Preface
The drawing of Jesus hung in the parish hall of the Episcopal church I attended as a child from the early 1970’s until it closed its doors 30 years later.
The church was situated just five doors down from our house which was a convenience for everyone, well almost everyone and just most of the time. Due to the proximity, our family was involved in activities there frequently, above and beyond the mandatory Sunday and Wednesday attendance when we were kids.
Often the short walk was attractive to host stays for visiting speakers and rectors (Episcopal priests) if they were brave, or desperate, enough to shack up at the already overflowing 1,100 SF space we called home.
To be fair, the church got there first.
However, the short distance almost eliminated any and all creative excuses I could think of, and there were loads, to avoid attending one of the services on Sunday morning. The struggle between church and sleep started at age 12 after I began working in a bar on Friday and Saturday nights, as well as some Sunday mornings helping clean up for the next day, to earn money.
My brother and I attended, were baptized, and in many ways grew up with this church as a permanent fixture in our lives, and the congregants just as much family as our own. From the age of five until I left my hometown for college at 18, it’s one of the few places I’d ever known peace. It remains so to this day.
When the church closed its doors, the rector gifted this drawing of Jesus to my stepfather and mother, who still lived in the small house five doors down.
My parents hung the drawing in the small combined kitchen and dining room area that was open to a small living room, with only a half-wall with 1960’s wood trim and turned wood decorative columns separating the small spaces. The open air concept was necessary to avoid feeling claustrophobic in the mid-century modern ranches the builder stamped out on our part of the block. The neighbors on both sides of us had the exact same plan, only the paint and wood stain differed.
In 2004, I returned home to say goodbye as my stepfather was dying in his bed from the small cell lung cancer Agent Orange gifted him from his tours in Vietnam, a war for which he volunteered, equally out of resignation to the draft but also in his fervent patriotism.
In the small hours of predawn as the end neared and the morphine no longer helped ease his pain, someone relieved me from my watch, and with it the utter helplessness of being unable to offer him any further comfort or relief, only my presence.
After I walked down the hall from his bedroom, I dropped on the living room sofa. As I sat in exhausted shock and frustrated sadness, I looked around me at the last place I called home under their roof. Above the half-wall, between the turned wood columns in the half light, the drawing of Jesus caught my eye. As familiar to me as family, I stared at the picture hanging there in a place of prominence, laughing, as I struggled to reconcile the faith in which I grew up with the pain of pending loss of a faithful adherent in my stepfather.
This verse was born of that struggle.
Coda: An Elegy
As you lay dying, you said,
“Let the Lord lead” and
Showed no fear
In the face of the
Malignancy devouring
The breath within you.
As some prayed, I wrestled with God,
Searching for justice
In the sentence you’d been given.
Others talked of Jesus
And salvation
— A triumph over death.
To me, it seemed
A narcotic chased with sand
To numb the pain
Of the finality in which
All will cease to exist.
God’s faithful servant, is this fair?
I prayed and trusted once
With all a boy’s sincerity
And innocence,
Fearing that my plea would be
Met with silence,
Angered by the helplessness
That drove me to my knees,
Sickly knowing they’d not return.
What time and industry hid
Was only resurrected
With a vengeance as I saw
The pain racking your body,
Nothing slowing the contagion’s course,
The venom winding its way
To still the beating of your heart.
A rap on the door brought
A late night visit —
A white Rasta in dreads,
The dark shaman called
Who taught us the
Science of transition,
And allowed us to
Give you permission
To let go.
As we listened in long vigil,
There sat on the wall,
Painted by the moon’s pale glow,
A picture of Jesus.
Why does He laugh?
Death’s rattle grew louder,
Dancing double-time
To the pendulum’s cadence,
Life measured in minutes.
On the bed, curled as the unborn,
You lie in wheezing moan and
Vacant stare.
Did you hear the Lord’s Prayer
As we surrounded you
In semi-circle, holding hands,
Touching you in your last moments,
Embracing as the staccato
Of your breathing
Ceased?
Your granddaughter hugged her father
As he mourned for you
On the front porch steps, saying,
“I love you, Daddy,”
On the cool and beautiful
Morning of your passing.
Child becoming parent,
The parent, the child.
Pain begat pain,
Weeping as one abandoned,
Realizing too late the love I felt,
Regret at the lack
Of its full expression
And sadness in the uncertainty
Of you not knowing,
Understanding with clarity:
Death’s sting is preserved
Not for those who die
But for those who remain.
Returning home,
Silence’s knell reverberated
From room to room,
Sounding an alarm of your absence.
Your wallet and money laid
On the dresser,
Surrounded by
A tapestry of pictures
A kaleidoscope of captured moments
— Relics of a life interrupted.
Did you hear the somber bugle
Of your funeral song
Or the blasting of a final salute
As you returned home?
Honored in dying
By the Agent of your death.
Decorated infantryman
In war’s foreign fields
— Far braver soldier in the soul’s campaign.
Credits: The Laughing Christ was a 1971 sketch by the Chicago-area illustrator and surrealist artist Fred Berger (1923–2006). This image of Jesus hung first in my church and then in the small house five doors down from where I first saw it at five years old.
