THE UNTOLD STORY: Day Twenty

Day Twenty: 2 Samuel 18:33

Elizabeth hovers. She means well, but I want to be alone. When I am alone…without physical distractions…especially those that remind me of my present reality…then I am with Benjamin. I seek solitude.

I went to the river again today, although I did not bathe in it. The current is swift, and I do not wish to struggle against it. The walk down and up is a mindless activity. Most of the time, I keep my head down…I do not wish to exchange pleasantries with travellers. 

As I watch the roiling water of the river…the swirls and the currents…the bubbles and the foam…my mind travels back in time to a happier place. Benjamin was no more than three years old when I brought him here for the first time. I carried him down carefully, balancing him on my shoulders. It was about the same time as now…after the barley harvest. My main concern then was his safety and I remember having to repeatedly drag him away from the fast moving stream…it was as if the pool was not enough…he wanted more. He always wanted more…to see more…to know more…to experience more. And I indulged him.

I can still hear him squealing with delight as an unexpected swell sent him tumbling. Even then I had dreams of losing him…of watching helplessly as a surging undercurrent sucked him under and dragged him away from me. And yet we returned as often as we could. This is where I can see him most clearly now. Here my yearning…my aching…my pining…invokes a false reality…making the intangible tangible for a brief space in time. The past becomes the present and I am relieved for a while.

King David longed for his son, Absalom[i]…he wished to exchange places with him…to escape the void in his soul. So I long for Benjamin. If he was not lost, I would be found.

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[i] 2 Samuel 18:33

THE UNTOLD STORY: Day Nineteen

Day Nineteen: Job 1:21

Am I losing perspective? I was once told by a wise woman, that I ought not to invest my happiness in something I could lose. But how is it possible for a parent…any parent…not to invest in their children? To invest in your children is to invest in yourself.

I bathed in the river today…in the pool where Benjamin used to bathe. Elizabeth seemed to believe I could move around without her watchful presence. I stripped, laid my clothes on the grassy bank, and walked into the water. For a moment I simply stood with my eyes closed, trying to recall the sounds of the past. I could hear the river rushing by…the snows of Hermon must be melting…the level of the water is higher than it was. As I stood there, stripped of all but my skin, I heard a voice quoting words from the suffering sage: “Naked I came into this world, naked I shall depart. The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” I opened my eyes to see who spoke, but there was no one. The experience was disconcerting and yet strangely comforting. A reminder that I am not alone in my suffering. Others have gone before me…others will come behind me…from the garden of Eden to the consummation of all things, suffering will bind us together in misery.

The Jordan River has never ceased to flow…from the heights of Hermon to the depths of the Salt Sea…it rises, and falls…it roars, and it murmurs. Like the river, life continues regardless. 

I immersed myself in the water…I immersed myself in the water as I am immersed in sorrow…but the water would not allow me to stay under. My buoyancy brought to mind something I learned in Hebrew school. “The eternal God is your resting place…underneath you, are his everlasting arms.”[i]  He is present, but silent…imperceptible. Delayed hope. I will have to continue without hope…hoping in spite of hopelessness. 

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[i] Deuteronomy 33:27

THE UNTOLD STORY: Day Eighteen

Day Eighteen: Proverbs 13:12

Does hope fail? The wise king Solomon once wrote that delayed hope makes the heart sick, but that a yearning fulfilled is a tree of life.[i] How long can one hope in the face of unrelenting hopelessness? Sleep allows me an escape for a short while…but I have no choice…I wake up every morning…to breathe…to live…the world keeps on turning and I am on it…turning with it, whether I want to or not. 

I hope. I pray. I beseech. I beg. I plead. I crawl. I grovel. I weep. Is God listening? No one listens to me here; save Elizabeth, and she is every bit as hopeless as I am. She cannot relieve my anguish…the pleading in her eyes are as pathetic as mine. 

Is God good? How can my present agony support such a notion? Or is God ultimately cruel and uncaring? His hands tear at my heart ceaselessly. I am distressed beyond all human comprehension…this pain is greater than my greatest fears…there has never been anything in my imaginings or in my nightmares that comes close to the hurt I live with now. 

My child is gone. Will I ever see his face again? Will I ever hear his voice again? Will I ever touch him or hold him again? Am I doomed to think of him in the past tense for ever? How can I think of him in terms of the future? How can I plan anything for him…dream anything for him…wish anything for him? 

Delayed hope…I pray to the one who created everything…all I can see as well as all I cannot see. Is anything too hard for the Lord?[ii] Surely, He Who spoke the sun and moon and stars and earth into being…He who gave Abraham and Sarah a son in spite of the impossibility of such a gift[iii]…surely, He can speak on my behalf and bring my child back to me? Of course He can…but He chooses not to lift a finger. Delayed hope. My heart is sick…and dying…

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[i] Proverbs 13:12

[ii] Jeremiah 32:17, 27

[iii] Genesis 18:14

THE UNTOLD STORY: Day Seventeen

Day Seventeen: Psalm 130

I had forgotten what it feels like to smile. It was such a strange and unfamiliar sensation, but not an unwelcome one…a timely reminder that there are some things in life that could and should still elicit a joyful response…some things for which one could be thankful even when the soul was a swirling cesspool of bitterness and a place of shadows.

Elizabeth’s kindness is like a shaft of sunlight that reaches down in the darkness of the pit I am inhabiting at present. Her unconditional love reminds me of every good thing I have believed about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Is He reaching down into my depths with His love through her? Or is His love perhaps deeper than my sorrow? Is His love below me…ready to go deeper still? 

