“Mom, we should go. Aunt Jackie is waiting on us.”
She raised her head but didn’t look at me. Acknowledging my presence, but not hearing my words.
“Mom...” I called to her slightly louder.
Putting her hands together, she closed then quickly opened her eyes. She looked to be thinking deeply about something. Slowly she raised her head and looked at me. I could see the devastation in her eyes.
“Timothy, when was the last time you were here?” She asked.
I did not want to talk about church. I turned away from her frustrated and walked back toward the pulpit. I knew she was thinking about how we all came here as a family. Reminiscing on the time we all had together. Throwing my hands in the air I realized the best thing to do was to walk down the road she was trying to guide me to.
“A while…what does it matter?”
“Your father missed having you come with us to church. We all missed having you. I knew there were reasons; some better than others as to why you didn’t attend much, but what was it that made you stop going altogether?”
Yes, she did know about how I felt. The older I got the more willing I was to let them know exactly how I felt.
“I just couldn’t keep coming here any longer. How could I sit here and listen to something I didn’t believe?”
I often wondered which was better. To just be honest with one’s self and accept the decisions you make or live in ignorance and false bliss. Maybe in the past I tried to deny what I knew was the truth for the sake of mine own or someone else’s feelings, but I soon realized it just wasn’t worth it.
“What caused you to stop believing? Was it Jonathan?”
“No, Jonathan had nothing to do with it. I discovered on my own long before I found out the real reason Jonathan never came to church with us.”
It was true in a sense. I did end up returning to church when I was fifteen and by then Jonathan had told me everything about his parent’s beliefs and that he agreed with them. I thought that there was something there I missed or did not fully understand. With the starting of high school and feeling myself being drawn further and further away from people, they presented a sense of belonging, but my initial thoughts and feelings were correct, it was nothing but an illusion.
“Then what was it, Timothy? Something must have happened to cause you to turn away from you faith.”
“My faith…? What exactly should I have faith in? A God who claims he is our father, but looks down on us and judges us? Oh wait, I forgot, he loves every single one of his children. So tell me this... if you could save your children from suffering and death, wouldn’t you?”
It was more than that, much more. My mother could see that as well. Her hands held the hymn book tightly as if it was giving her strength.
“God has a plan for everyone. Neither the path nor the reason is always clear. The gift of life cannot be given without death being attached. Something long before your father's death caused you to no longer believe in his plan.”
“His plan…? So it was God's plan for dad to be killed by a drunk driver, to cause our family to suffer? That doesn't sound like a plan to me, it sounds like the shit life feeds us sometimes. Don't you get it? There is no God, there’s just us! We have to take care of each other and do whatever we can to survive. Yes, I figured that out a long time ago and it rings true especially now.”
I could not understand why my mother was discussing all that with me right after the funeral. All I could assume was that she needed to, to be in her church holding on to her faith even though it had failed her. What did she want me to understand, did she think her words even on that day would have changed anything. With all I said she just looked at me, somber, taking it all in.
“I’ve heard Jonathan say similar.”
“This isn’t about him!” I yelled.
While I knew I was getting upset I did not realize how much so until that moment. My hands hurt. Looking down I did not notice I had balled my hands into a fist so tight that my nails dug into the skin causing it to bleed. Closing my eyes I tried to calm myself, taking a deep breath I sat down on the steps leading up to the stage.
My mother, even on the day we buried my father, her husband, was still worried about my well-being, my feelings. She knew what had happened between Jonathan and I, even in grief and all the pain she was in, she was willing to listen.
Again she was right, Jonathan had said similar when his mother died of a heart attack at age thirty- six. The doctors gave an explanation, but it was one of the nurses who set him off. I was there when she told him that his mother was in heaven and it was God’s plan to call her home. The look on his face, I thought he would kill her where she stood.
Where my mother was wrong was that any of my feelings about religion were brought on by my relationship with Jonathan. She knew how his parent’s felt long before I did.
“I didn't have to talk to Jonathan to realize the truth. You both knew how he felt and that's why he never came with us to church. I remember dad saying he would tell me the truth one day. He didn't. Jonathan told me himself. I can understand that telling an eight year-old that stuff would just confuse me. You could have told me when I was older, but you didn't. What were you afraid of or did it just slip your mind?”
She didn’t have anything to say. I was not finished. Perhaps it was the wrong time to tell her the truth, but as I said I did not believe in keeping it in any longer. I stood and looked out over the auditorium, there was one last piece to the story and I wanted my mother to know it.
“You want to know what did it. It wasn't the word of God, but the actions of those who call themselves his children. They drive up here in their luxury cars and gossip outside about how smart their child is or who slept with whom. Then they walk in here drop a few dollars in the collection plate and sing a hymn and they believe all their sins are just washed away. I heard what these people do during the week. If God is as all knowing and powerful as they claim, do they really think he doesn't know how full of shit they are?
