Epitaphs

June 24-June 30, 1990

June 24

On a Sunday morning, amidst my sins and thoughts and actions, amidst my shame and self-pity... I don’t know. Maybe there’s a bible verse, and maybe it will pop out at me by chance.

“Yahweh is all I have, I say to myself... It is good to wait in silence for Yahweh to save... to sit in solitude and silence when it weighs heavy, to lay one’s head in the dust —maybe there is hope... Yahweh, I called your name from the deep pit. You heard my voice... You are near when I call to you. You said, ‘Do not be afraid.’” (Lamentations 3:24a, 26, 28, 29, 55, 56a, 57)

“...Take off your dress of sorrow and distress, put on the beauty of God’s glory, wrap the cloak of God’s saving justice around you.” (Barach 5: 1, 2a).

“The whole world will remember and return to Yahweh, all the families of nations bow down before him. For to Yahweh, ruler of the nations, belongs kingly power! All who prosper on earth will bow before him, all who go down to the dust will do reverence before him. And those who are dead, their descendants will serve him, will proclaim his name to the generations still to come; and these will tell of his saving justice to a people yet unborn...” Psalm 22: 27-31a.

June 25

Why doesn’t Steve Sullivan want to talk about God? That’s a foolish question. Steve is one of several bible belt fundamentalists who work with me at Maxrad. We went to dinner tonight at the end of our shift, and, being hungry for a discussion of faith, I looked forward to Steve bringing up God, and he didn’t. Maybe he’s not as much of a Christian as I had thought.

But here’s another question: Why doesn’t Jon Vold want to talk about God? Now that is a question I would do better to consider: I should realize that there is no good answer I can conclude with Steve as long as I cannot confess the answer for myself.

And really, the answer to Steve’s question, the question about Steve, is irrelevant, because if I even get close to the point where I can be rightly concerned about someone else’s conversational faith I would have to be talking about God all the time; if I were ever quiet about God, I would have no cause to judge others for being quiet; and if I was talking about God all the time, I would never have time to wonder why anyone having dinner with me was talking about anything else. I would be forever steering the conversation back to God, and we would be talking about God from dusk to dawn, and I wouldn’t let anyone get a secular word in edgewise.

I am not that way, though. God knows I don’t even try to be. I might have a million answers to why Jon Vold doesn’t talk about God and not one answer is a good one: “I’m ashamed,” “I’m afraid,” “I want to talk about something else right now,” “I don’t know what to say,” and so on.

I am a sinner, Lord, perpetually falling short. I’ll use every excuse a million more times, and still I will come to you for forgiveness. You give it to me every time, too, and why I don’t talk about that to everyone I cannot say. All I can do, it seems, is ask for forgiveness one more pitiful time. 

June 26

I had a good talk with Dan tonight. We will be all right. God will take care of us.

And I had a great talk with Rebekah Choi at University Bible Fellowship. 

[Footnote: The presence of University Bible Fellowship (UBF) at the University of Illinois at Chicago prompted a 1990 student newspaper editorial to call the organization an objectionable cult, but in the year I spent with UBF I did not find cause for concern. Its leaders promoted a protestant Christian theology with a focus on in-depth interactive bible study, encouraging students to devote as much time to studying the bible as they would to a college course with writing assignments, weekly meetings and homework. Weekly “sogams” were written, hymns were sung. I never cared for their three hour Sunday church services, preferring my Lutheran hour, but they still kept the weekday bible study door open for me.]

Rebekah told a wonderful story about “wanting to die.” She was looking inward during a sufferable time of her life —recuperating from kidney stone surgery —and with the persuasion of a chance antagonist (”Stop worrying!”) she got religion, so to speak. She decided that as long as she was going to die she may as well die for Jesus. But after a while it became apparent to her that it wasn’t all smooth sailing, this dying for Jesus. For one thing, at the end of each day she still worried, so much that she couldn’t sleep. During the day, she kept herself busy dying for Jesus by attending bible studies, going to church, reading; but during the night, with nothing else to do, she was reminded again of her pain and it kept her awake. Well, one day, she “went fishing” (a UBF evangelism term), and she suddenly found herself with five new students to study the bible with. She put everything she had into building a fellowship with these new students, and before she knew it she found herself feeling exhausted at night. And it was wonderful.

There’s no way I can tell Rebekah’s story as well as she did; it was beautifully told by her because it was a personal testimony. But I hope the sense of what she said stays with me.

