Death of the Son

It was day, but it was night. His son was dead. He sat in a wooden chair and knew the horror of it, the pain, the grief. He had watched the son suffer, ache, cry out in agony. He had counted every drop of blood, every tear, and had felt the cutting disembowelment of the son’s cries of pain. His son was dead, and the father ached unendingly with it.

They had spent years apart, barely able to talk because of the wide distance that separated them. All through that time, the father had taken pleasure in the son – had loved him with his whole heart, his entire being. The son had been sent on a mission – a mission which entailed separation from the father, and years spent in a foreign land – a dry, hot, difficult land. The father had ached when the son had been homesick, ill, confused, angry and alone. He had rejoiced when the son had loved and nurtured those around him. He and the son had celebrated together when the son had made a difference in his world.

The father ran his hand across the polished wood of the arm of the chair. The craftsmanship was brilliant, and the wood had a luster like silk, smooth and warm from his touch. His son had not made it, but the father imagined that his son’s hands could have crafted something this beautiful. The wood of the chair’s arm felt like his son’s cheek when he had been born, held in the arms of his young mother, as the father had brushed his loving finger across the soft, flawless skin.

Now the son was dead, his body tortured and abused in ways unimaginable. He had been beaten, whipped, cut, marched through the village, humiliated. Nails had been driven through his hands, through his feet, and he had hung on a cross until he had suffocated, lacking strength to take another breath. Blood had dripped to the ground, made hot and red with the pain of the death. Night had fallen in the middle of day, as the son had died.

Now they were apart. Now the father felt the pain of the son’s death. Now the son knew what is was like to be separated, completely, from the father. The father slammed his hand onto the arm of the chair, angry that there had been no other way; that it had finally come to this. Choices had been made – choices made by those around the son, choices made by the son. The father heard the echo of the son’s cry, “Father, why have you left me alone!” He felt his heart break, once again. What he thought had already shattered beyond recognition, shattered again. He would never forget that pain-filled cry of the son.

The son was dead. In the father’s grief, he tried to comfort the son’s mother, who had watched the crucifixion from the mountaintop, standing close while the son was taken from her. He hoped she knew that he understood; that he felt her pain because it was his own pain.

The son was dead. It didn’t help that the father knew what would happen tomorrow. The separation, the pain and the death were reality. The birth of hope had meant the murder of his only begotten son. Today was Saturday. Pain and grief are real on Saturday.

Image: The sky this morning at the VA.