This Great Mystery

My dad is largely a mystery to me.

He died in August of 1991; my dad.

There is never a convenient time to die,

but that was a particularly inopportune moment.

My parents had just moved to Florida six months earlier.

Plus, I had already died earlier that same year,

somewhere between the Straits of Hormuz and Al-Masirah.

*

Among the very few things I know

is that, whether literally, or figuratively,

we rarely see death coming.

Perhaps, the best most of us can do

is to recognize it when it arrives.

With my dad, it was obvious right away.

In my case, it took years to figure it out.

*

Elder Joseph was the abbot of a monastery on Mt. Athos.

He knew a month ahead of time the exact day he would die.

When the day arrived, he brought his chair into the courtyard,

then he sat and waited.

After a couple of hours, he called his monks to gather around,

gave them a final, parting blessing, and then closed his eyes.

He had been correct. That was the day.

*

My great-grandfather knew when he would die,

but was not as precise as Elder Joseph.

Every day, into his eighties, he hitched his horse to the plow,

worked in the fields all day, then read his Bible by lamplight,

well into the evening. When his time came,

he announced on a Sunday that it would be his last.

Sure enough, he went peacefully in his sleep on Monday night.

*

It seems to me that few of us know ourselves

as well as Elder Joseph, or my great-granddad, did.

We know little about this earth beneath our feet

and even less about our relationship to God.

How often do we sift a handful of dirt through our fingers,

or reconcile ourselves to our Creator?

Little wonder we never see the end coming

when we’re so utterly blind to the present.