I also had a visit with Josh today. The hospital room was crowded, so it wasn’t too personal, but maybe that was for the best. I look forward to a brotherly talk tomorrow, though, so I can tell him about my conversations with Dan and Rebekah.

June 28

Yesterday was a good day. I walked (still doing that daily) to the hospital, had a good visit with Josh. Saw Aunt Grace there, too. And I had an extremely productive staging session at work. That’s it, but it was enough to count for a “good day.” The productive effort at work was so incredible that I’m thinking of calling at 8:00 am to get their reaction. Maybe that’s being too proud, but what the heck. And I’m looking forward to another walk to the hospital today and another visit with Josh. Oh, one other thing: while walking I finished reading “In Our Time,” the third of four books I need to read for my Hemingway class.

I am still waiting for a letter from Parul. She’s been gone almost three weeks. But rationalizing has been keeping me sane, and it might even be irrational to be worried about her delay. One way or another, I won’t see her for three more weeks, so I’ll just have to be patient. But I sure would like to hear from her.

Don is still at home, recuperating from last Friday’s chemotherapy. I have been simply giving him space. He prefers to be left alone, I think. He doesn’t like the question “How are you?” and I guess I can’t blame him, since he’s heard it asked so much and hasn’t often had a good answer to give. I wish I could think of something else, something better to say, but I can’t, and I guess I’ve resigned myself to that. Don’s condition is improving —the tumor is half size and the lymph node growths have receded —but I’m still cautious about my enthusiasm. God, are you there?

June 30

Parul’s letter arrived today. It had taken two weeks to get here, and now, at last, I am happy. So I have no reason to continue with the thought that had just crossed my mind. Church is tomorrow, and suddenly I have an obligation to go.

God bless Parul, and thank you for her presence in my life and in my heart. God I once prayed for someone to come to be my companion. God I also prayed that my companion would be someone to provide a support for my weak faith, even as I could support her in return. I still pray that, Lord, and I pray that while I might be a catalyst for Parul’s faith, she enhances my own faith in the process, so that mutually we grow together. Lord I want you to take priority in my life. But I want Parul, too, and this is the only way I can think of to ask for her continued presence. I want her to be my number two, God, with your great blessing, and I want to be her number two. So I guess I’m just praying, God, that you would keep standing in front of and in between us, reminding us that no matter what, you are number one.

Resurrection

It was Monday morning, two hours after midnight. Two brothers lay motionless in a ditch on the side of a country road. Beer cans had scattered on either side of them and behind them towered a fat oak tree. Nineteen and eighteen years old, they were in the early morning stage of drunkenness, full of philosophical questions and profound shrugs.

“Could you picture us being old farts?” the younger one asked.

“No.”

“Sitting around all day, lying under the trees, farting...”

“And drinking beer.”

“Sure. Where do you think the farts would come from?” He giggled.

They finished their beers together and started in on two more.

“What do you want to be remembered for?” asked the older one.

“I don’t know, the other answered. He paused, considered. Finally he said, “I just want to live.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

They breathed together for a while, looking up at black sky through the tree branches, then the older one sat up and leaned against the tree. The younger brother sat up with him.

“I mean it, Sal,” he said. “I just want to live, that’s all. That’s the whole answer.”

“Hey, it’s a good answer,” Sal replied. “And it’s what I’m going to remember you for now. I’ll even put it on your tombstone: ‘Dave Nekro. He wanted to live.’” His hands framed the epitaph in the air and he pronounced the words with exaggerated drama. They laughed together. It was funny to be irreverent, to pretend that they would die, one before the other. But then they fell quiet and lied down again, because it was serious to be thinking of death at all, and strange to be laughing at it. A third brother, older than both of them, had died not so long before, and suddenly they were sober again.

He had crashed his car into the same fat oak tree —it would come to be known as “the family tree” —that loomed behind them. He had got drunk, passed out while driving and veered off the road. Now Dave and Sal were sprawled next to the same tree, lying flat against the same ground. And one was talking about writing the other’s epitaph.

“So you plan on outliving me.”

“Yes,” Sal answered. “Maybe six, seven years. I guess I just want to live a little bit more than you, that’s all.”

Dave tried to match his brother’s wit. “Then we’ll have to put it on your tombstone: ‘Sal Nekro. He wanted to live longer.’” He swept his hands in the air, just like his brother had done, and they laughed again. “That’s how you want it, right?”

“Yep, just like that, remember me that way,” Sal said. The beer was making him speak more slowly. “If I’m the first one to go, I mean, which like I said, I won’t be. But put it in stone. I’ll do the same for you.”

