Chapter Nine
In the year of our Lord, 1989, death where is thy sting?
It was like almost any other summer day. On July 11th, 1989, my dad tended the yard of my childhood home. He trimmed the six-foot boxwood hedges, shaping their sides into flat green planes. He mowed the city-sized plot of grass that once had been home to a swing set where me and my siblings, Cyndi, Denise, and Chucky, had competed to see who could propel themselves the furthest into the air.
When he finished, he went into the house to take an afternoon nap.
He never woke up. He was only sixty-five years old.
The weight of the sudden loss was heavy. It was as if the surrounding air weighed a ton—I could hardly breathe. I had just talked to him a few weeks before, on Father’s Day. He told me then that he was very proud that I had gotten my life together—that I was independent again.
“I love you, dad,” I said.
With the sarcasm he was famous for, he replied, “You’re just saying that.”
Then I said, “Yeah. I did just say that.”
That made him laugh.
I didn’t write about his death in my journal until three weeks later, but I remember the funeral—at least parts of it. I remember standing over his casket, weeping and praying. The grief was so heavy. I asked God to lift it just a little so I could catch my breath, but nothing happened. At least not right away. Not until we got in the limousine and made our way to the cemetery for the internment.
My mom peered out of the window. “Is that the tint in the window, or is that a rainbow in the sky?”
We all leaned towards the window to see.
The sky was blue, and there was no rain, but a rainbow was there. It was not a conventional one, though. The colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet hung heavy in the sky, but they didn’t curve the way rainbows normally do. They hovered straight across the sky, right above the horizon.
As soon as I saw it, a flow of warm, electrified air permeated my skin from the top of my head, down my back, through my arms, and to the tips of my fingers.
It made me laugh.
Because just like that, the heaviness was gone.
And it never came back.
Ever.
I smiled like a fool during the interment service. And when it was over, I stood outside the mausoleum and smiled some more while I watched the colors slowly disappear.
That was God.
And knowing it was God was a game-changer for me.
If he could do that, what else could he do?
The Story So Far
Spoiler Alert: Mishalariah dies, even if only temporarily.
What’s Next
Next week, I bring to the conclusion of the story with the final chapter. To find out what happens in between, you can buy the book.
As soon as I publish it that is.