In view of the horrific world events I want to convey
my thoughts about a relationship that transcended the discord. It crossed the artificial divide we all too often
construct to keep human beings from sharing that part of our nature which
seems unique to us. It allows us to connect
to other living things on this planet and gives us the ability to love. We do not know for sure that we are the only
animal who loves but at least, on the surface, we seem to be the sole
evolutionary inheritor of the ability for higher thought and the attachments of love that it can bring.
When violent world events, especially those that centrifugally
revolve around religious belief and cultural differences, I think on a
relationship I knew between a Pakistani man, his family and an elderly Christian
woman who lived the love of her very strong Christian faith. She and I had ad infinitum discussions about faith as she tried, without much
success, to persuade me that this life is more than just our birth, all that
transpires in between and, finally, death.
She said, because she possessed such a strong faith instead of fearing
death, which was in sight for her as she approached 90 years of age, she
welcomed it because she knew her God would be there to welcome her into a place
of eternal peace. I envied her pacific
place.
This wonderful woman died yesterday and so I wanted to
write a tribute to her amazing life. She
was, in the purest sense, simply a good, kind and wonderful woman who never
married nor had children. She worried
about the loneliness of old age so she made her church and the love it preached
the center of her life. We would go on
walks at Christmas time when she shared with me the gift of her faith and the
love it encompassed and hoped I would see it too. Still, though, I remained steadfast in my agnosticism
and, in truth, I remain a skeptic who must wade through the travails of life
with no surety of anything more powerful beyond it.
There are times, though, I do think something more
powerful than we sends answers that are seemingly miraculous. I do not know this as truth but my friend's
circumstances gave me pause for thought.
She was forced to move in her 80’s to a less expensive section of town
where she found, as was her habit, someone, a young Pakistani Islamic man owner
of a convenience store nearby with whom she could exchange ideas especially
ones about the faiths they both possessed. They became close friends as each day she went
there for coffee and to talk. They
became so close she eventually bought a house with him. He moved his family to the US and she legally
adopted him. In the end he and his
family, too, were there for her helping her as a son would help his aging mother. She shared in the Middle Eastern food he
cooked and the holidays he kept. His
children thought of her as their grandmother, his wife as her mother-in-law and
they weep now for her loss.
He was a Pakistani Muslim man who prayed the required
five times a day. She shared in that
life as he shared in hers. It was the
most beautiful relationship and a love that, indeed, crossed the artificial
divide we create keeping those with whom we should have more in common to unite
us than we have differences that divide, keep us apart and kill. It does not
have to be this way and our friend proved that to me.
And so I say, rest in peace our beautiful friend and
if there is a God and a paradise, you are surely in His and its sacred
arms.
