Prayers for Bobby - Leroy Aarons [8]
But Mary herself hadn’t realized how much the loss would hurt. You die and you go to heaven; that’s the glory of being a Christian. At least that’s what they teach you. They don’t teach you about grief.
One of her Bible verses kept repeating itself in Mary’s head like a mantra. It was from the book of Revelation, the book of the apocalypse: “He that overcometh…shall be clothed in white raiment; and will not blot out his name in the book of life.”
The way she read that verse, it meant that the sinner who repents is promised eternal life. He who does not “overcome,” who dies unrepentant, must be destined for hell. Revelation seemed to contradict what Daubenspeck had said.
This frightened her. Bobby died without repenting. If he was condemned, he was in hell for certain.
Back home that evening, Mary asked Bob, “Do you think Bobby made it to heaven?” Bob shunned religion. He had resisted all her efforts to get him baptized. True to style, he answered simply, “He’s not here.”
Mary shuddered, her voice rising. “According to the Bible, Bobby’s in hell. I’m never going to see him again. Never, never, never!”
She sat up late, turning the question over in her mind. Why would God allow her son to go to hell if it was in God’s power to cure him?
Days later, Mary turned to the diaries. She sat through the night, reading them page by page. Bobby had begun writing in January 1979, when he was fifteen. He wrote through 1979, for some reason skipped 1980 except for a single entry, and continued up to two weeks before his death. The entries varied from consecutive to sporadic, sometimes jumping several months.
Mary quickly discovered that another Bobby—one far more scarred than she knew—lived in the diaries. The entries dripped with self-hatred. Bobby’s revulsion toward his gay nature was a constant refrain.
She read:
I am evil and wicked. I want to spit vulgarities at everyone I see. I am dirt, harmful bacteria grows inside me…. I was innocent, trusting, loving. The world has raped me till my insides are shredding and bleeding. My voice is small and unheard, unnoticed. Damned.
Mary had known that her son was deeply unhappy. But the diaries revealed that for Bobby each day, no matter how routine, was a Sisyphean struggle.
Gentle springtime weather surrounds me, but a fierce unrelenting storm rages within…. How much longer? How much more can I take? Only time and a million tears of bitterness…. I wish I could crawl under a rock and sleep for the rest of time.
From childhood, Bobby had embraced the faith of his mother. He had been going to Sunday school for years, when, at age ten, he came to her and said, “Mom, I want to accept Christ in my life.” Mary took him to be baptized. Bobby’s belief in God and God’s immutable word as revealed in the Bible had all the innocence and conviction of one whose faith is shaped early in life. This showed in his diaries. But Mary was shocked by the dark, violent blasphemies also present.
“Sometimes I feel so guilty about my feelings,” Bobby wrote in one entry. “Am I going to hell? That’s the gnawing question that’s always drilling little holes in the back of my mind. Please don’t send me to hell…. Lord I want to be good…I need your seal of approval.”
But that mood could change mercurially: “Fuck you God! If it’s not one damn thing it’s something else and a person can only take so much.”
Near dawn, red eyed and exhausted, Mary approached the final passages. Closing the pages, she thought of Bobby on his last visit home, just a few weeks earlier, at the end of July. He had never before seemed so blue, so lethargic. A vision haunted her of the preadolescent happy-go-lucky Bobby of the wide grin and untroubled face.
It had been a good time,