I have not attended Synagogue services…I cannot. How can I sit with those who love the harshness of the law more than the compassion of grace? Which one of us can stand before a holy God? If He kept a record of our sins, we would all be lost. No, I will not believe that God has rejected my Benjamin…He waits with me. After all, He is the Father of us all.

But what if I am wrong? What if the God we serve is the God of Aaron, the rabbi, and the elders? A God Who is vengeful and wrathful? A cruel or worse…an indifferent dictator who whisks away our joys as quickly as He gives them? Or perhaps He is not at all concerned with the things we hold dear? 

No, that cannot be. I must stop this line of thought. It will be the end of me. It will leave me with nothing to hold onto. As it is, I cling to the cliffside with my fingertips.

Out of the depths of my innermost being, I cry out to Him…and I wait for Him…or perhaps I wait with Him. He is my only hope…there is no one else.

THE UNTOLD STORY: Day Sixteen

Day Sixteen: Zechariah 10

Why Springtime? Why choose to leave when there is so much growth and beauty around us? This is the time of flowers…fruit trees and wildflowers everywhere…a mass of pink and white blossoms and of red poppies. A time for harvesting barley in the Jordan valley. The pomegranate blooms profusely. Why now? Perhaps he hoped to leave before the wilting heat of summer or the bitter cold of winter. After the rains, but before the dry hot winds.

But my heart and my mind…they are frozen in perpetual winter. Nothing grows in me save my anguish and my pain. Where is Benjamin now? Is he safe? Is he happy? Is he alive?

Elizabeth continues to be my shadow. Though she speaks but little, she is some comfort to me. She is another soul that longs for what is no longer. In this, we are kindred spirits…more than any other person on the compound. Aaron says nothing when he is in my presence…what do we have to say to each other? Our lives have ground to a halt in what once was, while the days continue to move towards what will be. 

But I do not want Elizabeth with me when I go to the river. There I must be alone…with Benjamin, or what remains of him in my memories. Somehow, I must convince her that I am in no danger of injury…self-inflicted or otherwise.

So, my pacing now expands to the land around the compound walls. We walk among the blossoming trees and under the lofty palms…a walk I used to enjoy in another life. I mindlessly pluck out a weed and immediately feel a stab of regret. I just plucked up a living thing. A weed, yes…regarded as little more than an irritant by some…an unwanted growth. But that is what some think of my Benjamin…my older son and my community, plucked him out of our present, like an unwanted weed. 

THE UNTOLD STORY: Chapter Two: False Reality - Day Fifteen

Chapter Two: False Reality

Day Fifteen:

I am stronger now. My feet still feel heavy and I still tend to shuffle. But I am determined to get to the river, and so I walk…or rather, I pace, like a caged animal, from one end of our compound to the other. Elizabeth follows me like my shadow. Her kindness is beginning to chafe at me, like a too-tight sandal…I feel claustrophobic…like a child being snugly smothered by an overzealous aunt. But I do not wish to injure her…after all, she was Benjamin’s nursemaid.

The heat of the sun stops my pacing. I sit in the shade and consume dates and nuts, seemingly endlessly…my appetite has returned with a ferociousness that has surprized us all. Is it not strange that hope can be revived even in the midst of hopelessness? But why would I will myself to live when I have little to live for? I am startled by that thought. What do I mean “little to live for”? Is that what I have become…a wallowing pool of self-pity? How can grief remove all sense of perspective? It appears to be a bottomless pit of self-absorption…of introspection…but it is there that I find comfort…warmth…and it is there that I find the reason to claw my way back up to the light, fingernail by fingernail.

So I eat…so I pace…I must go down to the river again. That is one place outside of my dreams where I may see him once more. Who said memories cannot be felt? I know I will feel his presence there at the water’s edge. His youth, his vigour, his zest for life…

There I will learn to breathe again…

THE UNTOLD STORY: Day Fourteen

Day Fourteen: Psalm 23

I have spent my entire life taking so many things for granted. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob blessed me with a good beginning. I received every blessing with an open hand, stopping only now and then to thank Him for His generosity. Perhaps it was not often enough. Receiving was normative for me and, like the psalmist says, my cup overflowed. Loving parents, a place we called home, a piece of land that provided for our daily needs…and then my beloved Miriam filled a void I was not even aware of before we were married. She was my joy…we overindulged on happiness. And then Aaron was gifted to us…an extraordinary bundle of delight. 

But as the sage once said, God gave and, in my case, He gave liberally…but then He began to take back to Himself the gifts He had given. I had never thought of anything or anyone being temporary, until the night my father died. That was the first time I ever thought of life as a fragile bubble on the surface of a fast moving river…the flow of the water never ceased…it continued to run its course…but the bubble…when the bubble burst it was gone, forever.

That was the first time God took anything out of my hand…but it was not the last. My mother, my beloved Miriam, and now…no, He could not have given us Benjamin only to take him to where I cannot go. Benjamin filled the vacuum left by my parents and my wife…without him there is only an empty void where once their lives had been.

I have closed my hand…I hold on to Benjamin in a tightly clenched fist. I cannot let him be taken away as well. His body still walks on this earth…somewhere…he has not gone into the unenterable hereafter…unenterable for the living, that is. And so I must hold on…if not, every drop of blood will be drained from my veins and I will cease to live. 

I must eat so that I can go to the river…I will find him there…waiting for me.