One Thousand Years
Genesage
"Love"
(Chp 6:10)
As if lighting had struck, He jerked his head up.
That was…, that was…,
Things were happening very fast for Tom to comprehend, but Tom had a pretty good idea who that “stranger” had been.
Suddenly it all became clear as if the puzzle pieces were beginning to fit together. The clouds of a thunder burst full of rain had just parted and rays of sunshine came streaming downward.
Tom knew then he had seen the Lord.
He knew he had heard that “voice” before. He knew something was wrong when he heard, he thought, Eben speak. He had just been so preoccupied with what was happening he didn't expect, he wasn't ready for,
"I…, don't understand.",
His cracked voice trembled with emotion.
Tom spoke out loud to no one there and no one replied. The quiet was electric and the absence of noise pregnant for birth pangs. There was pain but that of the birthing of new concepts, ideas, understanding and perhaps, appreciation. Tom was poking the fire still thinking too hard when again a voice from dark called out.
"You're not supposed to,"
Eben. It was obvious now with his staff and beard. He came walking up the path to him. He spoke as picking up the conversation as though he had been the other person there earlier. The one Tom had assumed was Eben. The one who was the Son of Man. Without missing a beat and stepping into the light so he could look Tom in the eye he added.
"And frankly I would be surprised if you did Thomas Levi Cohen."
A look of shock passed over Tom’s face.
His secret was out.
His real name which he had kept suppressed. The one he had not told anyone about had now been used. Not as though he had thought he had "put one over" on anyone. Or had kept hidden a secret. He had simply accepted his new identity as a coping mechanism. He had distanced the person he really was from the person he had become.
He frankly enjoyed the new persona. He was just Tom the Survivor. Not Thomas “the cohen”, Thomas the Jew. Thomas the “chosen”. As if chosen meant anything to Tom anymore.
Thomas Levi Cohen, a cohanim, a priest of the Levites, a Jew, had died when those Christians killed his daughter. He, that other guy, perished in the Tribulation.
He was dead.
From that moment on he had been just Tom. Clean shaved and absent from kippah, beard and Judaism. In fact Tom wouldn't admit it but he had enjoyed his pseudo-personality as everyone around him treated him as an equal, a fellow survivor. Just one of the guys. Someone who had been there, done that. No one particularly special.
Not one singled him out for "special treatment" as in the Tribulation the False Messiah had looked for and eradicated all Jews he could find.
Tom in these last sixty-nine years of peace and quiet had even began to believe his lie. He had created a persona in his own image and lived the image, the lie. And he wanted that persona. Anything having to do with God he did not want.
Not a God that could…, that could..,
Immediately caused him to remember the Day he had vowed,
Never Again and watched his daughter die.
Like Rose.
The sudden thought made Tom wince.
But rather then comment Tom stayed seated as Eben came over to him. He "broke off" some of the branches that had once been the "arms" of Rose.
Each time he snapped off a branch or broke a twig or limb Thomas Levi Cohen jumped involuntarily. Eben paid no attention but continued his task dutifully. Silence was acceptable to Thomas except for each "crack" of the branch that snapped at Thomas soul.
Eben organized the dead limbs. He set them together in a cairn or simple pile. Stacked upon each other it was a byre he prepared which formed a mound. It stood as though a bonfire was being prepared. Once the mound was made then the remaining branches were stacked nearby in rows, one pile, two piles, three.
Like a patriarchal Abraham,
thought Thomas.
Eben stopped his work.
He stood alongside the mound about where a headstone would be if this had been a grave. He had raised both his arms outstretched without his staff and began to sing.
The song was familiar and yet not so much so that Thomas could recall the words. But he knew that melody. He sensed the rhythm almost before it was sung.
His mind loosed itself and seemed to follow the scale and meter. The rise and fall of the refrain and verse had that echoing longing so familiar to him from so long ago. A part of him forgotten or rejected, but never far from his heart. It was his soul. His yid.
Eben sang it not once, not twice, but thrice.
When he was done there was a silence for a few moments as Eben lowered his arms at the head of the cairn. He knelt to one knee bowing his head. Thomas knew he was praying.
He wasn't loud enough to hear but a voice was evident as he prayed. Eben talked to the Almighty.
A small droplet of miniscule fire fell from the heavens like a falling star.
It landed without any obvious impact into the midst of the waiting wood. Those arms that had enveloped Thomas so few hours earlier. Now lifeless, now dead. They had become so brittle and dry.
It was beyond Thomas to think about.
He remembered everything about her. He could not stop thinking to himself.
This is love, this is love.
But why?
Why was he rethinking this and concluding Rose was loving?
He noticed everything and he could hardly register any of it.
The droplet of fire was little more than a tear and yet it ignited the wood into flame. The flame moved slowly and became a fire. The fire burned slowly and began to consume the wood. Aromatic yet hardly any smoke the air tasted. The area scented almost of spice.
As he tasted the air and recognized the spice he saw his wife for a moment in the flames.
Not his actual wife. But the way he had remembered her before he began to despise her. The way she had been on his Wedding Day. She was so full of laughter and life. She was so pure and so innocent.
She had been so giving and so freely giving her life to him to love and be loved.
He didn't love her.
He began to see now he didn't love like she had loved. He didn’t care for her like she had cared for him. Every chance they had to be together, he had performed his duty as he should. But his passion was not for her and in her.
In fact he had not loved until they had a daughter…, and she was taken away…,
"Pass me the Bread. Give me the Wine.
We will speak you and I
and hope the Son of Man return."
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