Chapter 8, Part 2
“I don’t need your pity.”
“I don’t have to pity you. You self-centered
old ass!”
Grandpa clenched his teeth. “Don’t you ever
use profanity in this house. If your mother were alive...”
“I don’t have to pity you. You’ve got enough
for the whole family. You’ve locked yourself up in this big house of self-pity
and now you’re drawing the curtains, bolting the shutters and pushing everyone
who ever loved you...”
“Leave me alone!”
“Is that all you see? Yourself? Can’t you
know I’m hurting, too? Part of me died that day, too, you know. A big part. She
was your wife for thirty six years. But she was my mother all my life.”
“She wasn’t my wife. She was my life!”
Grandpa’s anger melted to a whisper. “Can’t you know how much I hate myself? I
killed her.”
“You didn’t kill her.”
“I killed her. I told her it was all in her
head. I told her we couldn’t afford all that running back and forth to those
expensive doctors in Rochester
“You didn’t kill her, dad! You didn’t. I
didn’t. God didn’t take her so he’d have another alto in the choir. The disease
killed her. If you want to be mad at anything, be mad at that. Strike out at
that.” She reached to take his hand.
“Leave me alone.” He pulled quickly back,
unable to be touched.
“Don’t push away the only ones who can help
you... who love you. Your family. Your friends. Don’t push God...”
The word God snapped him back from pity to
anger. The rage almost caught in his throat. “God? Where was this God of ours
when your mother lay breathing her last? 84 lbs. - 84 lbs.!”
“I don’t know, but...”
He snatched Grandma’s worn Bible from the
table and flung it across the room. “...wracked by such pain that the morphine
didn’t even phase her.”
“I’ve asked the same question!”
“Where was this God when my prayers were a
river of tears, and not one of them was answered?”
“I don’t know!”
“Where was this Christ if he was supposed to
love her? Where?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know. Maybe he was
hanging on a cross with a broken heart preparing to buy her eternity! You
forgiveness. Me peace. Maybe God was there. That’s what you always taught me.
Maybe God was holding us as we held each other. Maybe God was reaching to her,
beckoning her from her pain to that perfect peace she always taught me to pray
for! That’s what you believed all your life. You were the one who taught this
hope to me! Dad! Don’t you believe it anymore? Is it all a lie? Some cruel joke
to make the tragedy, the emptiness of death more palatable? Is that what
Christmas is? Is that what your faith is? A joke? Wishful thinking? Or is hope
real? You do still have hope, don’t you, Daddy? Daddy?” He couldn’t answer.
“Then you’re right,” she concluded. “You have nothing to live for. You might as
well be dead.”
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