Eighteen: The Number of Life
REPOST.


Greetings! It's been ninteen years since I've received the date: February 18th. As you will recall in a previous post, "A Work In Progress," this date was given to me in 1988, and the significance of it discovered a few years later. From my personal experience, I keep expecting something truely miraculous to happen on this day. Each year brings with it this same "great expectantcy." Although there has been no tremendous manifestation, the miracle of it all is the life I now live, signified by the continual healing in my life - a life of absolute sobriety; drug and alcohol free now for over eight years. February eighteenth was the greatest thing that could have ever happened to me.

I'm going to share an excerpt on a very painful time in my life. A time when I could have been killed. I was six years old...

I have faint memories of my mother's funeral. There's the one image of all the brothers and sisters along with dad, standing helplessly, hopelessly, beside our mother's casket. There is emptiness, sadness. In light of the faith that she had instilled within us of a mighty and miracoulous God, the fact remained, she lay dead before us. I turn to look at one of my brothers. His face was shapened with pain, his lips quivering, and his eyes held back a flood of tears, holding onto nothing. My sisters, their cries so piercing and great. I turned to look at our father - it was pain personified, evidenced by the rivers of tears, uncontrollable cries, and his shaking body. In my mind I asked, "Why did you have to die? What does this all mean, and will I ever see you again." Hands upon shoulders, brother to brother, sister to sister, brother to sister, and father to children. No words were spoken. It's impossible to speak amidst great pain. There's only the sound of deep groanings between sobs, unending and from the deepest parts of the soul. In my young heart I prayed, "Father help me through the times that are to come. What is death and how do I handle this?" Angrily I stepped away from the casket. The days of darkness and despair were just beginning. "God is to blame for this! I'll show him!"

The pain of this experience manifested itself in our lives in many ways...

...Dragging me up the steps of the back porch, he threw me onto the floor. He grabbed the first thing he could see, a pipe pole. As I looked at that pipe pole, knowing what was about to happen, my pain turned to fear as I pleaded and begged through sobs and tears, "I'm sorry dad! I'm sorry! I'll be a good boy! Please! I promise. I'll be a good boy!" My dad was even angrier than he was a few moments ago. Pipe pole in hand and me in the other, he pushed open the kitchen door and threw me onto the kitchen floor. Terror ran through my body. It seemed, nothing in the world could stop what was about to happen. By now, through soul agonizing cries, on my hands and knees facing my father, I was begging for mercy, apologizing, "Dad I'm sorry. Please. I'm sorry." There would be no mercy for this broken hearted six year old child, as the force behind the aggressor was that of imense pain and anger, driven by the death of the one whom he had loved the most. My pleas fell upon deaf ears...


Post Script: I ran away from Port Alberni Residential School when it was time to return for another year. I was nine. The bus was readying to leave from Prince Rupert, B.C. I looked to my brother and sister who were also on the bus with me. I told them I wasn't going back, and, that I was going to run. I asked if they wanted to run with me. Fred looked at Linda and asked her if she wanted to run. She said no. She said that she wouldn't be able to keep up with us and told us to go. Fred then looked at me and said no, you go. I'm going to go back with Linda. I hesitated, then I ran.

I stayed hidden in a very dark spot in an alley, underneath some stairs in down town Prince Rupert. I hid behind some 45 gallon drums. It was two o'clock in the morning when I began to make my way home knowing for sure, now, the bus had left without me.

I approached the door to the house, not knowing what to expect. I opened the door slowly, cautiously. I peeked in. I heard the sound of someone sobbing, crying. I also heard the uttterance of words through this, like someone praying. I snuck in. It was my father. No one else was home. I whispered, "Dad?" He took one look at me and starred at me in disbelief. Tears rolling down his face and in desperation, he threw open his arms and called me to him. I ran to him, threw myself on his lap, wrapping my arms around him as he wrapped his around me. We just sat there and cried. We cried and cried as he held me in one of the most beautiful hugs I'd ever felt in a long, long time. He pleaded, "Don't you ever leave me again son. Don't you ever leave me again. I love you so much. Don't you ever leave me again."

I ran the way that I did, not knowing the real reason why I was running. I ran to spend the last six months of my dad's life with him. On February 14th, 1973, he died. I am extremely grateful for this time. If things had not happened this way, my last memory of him would have been the pipe pole and the beating. Now, it's been replaced by the experience of my father's love.

I truely love and miss you dad. Thank you for being my father. As our brother Fred said, you couldn't have picked a better day to go and be with our mother, right on Valentine's Day.

In Hebrew, as it has been told me, 18 is the number of life. I am so thankful for the one I have today.



- posted by Free2write @ 11:40 AM