They shook hands and called it an old wine pact. “That’s what the old farts would call it,” Sal explained, and they sealed it, in lieu of wine, with their last two beers. Dave suggested that the pact be written down, but Sal reminded him that the key word was ‘remember,’ and ink would be a hypocrisy. They didn’t have a pen with them anyway, Dave pointed out.

Then they began to meditate on this pact, and each separately thought how they could not be hypocrites now, how they would have to remember each other in a special way. And each was reminded again of where they were, at the sight of their brother’s death, under the family tree.

“What’s on Jim’s stone?” asked Dave, after they had been quiet long enough. They were getting sleepy, but had not fallen off yet.

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

“Me neither. I think it’s a bible verse.”

“Try to remember.”

“I am...”

They lay next to the oak tree quietly. Sal picked bark off the tree, reaching mindlessly behind his head, and Dave returned to staring at the pre-dawn sky. Eventually Sal stopped picking bark, and Dave closed his eyes, and they both slipped away into the darkness of sleep.

It was the same night, exactly one year before them, that Jim had rested against the tree. Metal caged him in and separated him from the bark and the stars and the ground, and when it was light —Sunday morning light then —he did not wake up. There was no one there to shake him at the sunrise, and he would not have responded anyway. When he was finally discovered several hours later, it took blow torches and power saws to get to him. Even then, with all of the racket and commotion he did not rouse. He just lay there, with his head covered with drying blood, in the middle of metal and beer cans and broken glass, next to the big old oak.

Dave had dreamt the scene many times in the last year. They were bad nightmares at first —Jim would not move! —but they evolved slowly to a kind of afterward serenity. In the early dreams he had tried to shake Jim awake, but eventually he would come to just sit with him. Sal would always be there, too, and after a while they began to take on a sleepy sameness, Jim lying there, Dave and Sal next to him, and the fat oak standing like a monument.

But on this commemorative night something different appeared in the dream. Above the wreckage Dave noticed —and they must have been there all along —three tombstones that read like a roll call: “Jim Nekro: He wanted to live ...Sal Nekro: He wanted to live... Dave Nekro: he wanted to live.” Dave thought, in his dream, that he ought to start screaming, but he found he had neither energy nor will.

When it was daylight, both Dave and Sal continued to sleep. Finally, several hours after dawn, Dave was the first to stir. His eyes opened, fluttered, closed. He raised an arm up to his forehead, brushing against empty beer cans beside him, and he groaned. His eyes opened again and he saw oak leaves and blue sky. As if these conscious senses had rung an effective alarm he sat up and reached over to shake his brother.

“Sal. Hey, wake up, we’re in deep shit.”

Sal grunted, rolled over with his face to the ground, and covered his ears and head with both arms. Dave shook him harder.

“Come on. We were supposed to go see Jim this morning.”

“No.”

“Sal, we never made it home. Mom’s probably just now telling Dad how our beds haven’t been slept in. We’re going to get it big this time.”

Sal rolled over again, uncovered his head and opened his eyes halfway. “Dave, will you please cool it?” he said. “My head hurts and yours ought to, too.”

“But Sal...”

“Yeah, okay.” He started to pick himself up slowly; it was clear that he was in no hurry. Dave tried another tactic.

“Sal, Mom wanted us all dressed up and at the graveyard this morning. She’d probably be crying as it is, and here we are making it worse.”

“All right, all right. Let’s go.”

They stumbled over to their car and got in. Sal started the engine up and began driving straight to the graveyard. They would not have time to go home, he said. Dave agreed, but he was convinced that one place or another their father was going to kill them and their mother was going to cry.

For the better part of the drive they were silent. Dave finally spoke.

“Hey Sal, do you remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Last night. Our pact.”

Sal paused, thought, and said, “Yeah. We were going to live forever, right?”

Dave looked at him, didn’t answer. Sal thought, remembered more clearly. “We were talking about our epitaphs.” Dave nodded, and they continued the trip quietly.

The graveyard was a large estate on the edge of town. It smelled of drying lawn and withered flowers. A scattering of trees gave character to the rows of marble and granite, and the green leaves balanced the yellowing of the late August grass.

The family was already at the graveyard, standing in front of the family plot. Their mother wore a summer dress with a big floppy hat. Their father had on one of the same sport jackets he wore every Sunday. Their little sister Susan was dressed up like her mother but without the hat. She stood between mother and father, who each had an arm around her. She looked like an only child, sure to be held tightly in the years to come.

