Welcome to Walmart, young man.

It happened again yesterday, I walked into Walmart and the greeter reminded me of my father who died on mother’s day in 2006. The greeter- an older gentlemen- looked at me and said: “Welcome to Walmart, young man”, but as he looked at me, I got the feeling he was scrutinizing me as a person.

My dad was not one of those people who could be said to not judge others, in fact, quite the opposite, he judged everyone on everything from their appearance to their choices to the people they hung around with. If it was something on which someone could be judged, he did it, despite the fact that his guru, Jesus, once said: Judge not that ye be not judged for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.” [KJV of Bible]

Before you accuse me of “dead-father bashing”, let me add that my father judged people mainly with an eye for diagnosing their spiritual condition so he could talk to them on his favorite subject: how a relationship with Jesus would fix whatever ailed them, whereas a lot of people judge others and conclude they themsleves are better than the other person or that there is something deficient in the other person. Dad had the world in two groups, those who were saved and those not saved and if you professed to be saved, you might make all sorts of mistakes in your life, but at least you would go to heaven when you died, and to him that was pretty much all that mattered.

But it was not just that I thought the Walmart greeter was judging me, it was that like my father, he seemed to be the sort of man who deeply loved other human beings. I inferred from just his brief attention to me that he was not only acknowledging me, but processing me deeply. Do you know people who seem to pretend to acknowledge you or those who are paying attention to you only at a superficial level? This man did not seem to be one of those just as my dad was not one of those types.

A dear friend of his came into the bedroom in my brother’s house where he would die the next evening and dad looked at him, smiled and pumped his fist up in the air, feebly, but still, as a dying man, he brought his fist up toward the ceiling to say he was praising the lord to see his friend. At this point dad had completely lost his voice due to his lungs being taken over by small-cell tumors. I will never forget the look of joy on his emaciated face at seeing his friend, no more than I will forget the look he wore the next evening when me and my three siblings stood around his bed and he opened his eyes, stared at my brother for several seconds, opened his mouth and then stopped breathing, with his eyes and mouth both still open.

My point is, in the presence of some people, I get the feeling I am barely registering, but with others, I get the feeling I have their undivided attention. Dad had a highly-developed capacity to attend to the presence of other people.

I will never know if I come across that way to others – I hope I do – but when I am in the presence of someone who processes others the way my dad did, especially if that person is an older man, I am reminded of dad and I start reflecting on how much I miss him, for better and for worse.

You see, I was fortunate enough to be the son of someone who deeply loved and attended to ALL people, so you can only imagine how laser-like his love and attention were in my life. For most of my adult life, no matter how far from him I lived, I would reflect on a regular basis how he might respond if he could see me as I was doing whatever I was doing.

If I contemplated telling someone off at work whom I thought had done me wrong, or if I actually went through with it, sooner or later I would have to deal with my reflection on how dad would have taken it, what he might have said, advice he might have given, whether he would have seen me as being right or wrong.

Dad has been gone over seven years and I no longer have to concern myself with what he might actually think of what I am doing. I don’t subscribe to the belief some seem to hold which is that not only is Jesus looking down on us, but those we have loved are doing so as well. I have this relentlessly realistic part of my mind that says, once your eyes are no longer functioning and your body is wasting away in the ground, you are not looking at too many people.

I spoke at his funeral and one of the things I said that day was that all the sinners in Breathitt, Lee and Owsley County Kentucky could breathe easier because Paul McCullough was gone. I might have been talking to myself though. If I were perfectly honest, as much as I loved him and as much as I missed him, I too was, in a way, breathing easier he was gone.

While he was around I tried to live up to his expectations, I tried to not do anything that might grieve him, in short, I was constantly mindful of his love and attention. After he was gone, I found replacements for his scrutiny in other people whose opinions I respect, but there would and could never be anyone whose opinion would matter to me quite as much as his did.

He is not around to judge me and I am probably not as trustworthy or as tightly self-controlled as I was with him around, but I suppose he was in my life long enough that I learned to be my own judge, to exert my own sort of pressure on my decision making. Now, about the only time I remember the power of his influence is when I am walking into Walmart and an older gentleman looks at me carefully as says: “Welcome to Walmart, young man.”