Coda

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 tuned 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 weezing 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 featured image is courtesy of Unsplash with modifications made by the author. Additionally, I’ve searched over the years. I’m not certain but I believe the drawing pictured here is by the artist June Moon. The image is a photo of the drawing that still hangs in my parent’s home five doors down from the church where I first saw it.