The three were looking down at Jim’s grave marker now. “James Allen Nekro,” it said, giving his life span of twenty one years. “Rest in peace” was inscribed below it. “I am the resurrection. Even though a man dies, yet shall he live.”

Sal and Dave had stopped their car a hundred yards away and were standing beside it, inconspicuously watching the family’s frozen pose. For several minutes the brothers stood frozen themselves, not daring to approach. They smelled of beer and their clothes were dirty and ruffled, and their stance, up to that point, had a sway from the night before. But now they did not move.

Sal finally said, “Dave, let’s not go.” Dave nodded, and they quietly got back into their car, opening and closing the doors without giving themselves away.

“Are we going home then?”

“No. We’ll go back later, when they’re asleep.”

“What about Jim? His gravestone, we were going to see what it said,”

“We’ll have to come back after they’re gone.”

And they left the graveyard and drove off as quietly as ghosts, back to the family tree where they decided to kill some time.

Parul Goes to India

June 7 - June 20

          Dicta-poem

          You can write about

          a despondent woman wanting

          to give up on life. But

          leave out the names.

          Tell them about her

          problems, her woes... 

          Tell them how she 

          wasted a whole day just 

          crying her eyes out 

          apparently for no reason 

          at all. And then the next 

          morning she started 

          panicking because she 

          had to study for her finals 

          You’re not really 

          writing this, are you? 

          ...now I’m afraid to speak.

June 7

School’s out, tests are done. I’ve got a week before summer school, time to read one or two Hemingways and start kicking around few story ideas of my own. Meanwhile, Parul leaves for India on Saturday, for six weeks. I’m sure I’ll miss her, but right now I feel like it hasn’t hit me —like I’m gonna miss her bad about the third or fourth week in. Things have been going good for us. Not perfect, but that in itself says something. We know each other pretty well, and still we love each other —can’t explain it, but it’s true. And we’re talking more frankly about “the inevitable” lately —it depends on my meeting her folks and her being baptized, but Parul called these “technicalities.” I laughed, and agreed. God will be with us, one way or the other. I do hope we will face our future thoughtfully —but for now I hope she enjoys India!

June 8

It started to hit today, and she’s not even gone. This is love: dependence, longing. I am going to miss Parul. I know she’ll be back and I know this trip is what she wanted for a long time, but I’m still wishing —very selfishly —that she could be staying here with me or that I could go there with her. Someday. Thank you God for Parul, for love. And she’s bringing a bible with her —inspire her, God, to read it and read it.

The family went to Grandma’s this weekend. I think of Don now God, and I pray that this trip will be refreshing for him and not tiring. I think of Josh, too, and I thank you Lord for the “refreshment” you’ve already given him. Keep it up, Lord, for Josh’s sake, and —thinking selfishly again —for the sake of us who want him to keep on being him, as a Josh-style support and witness to your presence. God, I pray the same for Don. I don’t appreciate the “Don style” sometimes, but your presence and support works though him just as much. The evidence, again, is in the people around him. Help me, Lord, be one of those people.

June 9

Parul is on her way to India now. We had a perfect goodbye, which makes me feel good now, but there were several goodbyes before the final one, and I’m afraid that in the time before the last time I may have said things wrong. Love should make that never matter, shouldn’t it? Or is it “always matter”?

Anyway, this morning Parul dropped by at 9:00, said “I have until 11:00 —and I want to go shopping.” I am not a good shopper, especially on a tight schedule, and more especially when I really wanted those two hours alone with her. So I rushed her and grew impatient with her, and as a result we did get at least half an hour of privacy. This was our first goodbye. We made love, and it was good. We said goodbye, sweetly, and I thought the six weeks had begun.

But what I had rushed her on, buying a jacket without letting her try it on, back-fired. Three hours later, she called from the airport to say it was too small and I would need to arrange with her cousin to have it exchanged. It was an awkward call, and in my clumsiness I had forgotten to say I was sorry (another never/always paradox of love?). And I hung up. I had said I loved her again, but I felt depressed. Her 5:30 flight time came and went with no last-minute goodbye. 

Then at 8:30, a late call from O’Hare: her original flight was cancelled, and she was just about to get on the next flight over. So here was the goodbye call. And it was very gushy. All things got said this time, and “I love you” was said a couple more times, by both sides, for good measure.

Parul is on her way to India now, and true love makes the world much smaller and these six weeks more bearable. Thank you God, for second chances.

