Sunday, January 29, 2017

To Prepare a Place


She wept. I could only sit still and wait. The damage evoked suddenly, yet innocently. The words I had prayed would sooth her pain had failed. Indeed, in speaking to her I instead pushed her sadness to anger, her anger to hatred. Her hatred, to now, a deep stillness interrupted only by her heartbreaking sobs.

Shattered glass sprayed across the inexpensive carpet now stained with cheap wine, glittered under the cruel incandescent lights. I thought I should clean it up before someone cut their foot on the sharp fragments. But everyone was gone. They had left when her anger had exploded, perhaps in fear of more soaring wine glasses. I could not help but to stare at that damn broken glass. It was simpler than looking at the broken woman who sat across from me.

“Why?” She asked me again…

To observe the death of a loved one, to hear the dying one’s final breath rattle into silence, to watch their eyes close for the final time, is an encounter of great difficulty. Even I, having stood at countless bedsides, recognize this burden as leaden with a deep melancholy that will not soon vanish. I have advantage in distinguishing this business of dying as not an end, but a glorious beginning. Yet for too many, such as the young woman I address, the certitude of extinction is overwhelming and singular.   

Her name is Isabella. A beautiful name, indeed. Her father called her Bella from time she was born. It is his death that has dealt her burden; his death that has brought me here. My purpose has remained constant, never changing. To soothe. To recall hope. To listen. All the other pieces completed by the One greater than I.

Death is instant. A moment which one cannot measure in time. It is the path to death, which all too often tarries. A prolonged duration will surely agonize the lost and the living. Such was the case for Bella and her father. His body penetrated by cancerous cells. These Lilliputian intruders attaching themselves at will to vital organs without care, laying claim to that which did not belong to them. For over two years he bravely fought an untenable battle. Bella sat at his side each week as the “We Care People” delivered the chemicals designed to destroy the invaders. Moments of hope were sparse for father and daughter. His body, now under attack by invader and ally, slowly eroded.

The day came when a decision must be made—should the therapy continue a crusade that had brought about greater damage than healing?  Would ending the treatments mean a sudden end to life? For one, the hope rested in the affirmative. But for Bella, the thought of her father dying robbed her of sleep, tore at her heart and decayed the foundations of her hope. Against her will, the treatments ceased. Her father abandoned the antiseptic whiteness of the hospital room, returning to the empty bed where his daughter had been conceived so many years before.

“Why?” She asked me once again. Her eyes red from depletion and ten thousand tears. “Why would God allow suffering for so long, if the love you speak of is so great?”

There was more for her to say, so I waited. Peering at the small window, clad not with curtains but with a bed sheet cut to fit the opening, I detected the sun surrendering to the evening sky. Time was running out; soon I must depart, for others lingered at Death’s doorstep.

She spoke, “If he has prepared a place.” She hesitated before speaking to the empty room, “He has had more than two thousand years to do so. He should have finished by now. He did not need to let my father hurt so much. He could have taken him before the suffering began.”

“Whose suffering?” I asked.

She stared across the abandoned room, only silence followed her gaze.

“There was more to be done.” I said.

“Then why did he die? Why did he take him now?” She cried.

“Not there.” I finished. “Here.”

Isabella stood, and walked over to the small window. More tears, amazingly more tears. It seems an inexhaustible flood of tears, comes from not understanding. Some may believe the source is sadness, but sadness stretches across arid plains, soon purging the tears of the saddened. But to not understand…

“Isabella, did you know Laura?”

The girl drew back the homemade curtain, peering into the cloudless sky. “My father’s nurse?” She asked.

“She is the one I speak of. Sit, I will tell you her story.”

She waited at the window.

“Laura was much more than a nurse. She elected to care for the dying. Now this is a noble choosing; to be surrounded by grief and hopelessness, despair and misery. Why, quite often the one cared for by the benevolent caregiver is not even aware of their presence. Laura was inclined to lead such a charitable life, but that was not her reason for choosing.”

Isabella turned from the window, walking to her chair.

“You see Bella, just out of Laura’s grasp, was faith. She would close her eyes at night bowing her head, seeking to pray. Behind her closed eyes, she would see all the people she has cared for. She would recall their great suffering. She would think of the terrible diseases that destroyed their beings. She remembered their names. She would see their loneliness. The late-night images would suck-in the life of her prayer before it ever began. Then she met your father.”

Isabella lay her head on the table, closing her eyes.

“Every night, Laura sat by your father’s side, waiting for him to sleep. Many nights, her wait was not long, his pain eased by the medicines she administered. But other nights, dear Isabella, his pain was too great for the elixir’s charm. On those nights, Laura held his hand and listened.”

“Why are you telling me this?” The girl whispered.

“She heard you father pray. As the end neared, he could no longer find sleep. She listened to his prayers, over and over.” I gazed down on Isabella, wanting her to hear, “He prayed for others. Not once did she hear him pray for relief. Not once did he turn his words against God. He prayed for those he loved. He prayed for you, his Bella.”

“Why…”

So many questions.

“Before He prepared a place, He prepared a plan. He had a plan for your father. You see, until this plan was complete, the place would not be. Laura was God’s plan for your father. She heard his prayers each night. The faith that had been so close, became clear through your father’s words.”

“Isabella, the moment Laura, reached out to God; finally, after fifty years of not understanding, fifty years of searching. In the very moment, she accepted Him— your father went home, his reason completed. Home, to a place prepared for him.”

Isabella sat up, looking around the empty room.

“Father,” she cried.

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