You guys brought me here to share in the love of God and for a time I felt it. When I stopped coming every week I gave you tons of excuses, but really, what I was trying to do is find out why I was going to church in the first place. You had your reason, but I didn't have mine. When I came back I thought I had a reason, a real purpose. I wanted to spread the word of God and learn as much as I could. I did everything I could to show I wanted to help others and when the chance came to go overseas with the youth group for missionary work they denied me.
They gave me a story about me not being ready, but I found out the truth. The youth organizer worked for a company that was a rival of dads. It was not about spreading the word of God. It was about petty competition and jealousy. I confronted the youth group leader and he told me that I wouldn't fit in with the group. I told him I thought God accepted anyone. He told me that God does, but he didn’t. I walked out and swore I would never come back. I told Jonathan about what happened and he understood fully. I didn't tell you or dad or even Ashley because you believed in all this so much I didn't want to take that away from you. Maybe that's why you never told me about Jonathan's family, you didn’t want to take away the faith of a child.”
That event was one of the last times that I tried to deny how I really felt inside. I wanted to pretend that moment did not change me forever but it did. After that I swore I would never allow myself to be drawn in to anything that deep anymore. They played off my emotions and my fear and used it against me and then told me that all their love for me was a lie.
My mother lowered her head, sliding the hymn book off of her lap she stood and walked toward me. I could see the sadness inside her unable to remain contained. Wrapping her arms around me she pulled me close and started to cry. I could feel her pain and it killed me.
“I’m sorry, Timothy. All I ever wanted was for us to be together, as a family.”
It was Ashley who told me later that my mother stopped going to Moo
dy church. She still believed in God, but that day it was her faith in man that was loss. All she wanted was peace and with everything that had happened there was serious doubt peace would ever be found.
“We still are, mom. We still are.”
Shattered Belief
The cold returned awaking me from my memory induced slumber. I could feel my mother’s presence fading from me, her warmth leaving my body. It was at that moment, I truly felt hollow. I climbed the few steps to the pulpit, my body felt drained. I stood behind the pulpit and laid my head against the leather-padded wood.
If this was the rapture, what crime did I commit that was so horrible that I would be deemed as evil and left behind? I was losing control. Tears streamed down my eyes. Below the top of the pulpit was a small compartment. Inside was a large leather bound bible, the one the pastor read from every Sunday sat inside. I pulled it out and placed it on top of the pulpit. I searched though its pages. I wanted to find one of the passages Miss Grant read to us that Sunday I walked out of class. I found what I was looking for and I began reading silently to myself then slowly building up to a whisper.
“For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
Shall we ever be with the Lord and where was my place I asked myself. If I were unworthy to descend to the heavens then there would be other’s left behind as well, where were they? I slammed the bible shut. I could feel the rage building up inside me again. What I have seen was not a world emptied of the good, but a world devoid of all life. Was that God’s plan? I looked up to the ceiling. I was giving validation to something I said I did not believe existed.
“Is that what this is? Your plan, did you take your children to heaven? What about me, am I not your child as well? Why was I left behind? Answer me!”
Emotional distress mixed with scored anger. I wanted to burn the church to the ground and curse God’s name. My eyes locked onto the bible, red by tears and anger. I grabbed it by its edges and ripped it from the pulpit throwing it to the ground.
“I don’t believe in that! Do you hear me? I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe in you!”
I was blinded by anger, screaming to no one. I pushed my weight against the pulpit; it tipped forward crashing down onto the stage and sliding to the floor. The sound echoed throughout the auditorium. I fell to my knees crying hysterically. I wanted it to end. I wished I had the courage to let go when I was on my balcony. I did not want to be alone any longer.
There on my hands and knees my mind slowly regained control. I forced my body upright and looked across the auditorium swearing to myself this would be the last time I would see this place. My situation was not an act of God, there was an answer and I had to be strong enough to find it on my own because nobody else was there to do it for me. I had the will to continue and I promised myself I would not stop until the real truth was found. I stood up from the crimson carpet and left the auditorium. I was content in the fact that even in the absence of faith I would persevere as I always had, on my own.
The Creeping Nightmares
When I was eight years-old my mother and father left Ashley and I with a babysitter, there was some event at McCormick place, no children were allowed and they just wanted some time to themselves. The sitter allowed me to stay up watching the cartoon channel. I was not use to staying up so late and fell asleep on the couch. I remembered waking up in the middle of the night in complete darkness. I was terrified and didn’t know where I was.