June 11

It’s been a very productive, purposefully busy day. I washed my car inside and out. I walked, brushed and moussed the dog and cleaned up his area. I washed dishes and cleaned the house a little. I looked at my bible study lesson. I did a load of laundry. I read 100 pages of A Farewell to Arms. I played piano for five minutes. I watched two movies. I ate too much. I may get a lot done in the next six weeks, but I may also gain weight. One way or another, it’s gonna be a dragged out stretch of time. School starts next week, though —that should help. 

But then again... God, I am an anxious person. I have been fretting lately, trying to write something, some semblance of a short story. I’m not a natural, though, God, and I need your help. But I think I know what you’re saying now, that I shouldn’t put all my hopes in one bucket, that I shouldn’t be a slave to this pen. Okay, God. But if you want something else for me, the way I’ve been you’re going to have to shout it in my ear and take me by the hand.

God, I want to write. And yes, God, I want to write for your glory. I want it to be mainstream, but I’d like to show that it can be both: theological and popular, of reason and of faith. And now you’re saying that I’m too specific, too narrow, too demanding. Yes, God, I know —and that’s why I’m so anxious and frustrated, isn’t it? Lord God help me to put it all in your hands. Help me to know that you know what’s best, not me. Help me to hear myself talking —no that’s not it, is it? Help me to hear you talking to me.

And God bless Parul in India. Let me trust you with her, too, so that I don’t faithlessly worry or selfishly yearn. Let me know that you know what’s best for her too, and that you direct what’s best for us all. And in that direction, remind us to acknowledge you. Motivate Parul to open the bible she’s brought with her, and let me open the one I have here... Thank you God. Amen.

June 12

Another busy-productive day: I finished A Farewell to Arms. I took an hour and a half hike, through the forest preserve. I ate conscientiously today, not completely disciplined but with an improved restraint. And I played around with a short story I’ve been working on. This one might pan out —become complete, that is, if not publicly palatable. It is another story about death —but it isn’t like that. The promise of the story is explicitly about life and “wanting to live,” but it revolves around a discussion about gravestone epitaphs. 

On the top of my mind, but not yet written it into the story, is this: “I am the resurrection... the way, the truth and the life.” My characters want life —I now have to show them that life, as the verse runs in my mind, without sounding preachy or sermonesque.

This may be a response to the attitudes of Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms. I can’t pin his death perception down in one sentence, but there is not any thought of the life of the resurrection. You live, you die in his book. And in my book, too, you live, you die, but I want to show something else. I want to show the necessary. I aspire higher than Hemingway, that means.

But thank you for today, God. Bless Joshua, Daniel, Annie, Don, Mom. Bless all my relatives and friends and acquaintances. God bless the people I don’t know and even the people I know and hate. And maybe by praying this I can reach beyond whatever clique circle of friends I might have, Lord. 

Maybe by writing this story I can be a better Christian. 

I can be a servant through my pen, Lord, if it is your will. And why wouldn’t it be?

But why do I feel like I’m begging? Free association will be my downfall.

“Can be” is still not “is.” ...But thank you God. Amen.

June 14

Ideas, germs abound; sometimes it seems like I could write all day long. I’m sure I’ve picked the proper direction at such sometimes; I’m positive then that I am a writer. But these germs and ideas are all very much in their infant stages. I’m learning that I’ve got a lot to learn. Things don’t just flow from head to lead. The sparks fizzle more than they catch, and even when they seem to catch there are countless steps to the blazing success I dream of, countless steps past the few combusted embers I’ve managed to produce. I do like the sparks, though, while they sparkle and catch and smoke; even at these minor stages of combustion, I like what can be done with words, and I have to stop and appreciate what God allows me.

I’ve finished a rough draft of the story I had alluded to. It’s not great, and really it’s not very good, but I have a certain pride, a certain good feeling that I will never apologize for, because the spark has caught and filled five pages, 1,200 words. If it’s kind of an ambiguous fire, or a somewhat lifeless fire (and my story is all of these, I will be told), I will still have my good feeling and I will still thank God, because there is a flame where once was only a spark, and there was a spark where once was nothing at all.

That “certain pride,” by the way, is not pride about what I have personally done. Maybe I don’t even have to say this, but I used the word... maybe the better word is fascination, about what I can do. Yes. God, thank you.

I will still work to improve the current story, because there is ambiguity and lifelessness and pointlessness and a lack of depth. Maybe I’ll work at it and never get it right, but that’s all right, because I’ve got other ideas after this one.... 

