The last class of my old professor’s life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves.
Why did we bother with all the distractions we did? Back home, the O. J. Simpson trial was in full swing, and there were people who surrendered their entire lunch hours watching it, then taped the rest so they could watch more at night. They didn’t know O. J. Simpson. They didn’t know anyone involved in the case. Yet they gave up days and weeks of their lives, addicted to someone else’s drama.
Music tells the truths.
My mother had been all over me as a kid – advice, criticism, the whole smothering mothering thing. There were times I wished she would leave me alone. But then she did. She died. No more visits, no more phone calls.
Look, no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness. We don’t see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become.
Answer me!” Then, suddenly, there it was again. A single word. Soft, barely audible, a mumbled prayer wafting up into the cave. “Longer.” Longer what? Dor wondered. He crouched on the floor, staring at the incandescent water, desperate, as man grows alone, for the sound of another soul.
I call him a stranger, Annabelle, because if he were truly something divine, he must be as far from me as you can get. We are taught as children that we come from God, that we were created in His image, but the things we do as we grow, the way we behave, what is godlike about that? And the terrible things that befall us? How does a supreme being permit them?
There are many kinds of selfishness in this world, but the most selfish is hoarding.
Before you, Chika, we were a pair. Now, we were a trio. Our car went from a married couple in the front seat to you and Miss Janine in the back, and me behind the wheel like.
Is it like Pope John XXIII once said, that it’s easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father?
He touched that carved teardrop, and it became an actual drop of water on his finger. He moved to where the stalactite and stalagmite had grown to within a razor’s edge of each other. He placed the teardrop between them and watched it turn to stone, connecting the two formations. They were one column now. Heaven meets Earth. Just as he had promised.
But no matter how a family comes together, and no matter how it comes apart, this is true and will always be true: you cannot lose a child. And we did not lose a child. We were given one. And she was glorious.
Mom?” I whispered. I hadn’t said it in so long. When death takes your mother, it steals that word forever.
You once said, “We all need to hold on to something, Benji.” Let me hold on to you, that first hour of you, the two of us staring at a colorful sky. Let me finish my story. Then I will let go of you and this world.
I’m not sure why. I had never focused on dying before, Annabelle. I pushed the idea away. We all know we are going to die, but deep down, we don’t believe it.
Isn’t the Lord in all children?
When someone passes, Benjamin, people always ask, ‘Why did God take them?’ A better question would be ‘Why did God give them to us?
I believed. And in believing, I was saved.
That’s the way it worked between the two of them. Long periods of absence – then crazy, intense romance. I do believe she and Frankie belonged together, even if they rarely stayed together. It was as if they had a secret they were bound to, which made them joyful most of the time and insane the rest.
That’s the thing, you see. Once you get your fingers on the important questions, you can’t turn away from them.” And which are the important questions? “As I see it, they have to do with love, responsibility, spirituality, awareness. And if I were healthy today, those would still be my issues. They should have been all along.
I done ’em, too. But it’s not me against the other guy. It’s God measuring you against you.