The Christian

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He did not attend the committal, and I’ve never asked him if he has visited her grave, but I’m sure he has.  I just don’t think he wanted to be around all those people, knowing that among them he was being judged.

I went to see him some time afterward, and it was another stiff winter day.  He was out back chopping wood for the fireplace, and he was down to a flannel rolled up past his elbows.  He still looked thicker than the wood he was chopping, and I watched those arms work as he went through a chord like it was nothing.

I had to know, so I asked.  “Dad, what happened to you during that accident?”

“I died,” is what he said.

“That’s not what I meant.”

He swung the axe and the wood split, and he let go of the axe, stuck in the stump.  He turned to me and when he breathed out, it clouded the air between us.  His eyes were the color of the sea I’d only seen in pictures.

“I saw no God,” my father said.  “And I thought maybe I’d gone to hell.  So I went through everything — I shuffled through my life and all the wrongs I had done — what I thought were wrongs.  But it just didn’t stack up.  I had not committed a significant number of sins to deserve that.  I had committed them — I was not, and never shall be, a man free of sin.”

“Neither am I.”

“I’m not asking if you are.  What I’m saying is, what had I done to deserve that?  And the answer was that I didn’t deserve that.”

“That wouldn’t be up to you.”

“I’m saying there wasn’t enough,” he said, raising his voice to a degree that I could hear it coming back to me from the side of the house.

We were silent then for a while, with the air foggy between us.

“But that’s not what it was.  I wasn’t in hell.  And I certainly wasn’t in heaven.  And then I realized that was because there was no heaven or hell, and by deduction, no God, and therefore, it was a waste of my time going to church and praying and tithing when there’s all this work to be done.”

“Isn’t that subjective?” I asked him.  “After all, you were brought back to life.  Maybe your soul hadn’t left your body yet.”

“Yes,” my father said.  “And if I’m wrong, then I’ll pay the price.”

“If you’re wrong, then you’re still a good man.”

“Even for the wrong I’ve done?” he asked.  “Even for turning my brother away from God after his death, and trying to do the same to your mother?”

“God is forgiving,” I said, and that was all I had to say, and I left.

Now, I trust in God even if the Bible is just a story, as they say.  I trust in God that he’s there, and that he’ll judge me at the gates when I get there, and that my father will be waiting for me on the other side.  Because God is forgiving of his children.  That’s His job.  And my father, no matter what he believes, it was the accident that made him think it.  The man has trouble tying his own shoes sometimes — how is he supposed to know if there’s a God or not?  But you never know.

My family — we pray before our meals.  All of us.

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