Sometimes it seems like I could write all day long —but thank you God, sometimes and always.

June 15

And then some days I don’t feel like writing at all.

June 16

Yesterday. Last night specifically. With an attitude not born of despondency, just low energy.

I’ve been keeping myself very busy. For the last five days I’ve walked six miles a day at an hour and a half clip. I’ve lost five pounds this week. I’ve read fifty pages of Hemingway daily, almost through The Sun Also Rises. I’m also going to work and keeping my room and my car clean. Yesterday I took care of a few phone calls Parul wanted me to make, to housing, to finance, to Zaba.

I’m still waiting for Parul’s letter so I can have an address to write back to her. It takes time, though, even as I have a feeling time is flying for Parul. I will understand if she gets caught up in the excitement of her first big adventure. Meanwhile, I’m working today, Saturday, and I have to go, right now!

June 17

Continually busy. It’s becoming a need. I finished reading The Sun Also Rises. I’m keeping to my walking schedule and today, having time off from work and school, I watched three movies and wrote a short story. And I went to church in the morning. At least one of the movies and part of the book made me miss Parul. I still haven’t heard from her.

School starts tomorrow, and work continues. I will keep busy and get busier. And yet —I’m a walking paradox —I’ve got the anticipatory Monday blahs. I’d rather not go to work or to school, I don’t want to, but I guess I have to. Right now, I guess I’m just tired. I had been feeling good, no need to be depressed, but I hope tiredness doesn’t bring about another swing.

There is something else, though. This week Josh will be in the hospital —his last chemo! —and Friday Don will get his chemo. Next week is sure to be a downer. God take it out of me, let me think and pray for Josh and Don and Parul.

June 20

School has started. This summer looks like it is going to be a relatively light load. We have two stories to write and I’ve already submitted the first, something I’d written three months ago. For the second story, I’m kicking at a dozen embers, but so far nothing has combusted.

Josh’s low white blood count has pushed his last chemo treatment out one week. Don still goes in Friday for a one night dosage.

I haven’t hear from Parul yet. It’s been ten days. I’m worried —not for her, I think she’s all right, I’m just not sure about myself. The sun also rises, though, and we will be together in four and a half weeks.

 ⇋

Biding Time

Scene 1: The clock, twelve feet up a brown brick wall, says it is five minutes after one, almost exactly. The second hand is only two ticks away from the twelve. One tick. Now it is exactly five minutes after one.

Sojan had said one o’clock. I was to meet her in front of the L section in the library. She would recognize me, she said, but I would have to be sure to be there. You will recognize me? I asked. She said yes, she remembered me from two years ago when I had dated her cousin once. I couldn’t remember her cousin. No matter.

“You’ll be carrying the jacket,” I said. “I’ll recognize you.”

“Yes,” she said. “One o’clock.”

I hung up the phone and rummaged around for some scratch paper and then a pen. Her name was Sojan; we would meet on Monday at one sharp.

Now it is Monday and it is twelve minutes after one. I don’t even know this person. She is the cousin of someone I once dated, someone named —I don’t remember. Her name is Sojan and I had been at her house last week. I don’t remember that either. It was Friday night and I had been pretty wrecked.

“What did we do there?” I asked my friends.

“We had a good time. You slept.”

“How long?”

“Three hours maybe. You passed out almost as soon as we got there. We had to carry you to the car.”

Three hours and I didn’t even open my eyes. I don’t remember anything.

Now it is seventeen minutes after the hour. I need a smoke. The second hand moves very slowly and I start to wonder. “What time is it?” I ask someone nearby. He looks at his wrist. “A quarter after,” he whispers. According to his watch, then, the clock is right. More or less. 

The jacket is bright red. There’s no way I’ll miss her. She said the wallet was still in the pocket.

“I dated your cousin?”

“Yes, you went to a movie.”

“And you were there?”

“No. You passed me on the street, and my cousin introduced you to me.”

“And you remember that?”

“Sure.”

She said the name of the girl, her cousin, my date two years back, and I did not recognize it, and now I’ve forgotten it again. Maybe she thinks I’m someone else.

“No, I will recognize you from the other night, too,” she said.

“Right. Last Friday. I’ll see you at one.”

It is now one twenty five. I need the jacket. I need the wallet. They aren’t mine, but I must have them, to return them to the person I got them from. It’s a long story.

