I wrote this piece about one of the pastors at my church who passed away this past December. David was one of those people who touched many lives. His kind, gentle spirit and huge smile left people feeling loved and encouraged. This week his three daughters took his remains to Haiti, a place that stirred a deep passion for David to help and care for its people. So, in his honor, here is the piece I wrote for my writing class about David. The topical prompt was Moments and Lessons; the title of the piece was The Undisclosed Box.
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We do not know a significant moment until after it happens. It surprises us in tingling lucid stillness. This past Saturday morning I decided it was important enough to take a carload of “things” encompassed in a closed box from the duplex home of a friend to an unknown place of storage. Storage: also known as, “The girls only had like three days to make a decision before returning back to their lives. Right now they want to keep everything.” When I arrived lots of people were already there moving boxes onto the lawn to be loaded into cars. I went inside. Only undisclosed boxes marked by letter and number, and furniture stripped bare were apparent to the physical eye. Once most of things were out of the home, a Google map of directions was handed to each of the drivers for the goods future destination. And I was off to the place unknown to me, someone’s home in Round Rock. Before I officially left, I looked around the place someone once called home, one last time for anything left behind that my car could hold. Everything was gone, but then I noticed a cross still hanging above the light switch, left of the doorway. The cross was simple yet ornate, adhered to the wall by a simple white thumb tack. I took the cross down and mentioned to the people left in the room that someone forgot to pack this. I turned around and walked toward the kitchen and saw some other items not packed on the kitchen counter. I picked up a model of a 50s station wagon, an uncomplicated yellow cup and a ceramic vase with tiny flowers painted on the exterior. I mentioned I would take these things and put them in my car. On my way out the door, I picked up one more thing: an unopened canister of tennis balls I saw lying against the wall near the entry way that led to the bedrooms. As I got in my car, I set the items down in the front seat, wrapping my white cable-knit cotton sweater around the vase and the cross for safety. I started to drive off not wanting to think about the surreal nature of this moving of “things”.
It was only after I arrived to my home that I realized those items packed carefully and not as carefully marked the materialization of a revered one’s memory now gone from us. I stopped to think of where David might have gotten that cross, or the model car, or the vase, or even the cup. I stopped and smiled. What’s the reason for the tennis balls? I remembered. He loved tennis, and was part of a league, winning first place in his experience and age bracket. My mind went to the cross. Did the cross come from his missionary work in Russia? Did the other items have some semblance of specialness? Did it represent a young person whose life he touched, or just something that reminded him of his childhood? Or even, was it something that belonged to someone who mattered, to him? David who died exactly one week before Christmas day left behind three daughters, and testimony after testimony of humble adoration. To experience David was to experience the grace of God. He cleanly personified the definition of simple, uncomplicated love. David epitomized the attributes of patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. And those attributes rebounded.
People still write on David’s Facebook wall. Not long ago, one person wrote, “David, I am trying so hard and I wish I could be as good as you.” My memory of that statement struck something familiar within me. Wait, I want to be good. I want to be kind. I want to know the right thing to do, shown in a perfect way. I want to be like David too. But then, I remember that I cannot be another person. I am who I am. And, does Jesus want me to be good and right?
My education, my experience, my heart and my God tells me no. God wants me to be brave. By Jesus’ example, God wants me to be loving and thoughtful, all the while being mindful of hurt, pain, loneliness and oppression. Jesus shows me how to allow myself to become available to see the “Face of the Other“, regardless of who, and regardless of physical and historical characteristics. That was David’s example too. And just the same he was not completely good and right. He just remembered the humanity of others.
I drove way Saturday afternoon with David’s things laying on the carport organized by letter and number. My few odd items transported outside the barriers of an undisclosed box, now hand delivered to a friend. I sighed as I shifted from Park, to Reverse, then to Drive. In the midst of the sigh, I knew that I can not rest in a moment of giving up. I must try to revere the memory, the person; but let go, so the essence of the person and my memory of him can reverberate out. With God nothing is left behind, and with certainty, no one is forgotten.
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