompense for a man who beat his wife and children into submission, who used his considerable resources to attack and antagonize the world without compunction. I could already hear their arguments, and though I wanted to defend him—“But his decades of civil rights work!”—I had no real rebuttal. Still, I couldn’t stop the overwhelming sense of hope that washed over me. My own change of heart and mind had already made me optimistic about the same potential in others—and now with evidence that even someone like Gramps could experience this kind of change, the idea of completely writing anyone off seemed senseless.

  After I hugged Zach and handed his phone back to him, I picked Grace up from school and pointed my car to the Midland Hospice House. I drove past Gage Park and the corner where we had first taken our signs to the streets, past the pond where my father had taken us to feed the ducks when we were kids, and pulled my car into the most remote section of the hospice parking lot—just in case my aunt showed up. Grace and I stepped out and looked at each other across the hood of the car, assessing. What was out of place? Our earrings, we decided. We removed them while debating whether Grace should put her hair up. “It doesn’t look cut!” she insisted. We didn’t want to upset him.

  The woman who greeted us at the front door looked suspicious when I asked for Fred Phelps. “And you are…?”

  “His granddaughters,” I said firmly.

  She looked doubtful. “Let me check with his nurse.”

  The nurse rounded the corner a moment later. “You’re the one who called from California?” she asked. I was. The nurse gave me a sad little half smile, nodded, and led us down the hall to the door of his room. “This is him.”

  I put my hand on the doorknob and paused. “Is he … lucid?” I asked.

  “Yeah. At times, he is. At times, he is.”

  I nodded and stepped carefully into my grandfather’s room. The waning light of dusk drifted in through the window over his bed, brightened by the warm glow of a few lamps scattered around the room. The television was on, as so often it had been in his bedroom back home, but he wasn’t paying attention to it. Grace stood just outside the door, waiting to see how he would respond. Would he be happy to see us? Or was he of a mind to rejoin the church, viewing our visit as a hindrance to that goal? Was the disdain he felt the day I left still seething? My heart clenched at the thought. His last words to me still reverberated often in my thoughts, that bitter, biting tone. I thought we had a jewel this time. The last thing I wanted was to dredge up bad memories for him. If he showed any sign of being upset at our presence, we would leave immediately.

  But there were no such signs. The head of his bed was elevated, and when I approached, he looked over at me with recognition and welcome. I couldn’t understand almost anything he tried to say at first—he was so weak, his mouth so dry, his voice so far from the booming proclamations he had delivered from the pulpit all those years. But his eyes seemed aware, and he laughed at me when I tried to interpret his words. I gave him water when he pointed to his glass, and told him that Grace had come to see him, too. She came in a minute later.

  We sat next to him on his bed, me by his side, she near his feet. We realized quickly that he was in and out of lucidity. In his mind, he seemed to be preaching in front of a congregation. He asked me to pass out the hymnals. He wanted to sing. I knew the song as soon as he started quoting the lyrics: When peace like a river attendeth my way / when sorrows like sea billows roll. I searched YouTube and pressed play. “It Is Well With My Soul.” A friend would tell me later that it was a popular funeral hymn. The three of us sang along with the music, Gramps oblivious to the tears pouring down our faces. He prayed to God in thanks for the church and for His help. I held his hand while he started to preach a wedding sermon.

  A little time, and he seemed to be in a different place mentally.

  “Brothers and sisters,” he said gravely, “I hope you believe that I’m doing my best, and that I’ll continue to do more with pleasure and privilege. I’m not a threat.” He looked at me. I told him that I believed him, and squeezed his hand tight. I imagined him at the center of one of those godforsaken disciplinary meetings. I hated their self-righteousness. I hated their sociopathic lack of empathy. Whatever God there might be, He was not in that place.

  Gramps didn’t seem to understand where he was until I told him about Libby. She had just given birth to her first child, a son. Paxton, meaning “peace.” I showed him a photo, and he seemed to snap back to the present immediately. “Was he born yesterday?” he asked.

  “Two days ago,” I said. I told him we would all come back to see him tomorrow.

  He said, “I remember her as a sweet little baby. Just a little baby. And now she’s a mother.” He asked how old she was now.

  He looked at Grace and said, “Mama.” He was asking about Gran. I told him that Gran loves him very much. His eyes found mine instantly and he said, “She said that?” I nodded and said yes. I’d heard her say it many times.

  “Such a beautiful woman,” he said. “I can never get over how beautiful Gran is. She’s in all you grandchildren and great-grandchildren. So beautiful.” He looked at Grace. “You look so young.” He told her she looked tired. “You need to find a place to lie down.”

  He thanked us for coming to see him. He asked if we’d come back and said that he wouldn’t hold it against us if we did, joking like his old self. I kissed his forehead, and he looked at me and said that we were wonderful grandchildren. Just wonderful. That we always were.