Her name is Sojan. I had to ask her to repeat it, and I still wasn’t sure, so I asked her to spell it. S-O-J-A-N. She already knew my name. Sojan. She is Oriental, and her cousin is someone I had once dated, someone whose name slips my mind. I vaguely remember the date now. I have not dated very many Oriental girls.

1:33. Twenty seven minutes to one. Or twenty nine, by that man’s watch. We did not specify AM or PM, but of course the library isn’t open in the middle of the night. I’m pretty sure we said Monday. I should have written it down. I wonder if we had actually agreed on the L section.

“Excuse me,” I say. “Have you seen someone... I’m looking for... She’s Asian. She’s carrying a red jacket... Her name is Sojan.”

It’s a long story, that jacket. It wasn’t mine, but I had one just like it. I mixed it up with someone else’s somewhere, and someone else went home with mine. By the time we figured it all out I didn’t have the jacket anymore because I had left it at someone’s house. Sojan’s house. The other guy stopped by with mine and I didn’t have his. He threw my jacket back at me —it wasn’t worth much, he said —but he wouldn’t give me my wallet back because he thought I was lying. I don’t remember what he said his jacket was worth, but it was quite a bit more than mine. And it had his wallet in it.

It’s 1:39. Almost forty minutes. She must have forgotten. We did say this Monday, and I’m sure I would have seen her. Sojan. Oriental. I haven’t dated many Oriental girls. None since —I can’t remember the name. It must have been a short romance. She must have jilted me. Sojan, where are you? Sojan. So, John. So, John, you may never get your wallet back.

I remember the guy’s jacket, it was just like mine. Very red. Maybe it was worth more than mine, but anyway it had this guy’s wallet in it, and I have to get it back to him.

He didn’t believe me, but he said he would wait until after I talked to my friends. As a matter of courtesy.

Forty four minutes after one. Sixteen minutes before two. I have been here almost forty five minutes. The second hand sweeps along so slowly when you watch it. There, now it is 1:45. So slowly, and yet when you look away and come right back, five or six minutes have gone by.

Maybe she’s waiting for me somewhere else. Sitting in the periodical section or pacing the lobby, tapping her fingers and watching some other clock tick slowly past the meeting time. She would have given up by now.

Sojan, Sojan, Sojan. I don’t know what she looks like.

She sounded very patient on the phone. I will give her until two, because I am sure we said the L section. L for lobby? But I won’t move until two. I want to go check the lobby, maybe take a quick tour of the rest of the library, but surely we’ll miss each other that way. She’ll get to the L section and I won’t be here, I’ll be in the periodicals maybe and she’ll give up and go home. So I’ll wait here, at least until two.

1:55. She’s stood me up. Sojan —I don’t remember her last name. I don’t know her phone number either, so I’ll have to wait until she calls me again. Or maybe my friends can take me back to her house. She didn’t want me to meet her there for some reason, but she hasn’t shown up here. It’s 1:56. I’m tired of watching the clock. I’m going home.

“John!”

“Sojan?”

“Yes. I have your jacket. Where were you?”

“I... I was right here.”

“But I’ve been waiting for you in the lobby, like we said, 1:00pm.”

“Uh, sure.”

“Don’t you remember?”

“Yes —I mean —I guess I remembered it wrong.”

“Well, anyway, here’s the jacket.”

“How long were you here?”

“An hour. I’m surprised you didn’t pass me on the way in.”

“Yes. Well, thank you Sojan. Thanks for waiting.”

“No problem. See you again maybe,”

“Yeah. Maybe sometime.”

It is a minute after two.

Every Thought Is a Prayer

June 1 - June 5, 1990

June 1

     God, when the job at hand is more than I can handle,

     God, when the pressure weighs heavy upon me,

     God, when things are out of my hands,

          when I am helpless, lost and looking for answers,

     God, when I’ve buried my head in the sand,

          sulked in my sorrows and wondered aloud

          in a roomful of sufferers, selfishly cried “Why me?”

     God, when I don’t know the answers,

     God, when I think I need to know

          as a matter of survival, life and death,

     God, the power and the glory

          and the answer, God, is yours.

June 2

     Parul is not happy with her mother today.  They don’t want her going to India —because of money, because of safety, some other time maybe —and she’s disappointed.  She threw some shoes at her mother and walked out of the house, eleven miles to 520 Stewart.  

     She got rained on several times along the way.  

     She’s never been anywhere, she says, and now, forget it, she doesn’t want to go to India.  “One day we’ll go together,” I said, and she said, “No, I don’t want to go.”  

