Love's Legacy

On the way home from Cairo (pronounced kay-roe) on Saturday we (my Primitive Baptist pastor friend Chris and I) stopped to visit with Chris' relatives Tom and Joyce in Moultrie. It is a heartbreaking story. Tom’s most recent checkup initially found that he was free of disease with no cancer cells. They were on their way home after receiving the good news when the cell phone rang. It was the hospital and Tom’s doctor wanted him to return to the hospital immediately. It was very bad news. Contrary to what they initially believed the cancer was not dead. Monday morning Tom went back into the hospital to begin an even more rigorous round of chemotherapy and to determine if he would be a good candidate for a bone marrow transplant.

Tom and Joyce see the end of the road, they know how this will most likely end. But it was not the specter of death sitting quietly in the room that moved me, it was their manners, their genuine-ness and the love that filled them both. I had just met them but I was treated as family. My hyper-vigilance set off no alarm bells (which is rare indeed) so I knew I could trust them. We went to them to offer assistance and prayer but we were the ones who were comforted. In the midst of what some days must be a nightmare they were genuinely concerned about us, about making us comfortable. It was not an act, no polite show of manners, it was genuine concern. I am in awe of such courage.

The terrible irony is that the cancer radiation treatment Tom had twenty-five years ago probably planted the seeds of this cancer. Tom injured his back and somehow it seemed to trigger the malignancy laying dormant in his cells.

Many times in our culture there is great emphasis put on how we die. Was it an honorable death? And I hope that when the day comes I will face my own death without flinching. But I now realize that the real test is how we live. What legacy are we leaving behind? Did we love our enemies? Did we love and honor our spouse? Did we raise our children? Do we feed the poor and clothe the naked?

While I spent only an hour with Tom and Joyce I have rarely spent an hour better. In their own time of need they offered love/comfort to a stranger. And I suspect I am not the first. Theirs is a legacy of love, of kindness, of sincerity. Before we left we stood in a circle and held hands while Chris prayed for healing, for endurance, for grace. Holding Joyce’s hand for that brief moment was like holding the hand of my mother.

Icarus Too Young

Icarus my son in a box inside a box lowered slowly into a hole
neatly trimmed. His broken body once supple now cold,
no blood, no warmth, no hope.

Too young, too young he soared from my hand
which shaped the wings of his escape. A man
he was not ready when the push became shove.

Now trapped in my mind’s labyrinth

the great artificer cannot free himself.

The Soul's Lament

Sadly, this posting is not a work of fiction.
The staccato dirge of gunfire shattered the serenity of a quiet neighborhood early Monday morning as a husband and wife were shot and killed in their own home. On the 911 tape you can hear the woman screaming. Then, just before the last gunshot rang out you can hear her say, “But I still love you.” The killer then got on the line and very calmly told the dispatcher that he had just killed his parents. He told the dispatcher to make sure the responding deputies knew that he would be unarmed and waiting for them in the front yard.

This was no crime of passion, no uncontrolled fury, no blind rage. The 22-year-old son stole the murder weapon from the home of a friend the day before the killing and then bought ammunition for the .357 six-shot revolver.

Ironically the parents had just hours before filed a missing persons report on their son’s behalf. It seems they knew he had the gun. Perhaps they worried he might use it for suicide. Instead he committed patricide and matricide. Murdered in the place where they should be the safest. Dead in their home in a quiet affluent neighborhood on the marsh with a view of the river.

What could possibly explain how a son could plan and carry out the execution of his parents? Perhaps nothing. Unfortunately such crimes are not all that uncommon and this generation certainly has no monopoly on horrendous crimes and homicidal killers. It would appear as if murder is part of who we are. Cain, meet Abel.

Some hold that owning weapons is our inalienable right, that bearing arms is one of the pillars upon which our nation rests. In fact I was speaking just last week with a friend (born and raised on France) about weapons in our society. He said this aspect of American culture id difficult for him to grasp. Our is a culture of violent video games and violent television, a culture rich with killing both real and imagined. A society thoroughly imbued with the cult of the gun. A society where a young man can shoot and kill his loving and supportive parents in cold blood then calmly and with little emotion admit to the deed.

The victims’ married daughter (the killer’s sibling) lives directly across the street from her parents’ home and wanted to see them before they were removed from the scene. As the second body bag was loaded in the hearse she began wailing, crying “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.” It still brings me to tears just thinking about it. I have heard that cry before but it has always been the cry of a parent losing a child. It is the sound of anguish, of grief unbearable, the soul’s lament. Pray you never hear it.