Continuing the reflections of the first Holy Week of my post-divorce life so many years ago (see previous post), when Good Friday came around, I had made the decision not to attend the service on that day, being weary of death themes. (Good Friday on the Christian calendar marks the day Jesus’ earthly life ended when he expired on the cross. It is the saddest day of the year for Christians.) Instead, I rented a movie called Signs. It starred Mel Gibson, who played a struggling ex-priest who’d abandoned his calling after the untimely death of his wife. It involved crop circles and the invasion of aliens. The ex-priest —Mel Gibson — lived on a farm with his two young children and his younger brother, played by Joachim Phoenix. One day, the children started sensing the presence of something unusual—aliens, it turned out, and crop circles appeared in the corn fields. The terror they evoked reduced Mel Gibson to becoming (once again) a praying man. Only with God’s help could he and his family (and the world) be saved, and it was.
The movie felt contrived. I felt no terror watching it. It did, nonetheless, lend me a moment to imagine myself being led into the darkness with Jesus holding my hand the way Mel Gibson took his little girl’s hand when the aliens threatened to harvest her soul. Jesus went before me, holding my hand, and Mel Gibson went before his little girl. Sometimes my heart spasmed and I couldn’t breathe. Sometimes my soul buckled in on itself. Then he carried me.
I imagined aliens arriving, my soul buckling in on itself, and the worst —the worst—that could happen was that I would die alone. Aliens would come with their crop circles and shadow people’s doorways and hide in people’s pantries, the way they hid in Mel Gibson’s pantry. They would terrorize towns and nations and CNN would cover it. People would be harvested—empty shells of human remains left behind á la Jerry Jenkins (get it?). I’d be alone in my home when the end of the world would come. I’d be in my soft green bowl chair, the one I bought at Pier 1 for $79. I’d die alone and wouldn’t fear aliens because a woman with nothing to lose had nothing to fear and, who knows? I may never be found because the world would be ending everywhere and people might not think to call. I’d die in my home with “0” on my message machine. When the world would end, I’d be alone in my house and the moment of death would end all fears and I wouldn’t remember the feeling of dying alone, nor would I have to keep thinking about living alone because I would have already faced the Worst Case Scenario. Thinking of it (for once) didn’t make me cry.
Then, on Sunday morning at 12:37a.m., I passed from death to life. Hopelessness awoke to possibility. (To be continued.)