    I brought her to her uncle’s house.  She’s not sure what will happen next.  She’s even having second thoughts about medical school.  

     “This too...” I said, but she wasn’t ready to believe me.  

     Tomorrow, God, I pray for Parul.

⇋

     “I talk to God a lot.  In the shower, in the car.  Some people might call it prayer, but I like to think of it as a kind of thought process, a figuring out.”

     “Does he hear you?”

     “God?  Sure.  God hears us whether we’re talking to him or not.”

     “Hey, Joe, come on, what makes you think God would take the time to listen to you?

     “I don’t know, Jim.  I don’t know why.  I just know he does.”

     “How do you know?”

     “He answers.”

June 3

     Faith: such that I long for, a faith of such power to give me the strength to recognize my weakness, to repulse all illusions of my own credits, to relinquish my whole self —faith to say no more me, just God.  Faith, trust, that I could walk within every shadow of darkness, that I could believe that light awaits me, that darkness will be defeated.  

     God, you lay it all out for us.  You give us a one word direction and it ought to be easy.  But I... the self gets in the way, and yet you have given us the self, too, God; you leave us all sorts of mysteries and then you give us this mind, that wants so much to know.

    Thank you God, for the promises you have given Josh today and for the strength you have given to Don; for the smile you have given to Parul today and for the grace you have given her family.  Thank you God for everyone close to me —Annie, Mom, Dan —and thank you too for everyday people, most of whose names I do not know, but thank you God for their patience —your patience —and acceptance of a man with measly faith.  I am afraid to be weak, God, and I am afraid of relinquishing myself, even to my maker, but thank you God for your ears and your hand and your presence.   Thank you for your strength and your smile and your grace, your light and your direction. 

     P.S., just one thing more:  God bless my studies and my tests this week.  I need you.

June 4

     The thought occurred to me that things will never be the same.  

     This wasn’t a pessimistic thought, either.  Josh has realistic hope of a lasting remission.  Don went to work today; he’s feeling much stronger and it makes me consider that with the extent of last week’s pain for him followed by this week’s recovery, the chemo might really be doing what we want it to do.  

    So I thought: what if Don’s tumor disappeared and Josh’s remission were complete?  Things wouldn’t be the same; they would be better for the ways we would —and will! —be stronger: in spirits, in confidence, in faith.  There is, of course, a “best case” scenario, to believe that Josh and Don will live forever.  And why not?  By faith, God promises that they will!  

      For now, however, I must continue to pray.

June 5

      How about this:

     Every thought is a prayer to God, and every prayer has an answer within it.  God is with us all the time, and when we remember this and believe this, his spirit responds in us and directs us.   God directs us as long as we acknowledge his presence (Proverbs 3:6), but when we forget this, where are our thoughts, our prayers?  Even then, God is still with us, waiting for us to call on him again.

     Every thought is a prayer, how about that?  But every day —isn’t it a shame? —we spend so much time being thoughtless.  And still God is with us, waiting for us to come to our senses, to think, to pray.

     God is more than an abstract thought, however.  The proof is not, and cannot be, my own, but it is this: our thoughts do not sustain themselves.  One private thought cannot sustain another, yet there is an answer, always, like the voice that came to Moses and said “I am.”  God is an answer.  Yahweh is the answer to our prayers.  God is not a thought; God is “I am,” the answer.

     But what about the so-called great thinkers of the world, those who say they do not pray because “there is no God”?  God is still the answer, waiting for the question to be asked, the prayer to be prayed, the thought to occur (There are thoughts that have not yet occurred, even to the greatest thinkers).  Every thought is a prayer, I said. 

     So what about the thought that God does not exist (and who has never cried, “Where are you, God?”)?  Isn’t this simply thinking without direction, aimlessly pondering, oblivious meditation?  Thoughtlessness, really.  And still God waits with an answer.  Is there a God?  Yes, Yahweh say, I am.

 ⇋

          God, with apologies*

                    God

                    adj.

          I AM:    considered apart

                    from concrete

                    existence

                    or

          (AM I)   a specification

                    thereof.

          I AM:    theoretical;

                    not applied

                    or

          (AM I)   capable of being

                    put into effect.

          I AM:    thought of

                    or

          (AM I)   stated without 

                    reference

                    to a specific

                    instance.

          I AM:    Fine Arts. with

                    nonobjective

                    design, form

                    or

          (AM I)   content.

          * with apologies to Concise American Heritage Dictionary, 1980.