  “Special,” he said. “So special.” I hugged him for a long time and cried with my cheek pressed against his chest. He lifted his hand and held my face while I did. And when I stood up, he motioned me down as if to kiss me. I put my cheek to his lips, and he kissed it several times quickly, the way he always had. “Muah, muah, muah, muah, muah.” I did it back.

  He looked at Grace and said, “Sugar, I just want you to know that I love you.” She told him she loved him, too.

  We kissed and hugged him again, and he kissed our cheeks, and we promised to come back tomorrow to see him, all of us unaware that the church would uncover our visit the next day and instruct the hospice to keep us—and every other visitor—away from him. He was drifting off to sleep as we left.

  The sun was gone when my sister and I left the hospice, my car automatically steering its way back home. Driving around the block was always the last thing we did before leaving town. For over a year, we had been reaching out to our family here. To share with them the experiences that opened our minds. To remind them of passages we had so long ignored while we were together. To convince them that there were other ways. We knew the messages were unwelcome—not unlike Westboro’s decades of protests—but we sent them anyway and would for years to come. We did not use the bombast of our grandfather or the florid insults of our mother, but the still, small voice I had learned from Chad, from David, from the sassy start-up employee in Chicago, and the hilarious Australian guy, people who learned the lesson that Margie had tried to teach me as a child. A soft tongue breaketh the bone. In the years that followed, I watched in amazement as the signs I most often argued against—PRAY FOR MORE DEAD SOLDIERS; PRAY FOR MORE DEAD KIDS; FAGS CAN’T REPENT—began to disappear from their repertoire, replaced by messages like CHRIST OUR STRENGTH and BE RECONCILED TO GOD. It was all the encouragement I needed to go on. Grace and I use tweets and letters and postcards to reach them, cupcake deliveries and birthday presents.

  And just once, we used a sign.

  For four years, it sat at the corner of 12th and Cambridge, right in the midst of our old neighborhood. A brand-new bus bench I had noticed on a similar drive just a few months after we left. It ha
d been blank back then, except for a phone number to call if you wanted to buy the ad space. Grace and I had spent over a month trying to figure out what to put on it. What would we say to our loved ones living in the surrounding houses? What was the most important thing to tell them? To anyone driving past, the bench’s message looked like a nonsense saying written in chalk paint, surrounded by brightly colored drawings that belonged in the pages of a children’s book. To our family, it was a reminder. “Goldbugs forever,” it read in Grace’s loopy handwriting. A mistaken iPhone autocorrect for “good night” that became a saying among the siblings.

  “Goldbugs, bro.” “Goldbugs, sis.”

  A sweet way of saying Good night. I love you.

  The drawings were for the children who couldn’t read yet. The ones Grace had always drawn for them. The little sailboat on its choppy waters. The fat, floating bubble man stretching his arms out toward a heart. The jolly baby with a lollipop, a shirt too small to cover his belly, and a bib that read simply FOOD. The interconnected symbols of the sun, the flower, and the swirl. Grace, Bekah, and me, back together as we should be.

  And on the back of the bench, a line from a story my sister read to us after Bible study one evening. Another Hans Christian Andersen.

  There is always a clinging to the land of one’s birth.

  Gramps is gone now, buried unceremoniously in an unmarked grave under the Kansas sun. Yet his church remains. I’m just around the corner from it, right outside my old front door. Gran lives here now, with my mom and my dad and my brothers and my sister. Their hearts beat just inside. I can’t knock, and I don’t pray anymore, but I can wish that it all would end. That the walls they built to keep me out would vanish. I want to tell them that the world isn’t evil. That it’s full and complicated and beautiful and good, filled with unknown truths and unbroken hopes, and that it’s waiting just for them. That I’m waiting just for them. I want to tell them that I love them.

  I’ll just have to find another way.

  Acknowledgments

  This book began as an essay, written as a gift for my dearest C.G. Chad, I wouldn’t have undertaken this project without your unwavering belief in me, your honest and tactful criticism, and your willingness to walk with me through the difficulties. I love your mind, and can’t believe I get to have you as my first reader.

  My friend and mentor Eric McHenry played an instrumental role in bringing this book to life. Eric, when I first asked you to edit that essay back in 2014, my only goal was to write something beautiful for the man I loved—but with your endless encouragement, it became something more. I have no idea where I’d be if you hadn’t been so willing to share your writerly wisdom, to read so many of my ugly first drafts, to connect me with a wonderful editor who became my wonderful editor, and to write on my behalf to literary agents. Given how reluctant I was to write about my life, I have every reason to believe that this book wouldn’t exist without you. I am forever in your debt!

