Prayers for Bobby - Leroy Aarons [94]
Inside, I settle at the kitchen table next to a pair of windows. Nearly all family business is conducted here. There is a Silex of strong black coffee constantly warming on the stove. The windows command a view of the generous backyard, including a good-sized swimming pool.
A lot has changed since I first entered the Griffiths’ lives in late 1991. Bob Griffith retired from his electrician’s job, underwent a serious ulcer operation that cost him half his stomach, and turned sixty. Now he keeps up with handiwork about the house, reads, plays with a computer, and wonders how he’ll keep busy and productive for his remaining years.
Joy and Nancy, both unmarried, have left the nest. For a time they were sharing an apartment about two miles away. Now Nancy has moved in with her boyfriend and Joy is apartment shopping. Ed and his wife, Linda, bought a home in Fairfield, an exurb twenty miles north, and have a baby girl, Christina. He has settled into a police job in Lafayette, a bedroom community between Walnut Creek and Oakland.
I look around and try to imagine for the tenth time the interior as it was a dozen years ago when Mary’s life was absorbed with the paraphernalia of religious devotion. Gone since 1985 are the tattered Bible (stored away for reference only), the crucifix with the ceramic infant, the Scotch-taped Bible verses, the Norman Vincent Peale calendar, the copies of Guidepost, the bookcase stacked with Christian books and tracts (since piled into the car and delivered to Goodwill). It is as if a squad of God busters had roared through the house under orders to obliterate any trace of religiosity.
The family is scheduled to come together today at my request. My research is drawing to an end, and it is time to sum up. Mary and I begin early. We settle down over coffee and I ask, “What do you believe in? Do you retain any of the old beliefs?”
“I believe there is a spirit that goes beyond our capacity—something in the universe stronger than us. I don’t understand its workings, but I no longer believe that Christianity is the key to the afterlife.”
I ask, “Is there a hell in this universe?”
Mary considers, then replies, “I don’t believe in hell anymore. That’s just a way to keep the troops in line.”
“Do you pray?”
“No, not anymore. I hope for the best in a person’s life. I hope they have the faith and the strength to rely on their abilities and their good judgment. I believe in the inherent good in humanity.”
“Sounds like you’ve become a humanist in the classic mode,” I suggest.
Mary grins. “If that means I feel good about myself and not guilty like I used to, you’re right. I was brought up believing that it is my nature to be sinful and that it is for my sins that Jesus Christ had to suffer on the cross. In that way of thinking you’re just as guilty as if you had nailed him on the cross yourself. There wasn’t anything I could rely on myself to do or accomplish. I had to rely on Christ. I was nothing.
“I feel since I’ve been able to really put the Bible in the proper perspective, I have the freedom to think and reason without being afraid. That is a wonderful feeling—to know that I am responsible for my life. I am responsible for what happens. It’s not because God is punishing me for something. And I can’t say, ‘Here, God, you take care of it.’ I would rather be where I am today because I feel I’m in control. I’m not evil. I love myself. My self-esteem has leaped a hundredfold.”
She adds with a chuckle, “I’ve been born again!”
I can’t resist suggesting, “Would you say it took Bobby’s death to give you new life?”
She pauses to think about that. “I wouldn’t state it that simply. I’d gladly give my life in a minute to bring Bobby back. But it’s true that when I realized Bobby came into this world