By Tyron Devotta
I first met Patrick Wijesuriya a little over 35 years ago. I had been invited to his home for what I suspected was not going to be a casual visit. After ushering me into the house, he pointed me towards a very small and distinctly uncomfortable chair. Once I was seated, he began asking a series of rather personal questions. It felt less like a conversation and more like an interrogation.
After a few minutes, he paused and asked, “Is there anything you need to tell me?”
I took a deep breath.
“Uncle,” I said, “I’ve asked your daughter to marry me.”
He responded with a sound that resembled “Hmm… okay.”
Whether it was approval or disapproval, I could not tell.
His wife, Bernadette, immediately asked, “And what did she say?”
Before I could answer, Patrick interrupted.
“That doesn’t matter.”
At that moment, I was convinced I had just received a polite but unmistakable rejection.
Then he stood up, disappeared briefly, and returned carrying a bottle of Old Keg whisky. He poured me a drink and offered it with great seriousness. By then my nerves were completely shattered. I almost swallowed it in one gulp, but wanting to maintain some semblance of dignity and protocol, I sipped it slowly.
By the end of the evening, I was reasonably certain that I had, in fact, received permission to court his daughter. That was the beginning of my relationship with the man who would become my father-in-law.
At first glance, I thought we had absolutely nothing in common. We were, in many respects, opposites. But as the weeks and months passed, I discovered there were areas where we met in unexpected ways.
One was religion.
Both of us had become, in our own ways, outsiders to mainstream Catholicism. We were searching for answers and found ourselves drawn deeper into the Bible. For those familiar with people like us, that meant dissecting verses, studying historical context, examining original meanings, and then arguing about them endlessly.
Patrick loved that.
Friday nights were often our favourite time for these discussions. For him, Friday evening marked the beginning of the Sabbath, which he observed faithfully as a member of the Worldwide Church of God, a church I too eventually joined.
Sometimes our conversations wandered into the absurd.
We would debate hypothetical questions such as, “What if Adam had never eaten the fruit?”
To most people, such discussions would sound ridiculous. But for us they were tools for understanding scripture from different angles.
The Bible gave us common ground.
The other common ground was much simpler.
We both enjoyed a drink.
After a few glasses, Patrick would inevitably break into song. At first, I struggled because I didn’t know many of the Sinhala songs from his generation. Over time, however, I learned them, and eventually I found myself singing along. Those evenings of arrack, song, and debate became part of our family life for many years.
The last six or seven years of Patrick’s life were overshadowed by dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Gradually, the sharp mind that had once challenged pastors and analysed scripture became clouded. Yet one thing never disappeared.
The songs remained.
Even when he could no longer remember many things, he could remember every word of the songs he loved. A drink and a familiar melody could still bring him to life. Sometimes, despite being too weak to stand comfortably, he would rise to his feet and dance a Baila as though the years had melted away.
Patrick was not a diplomatic man.
In fact, diplomacy was probably one of his weakest qualities.
He spoke exactly what he thought, often without considering how it might be received. This occasionally got him into trouble, even within his own family, who would complain that he was “shooting his mouth off.”
I watched him challenge pastors and church leaders on matters of scripture. More often than not, he was right. It was dangerous territory for any half-prepared preacher to engage him in a biblical debate.
Yet he was never fanatical.
What fascinated me was his willingness to think beyond conventional religious boundaries.
One day he tried to explain astrology to me.
Most Christians immediately dismiss astrology as something demonic. Patrick’s explanation was different.
He argued that astrology, at its core, was the study of rhythms and patterns within God’s creation. The cosmos had been created by God and operated according to laws established by Him. Therefore, studying those rhythms was not inherently wrong.
The danger, he said, was when people tried to use astrology to predict the future and surrender themselves to fatalism. That, in his view, conflicted with Christianity because it undermined free will and faith.
It was an argument I had never heard before.
And strangely enough, it made sense.
At the same time, Patrick could be intensely literal about scripture.
The moment I married his daughter, he began asking when we planned to have children.
“You need to do it soon,” he would say. “The end times are coming.”
He would then quote passages about the tribulation and how difficult it would be for mothers carrying infants.
Patrick was also one of the most practical men I have ever known.
He could build cupboards from scratch, wire a house, repair a vehicle, clean a deep well, climb onto a roof, and fix whatever needed fixing.
I, on the other hand, barely knew how to hammer a nail into a wall.
Almost every weekend he would be at our house, tinkering with something, repairing something, improving something, while I watched gratefully from a safe distance.
About ten years ago, I lent him my Maruti Wagon R.
One day he told me it appeared to be overheating.
Drawing on my vast automotive knowledge, which at the time was somewhere around minus one, I confidently informed him that it probably just needed water in the radiator.
He immediately went outside to investigate.
About fifteen minutes later, I wandered down to see how things were progressing.
I found him pouring water into the engine.
Not the radiator.
The engine.
“Uncle, what are you doing?” I asked.
He looked down, paused, and then stared at what he had just done with genuine surprise.
For a moment we both stood there in silence.
It was mildly amusing but also deeply unsettling.
This was not a mistake Patrick would ever have made.
Not in a million years.
As the years passed and Alzheimer’s took hold, I realised that moment had probably been one of the first signs.
Patrick was also remarkably stoic.
Pain was something he simply endured.
I remember occasions when he fell from a roof, broke bones, or injured himself, yet carried on with minimal complaint. He disliked doctors and preferred fixing himself whenever possible.
Even in his final years, whenever a doctor visited the house, Patrick’s response was almost always the same.
“Why have you come, doctor? I’m fine.”
For most of his life he was convinced he would not live beyond sixty. Several members of his family had died relatively young, and he believed the same fate awaited him.
Instead, he lived to ninety-two.
Far longer than he ever expected.
Perhaps longer than he wanted.
Patrick was never a man who wished to become dependent on others.
Yet life had other plans.
Fortunately, he was surrounded by people who loved him deeply. His wife and three daughters cared for him faithfully until the very end. It was not an easy journey for any of them.
Watching a strong and independent man gradually lose his memory and physical strength was heartbreaking.
Dignity and determination had carried him through most of his life.
In the end, age simply proved stronger.
Patrick did not believe in the immortality of the soul. He believed that the dead sleep in the grave until the resurrection. Throughout our years together, I heard him speak often about the resurrection, the White Throne Judgment, the return of Christ, and the New Heaven and New Earth.
He believed that once a person died, the race had been run. Nothing done afterward could alter their destiny.
His faith was unconventional by mainstream standards, but it was deeply researched, sincerely held, and firmly rooted in what he believed the Bible taught.
So as I bring this story to a close, I find comfort in imagining that we will meet again in that resurrection he spoke about so often.
And if we are permitted, perhaps we will share a glass of Old Keg whisky and sing a few C.T. Fernando songs together.
We will not be arguing about scripture then.
In the New Heaven and New Earth, the questions will have already been answered.
Until then, Patrick, my father-in-law, my debating partner, my occasional singing companion, it is goodbye.