Something Beautiful Remains

      You never know just what someone means to you until they’re not around anymore. Usually, it’s too late to matter then and it makes you even sadder to think about it. Life’s funny like that sometimes. Your family and friends spend most of their lives and yours trying to teach you a lesson and when you finally, truly get it down, there’s no one around to know it. It seems like life’s best teacher dwells in the valley of death.

           My mother paid a visit to that valley when I was five years old and dragged me and my father kicking and screaming behind her. She had been sick for half of my life, but we didn’t find out about the cancer until a year before she passed. My most vivid memory of her agonizing illness is that she was positive it was only temporary. She went to chemotherapy faithfully and didn’t even frown when she had to buy wigs to cover her balding head. She had been an independent woman all her life and she dreaded having someone else help her wit the simple things that she used to take for granted like going up and down stairs or to the bathroom. Still, she never complained. She would always say that she had been through worse things in her life and she wasn’t about to let a “little bit of cancer” take her out of here. My father and I both heaped hope upon hope that she was strong enough to make it through, but we eventually had to realize that she wasn’t getting better. By the time she passed, we had already given up all hope of her recovery and resigned ourselves to living without her.

           I had just turned 8 when my dad and I went to live with my Aunt Mary, so I didn’t really understand that I wouldn’t be going back home again. My dad had to sell the house to pay off my mother’s enormous medical expenses and to provide for me. He used to come home from his janitorial job late in the evening, covered with the stench that constituted his daily chores, and head directly for the shower. Afterwards, he would come into my room and talk to me until we both fell asleep. He used to tell me stories about my mother and what a wonderful woman she was, always adding that I was a miniature version of her. He would tell me that I was beautiful and smart and all those things that daddy’s little girl likes to hear, but he didn’t do that anymore once we moved. I never quite figured out if it was because he had taken on a second job, or because he didn’t want to see the disappointment in my eyes. It turned out not to matter, though, because he passed away of a heart attack just a few months before my ninth birthday.

           Now people might think that a little girl my age would be too young to be grief-stricken, but they just don’t know. That gravedigger couldn’t have known that he wasn’t just throwing dirt at the corpse that I used to call “daddy,” but he was burying all my hopes, my dreams, my heart. My aunt, bless her heart, did all that she knew how to comfort me, but I could find no solace without the man who had surrendered his pride and his very existence so that I might have a chance in life. My sobs were uncontrollable and my grief was irrepressible as night after night was filled with memories of my father and a longing to join him and my mother in death.

           I had always been smart in school, but the fourth grade was a major challenge. My dad had always checked over my homework, no matter how tired he was, and my aunt tried but I wouldn’t even let her look at it. I had to be the first 9-year old to fail a whole grade. The other kids stayed away from me, but amongst them I was “that weird kid.” Oh, they had all sorts of stories for what was wrong with me. The one that hurt the most, though, was that my dad had killed my mom and was doing time in jail for it. I could’ve killed the little nappy-headed boy who started that one and, believe you me, after that black eye I gave him, it was hard to convince the teacher or my aunt that I didn’t try to. I tried to concentrate on my schoolwork, but I felt as though my world was in shambles and getting a passing grade was the last thing on my list. It didn’t matter to me that my parents had always pushed me to succeed in school. All I could think about was that if they really cared about me doing well in school or in general, they wouldn’t have left me.

           Seeing my depression, Aunt Mary paid very close attention to me and often told me stories about both my parents that it hurt me to hear. Yet somewhere underneath all the pain that those narratives brought, I began to realize how important they were. I stored all of them inside my bosom and they lightened the burden of my heart. It was as though they had never really left me, but just moved inside of me where I might get to know them better.

           I remembered how my mama used to read to me from the Bible and then she would close the book and tell me about her personal experiences with God as an all-knowing, all-powerful Being that holds each of our lives in the palm of His hand. Daddy did the same thing after she was gone and when I thought about the things that they had told me, I realized that, not only were they in the hands of the Lord, but so was I. We weren’t apart after all because their hopes and visions would become a reality through me. All I had to do was stay in touch with the One who created the instruments of my life – my parents.

I heard my aunt every night praying for the Lord to watch over and protect me, to keep me safe in His loving arms and to comfort me as only He could. To this day, I don’t know why she was so surprise to hear me repeat the very same words at my bedside. I didn’t know what they meant them, but I’ve heard that God watches over babies and fools and I guess I was a little of both. Maybe I still am. The only difference is that now I’m an old fool who is just crazy enough to believe in the omnipotence and omniscience of the God Hwho holds my yesterdays and my tomorrows.

I still pray that same prayer at night, except now I have confidence in what I say and before I get off my knees, I give thanks unto my Heavenly Father in advance because I know He is more than capable of meeting my tiny requests. And time has certainly shown that He does not wait for me to ask for things, but He has already prepared whatever I need and if I just trust in Him, His preparation will become my direction.