Dear God
Dear God;
I am writing you an e-mail because I do not know what else to do. I read in a book that you are dead. I think that is crazy. I read in another book that you do the best you can to stop us from living in the painful civilizations we have constructed or at least ease our burden but that even you are not powerful enough. I like that idea. No offense meant but I like the idea that you are out there trying like the rest of us. We are Brother and Sister Peaceful Fighters for a better world. In this all-knowing but not all-powerful conception of you people are still holders of their own destiny.
We may have made things so fucked up down here that destiny is a joke and the deck is stacked against most of us in an insurmountable way. I won’t argue against that. But God, I need to believe in something. I am not sure I believe in you or if you are just a convenient idea prefabricated for me like my couch or my Ikea bookshelf requiring minimal assembly.
Several times in my young life I have asked you for a sign and normally when I do the clouds part and the sun powers down upon me making me feel blessed. I am so torn though God. Why did you put my brother in a wheelchair? He is the nicest kid I ever met. Is it because you knew he could take it? I know it has nothing to do with original sin or guilt of his; he is far to angelic for that. We always gave him a hard time growing up, trying to keep him knowing that he is normal. I think he is perfect. But why must he go to the hospital where the children are crying and dying?
God why do babies die? Why when I visit my brother in the hospital after a surgery do I meet little kids, 4 years old God! Who are dying of cancer? They are too young to understand. What will their parents tell the other children? Who will talk to the parents? How can a child get a brain tumor? Aren’t their bodies busy growing? Sometimes, God, I wake up at night and cry for my little brother taken so young for no apparent reason. Then I get up and read the news online and see that another school has been shot up and that many more children died.
Fuck.
I do not understand all this. I think all people who are looking around and yet manage to remain happy are saint-like. How are they so confident that it will all work out? Did you make the world this fucked up or is it our fault? Whose fault? How long must we pay for past mistakes? When will we change our ways and stop making this planet upon which we depend, sick? And ourselves? Who will protect us from ourselves? If you do not have the power and I am so small then what is to be done?
Little brother Peter, I hope you are safe and fit up there my brother. I miss you even if I never really knew you. I remember you and my throat constricts like a thirsty man in the desert trying to drink my own tears. I can still see you sitting in the gravel driveway at 20 Oval Drive, built by the hands of our grandfather. He is a man you never really got to meet which is too bad because he is great. Did you suffer much? When you died or did you have no idea what you where losing out on? Or did you somehow sense life was painful? Are you comfortable now? You weren’t when you were here and there was nothing any of us could do for you. I couldn’t help; I didn’t even really know anything was wrong. I kissed you at your funeral knowing, because someone told me, that you wouldn’t kiss me back.
Painful memories welling up from somewhere deep, I need answers. Torturous to a boy of 4 to have a brother disappear and not be able to comprehend. God, take care of him. I hope you take good care of all the little children who leave the earth before their siblings can know them. Before their ancestors get to know their personalities and get the pleasure of teaching them how sidewalks are made or how to play crazy 8s.
What kind of a god are you? You who kills little babies and makes the old so decrepit they can not remember the joys they have had in their lives. An Ironic God that gets us at one end or the other? The young and old are wasted by life and those in between who are paying attention must shake their heads, wring their wrists and cry at the horror of it all.
So, like I said, I need answers and I need something to believe in. What is there to have faith in when there is so much pain? I do not know if you will ever offer me answers, but I think I might continue to write to you either way. As painful as this has been, teary eyed the whole way, I think this has been good for me. Coming to terms with the past. Living it again and trying to understand. Perhaps now I will be able to grasps how these moments of the past affect me today.
Normally I write ‘cheers’ at the end of e-mails, that seems inappropriate, so while this is no prayer I will sign off with a humble and simple
Amen.