Crying out at the top of my lungs I screamed for mom and dad. They ran down the stairs to me in less than a minute, but to me it felt as if they were never coming and that I was alone. That started a chain of nightmares much different than anything I had dreamt about prior to then.
I opened the door to the church and stepped back out into the street, when I did it reminded me of those dreams. Startled by an unfamiliar noise I would sit up in bed. With my eyes still closed I would reach over and flip the light switch. Scared of the dark, I would open my eyes to find it was morning, but I also realized the lights did not work.
I would leave my room and would search the upstairs of the house, thoroughly checking the bathroom and then the baby’s room before opening the door to my parent’s bedroom. Finding no one upstairs I would make my way downstairs which lead to the laundry room and then into the kitchen. There were no sounds or smells in the house that would alert me to anyone’s presence; it was then that I would start to feel fear creep up into me.
A desperate need to run out of the house would come over me. I would rush toward the wooden screen door pushing it open with all my might. Outside it would still be daylight just as it was when I exited the church, but it was an eerie daylight as if the sun was being forced to shine and the light it would cast was dim, cold, and almost angry. That light brought me no comfort, a cloudless sky and my home and neighborhood just as it was in the waking world but devoid of all life.
There was no need for a monster to frighten me. The world created in my dreams by my sub consciousness was a terror stronger than any demon. No need to search, my mind understood its fate and my body would surrender. Falling to my knees I would close my eyes and cry until I would wake up. Back in my bedroom this time startled awake by my dreams my hand would shake reaching for the light switch because I knew if it did not turn on my nightmare had not yet ended.
What we leave behind
The overcast from earlier had disappeared. I wondered if the clouds had left me as well. With nothing inside the church but troublesome memories it was time to select another destination. I wanted to check on the fire that was burning toward Christine’s home. I turned back onto North Avenue before heading west toward Wells Street. Just before leaving, I turned back and looked toward my apartment.
My thoughts returned to my standing on the ledge of the balcony unable to jump from it. I wondered if I was unable to find any answers or reason for this world would I have the courage to return and release myself from it. If my imprisonment in this empty box was to teach me that a world of one was not a world to behold then I had learned my lesson, but I knew it was not that simple. Exploration of my memories was not just my mind struggling against insanity, but a clue to this awful mystery.
Unendingly pointless my eyes scanned each window I passed hoping that there was something I missed. I stopped at the intersection of North Avenue and Wells Street, the fire had spread quicker than I realized. Watching my neighborhood burn to the ground was just a prelude to what would eventually fall upon a world devoid of life.
An image appeared in my mind, it was from Ashley’s room. The letter jacket her boyfriend gave her. Lincoln Park High School, she chose that school because of him. My father was set to send her to the same school I went to but it was my mother who convinced him to change his mind. Reasons for her attendance there were not important, during orientation the staff gave a history of the school including the knowledge that a bomb shelter was built in its basement.
Secondary to a church a school specifically one built to house people in an emergency would be an obvious choice to find shelter. I headed west toward Halsted Street when I realized there was a hole in my investigations theory. If only the city was evacuated then it would be reasonable to assume that an attack or some form of devastation was imminent. If that were the case then why would people remain behind even within a bomb shelter? Of course there are well documented cased of people refusing to leave their homes during a natural disaster, but would that apply to an entire city?
Recalculations would need to wait. I reached Halsted Street and found there was another accident. However, this one was differe
nt from the one on Clark Street. I left my bike behind and headed toward the intersection. A public transportation bus had crashed into a police cruiser. There were several vehicles that had crashed into one another or onto the sidewalk. These accidents were consistent with my theory that the vehicles were allowed to roll uncontrolled and unmanned. The accident between the bus and the cruiser was different.
I approached the cruiser, it looked to have been traveling west bound on North Avenue. The impact was to the driver’s side door. Either the cruiser had the right of way and the bus blew through the light or the cruiser, perhaps responding to an emergency, drove through the intersection and was struck by the bus.
Almost wrapped around a lamppost the shattered glass of the cruiser crackled beneath my feet. The bus sat almost in the center of the intersection, there was no one inside. My attention was fully on the driver’s side door and window. I stepped before the cruiser. I confirmed what I thought I had seen from the intersection, something I had not found at any of the other accidents: it was blood.
Undeniably, this accident occurred before the event. I leaned into the broken driver’s side window when a sharp pain on my forehead staggered me. I fell backwards onto my backside, my hands slammed atop the shard covered asphalt. The pain on my forehead faded replaced with the pain from my hand.
Nothing serious, it was just a few minor cuts. It was a shadow cast from the lamppost onto the driver’s seat; that and the force the officer inside would have struck the glass with. Clearly if he did not die on impact, then he would have died shortly after if not taken to a hospital. Fragments of skin were on the few remaining shards in the window.
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