  And now, to contain my loquacity and in homage to my favorite social media platform, tweet-length expressions of gratitude:

  To my brilliant editor, Alex Star—You gave me the book’s structure the day we met, and expertly molded the text each time you touched it.

  Mel Flashman, literary agent extraordinaire—I couldn’t have asked for an advocate more enthusiastic and equipped (in all ways!) than you.

  Adrian Chen—I’ve never known a more thorough reporter. The depths of our conversations made my thinking and writing infinitely clearer.

  Willing Davidson—The title you gave Adrian’s profile in The New Yorker was truly inspired. Thank you for sharing it with this book.

  Keith Newbery—We wouldn’t have lasted nearly as long without you. Existential heroines forever. (P.S. Everyone follow @TchrQuotes!)

  David Abitbol—Your guidance and friendship have shaped so much of the life I’ve made. You helped me find my voice, and I owe you much.

  Laura Floyd—Darling! The attention with which you read is astounding, and this book benefited enormously from your keen eye. I adore you!

  Dustin Floyd—From Yellowstone to NY to Israel, discussing ideas with you and Laura has clarified much for me. Thanks for going the distance.

  Louis Theroux—Your thoughts and questions on early drafts were insightful and important to the life of this book. I appreciate every word.

  Andy Mills—You’re an extraordinary friend and teller of stories, and I’m grateful for the time we spend discussing ours. You are invaluable.

  Dana Meinch—Thank you for teaching me how to be a good human, to set boundaries, to question assumptions, and to remember who’s on my team.

  Rabbi Yonah, Rachel, Moshe, Tzofiya, Shlomo, and Nafi Bookstein—Your kindness and generosity of spirit are unsurpassed! An example to all.

  Mike Savatovsky, Sarah Atkins, M., N., H.—Our month in MTL taught me intentionality and the magic of taking action—and chances. All my love.

  Dortha, Mark, and Nate Phelps—Thank you for answering my questions about long-ago events. Dortha, you were so generous, and I am grateful.

  Steve Fry and the Topeka Capital Journal—For opening the archives and shedding light on the early days, thank you very kindly.

  To my early readers—Tom Kenat, Mike Savatovsky, Brittan Heller, Karrie Fjelland, too many to name, but you know who you are: Thank you!

  And finally, to the family who have been my everything:

  Josh Phelps-Roper—Going through this process with you has helped me heal in ways I didn’t know I needed. You are a rock, dear brother.

  Zach Phelps-Roper—Your comments on this text were full of wisdom and comedic relief. You and your sweet disposition are a light to me.

  Grace Phelps-Roper—I still aspire to the “wondrous things” you wrote of so long ago. Thank you for sharing your adventurous spirit with me.

  Nana Toews and Grandpa Fundis—I now know whence my dad got much of his goodness. Thank you for the love and thought you’ve given this book.

  Stephanie, Gabe, Asher, and Emmie Roper—Your presence in my life has been unparalleled joy & lightened the dark times. I love you dearly!

  Sølvi Lynne Fjelland—You are the most precious gift, sweet dolly. The embodiment of joy. What a delight it is to be your mom.

  Kurt, Karrie, Halle, Kate, and Jasper Fjelland—Halsnøy, the Hills, rocket ships, and princess cake. Oh, how I’ve loved joining this family!

  Marlin and Joyce Fjelland—I couldn’t be more grateful for your wild enthusiasm and love. Thank you for raising my beloved so wonderfully.

  Sam, Bekah, Isaiah, Gabe, Jonah, Noah, and Luke—Our years together were a treasure, and I ever wish for more. I am lucky to be your sister.

  To my beloved Gran—Having your name is a constant reminder of the gentle wisdom & patience you inhabit, & to which I aspire. I love you so.

  To my padre—There isn’t a day I don’t think of the wonderful father you’ve been to me. Your absence is felt always.

  And to my madre—Who could ever ask for the sacrifices you made for me? I will never have a greater teacher than you.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Megan Phelps-Roper is a writer and an activist. Formerly a member of the Westboro Baptist Church, she left the church in November 2012 and is now an educator on topics related to extremism and communication across ideological divides. She lives in South Dakota with her husband, Chad, and daughter, Sølvi Lynne. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. The Qu
arrel of the Covenant

  2. The Bounds of Our Habitation

  3. The Wars of the Lord

  4. The Tongue Is a Fire

  5. The Lust of the Flesh

  6. The Appearance of Evil

  7. Ye Shall Be Judged

  8. Strangers and Pilgrims

  9. Lift Up Thy Voice

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About the Author

  Copyright

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  120 Broadway, New York 10271

  Copyright © 2019 by Megan Phelps-Roper

  All rights reserved

  First edition, 2019

  E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-71581-6

  Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

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