“When Bruce got his voice back, when you became a Christian, when he came home. God is working, Joyce. His ways are not our ways.”
“They sure aren’t! Hasn’t Bruce been through enough? Does he need to learn something more?”
“Maybe I do.”
“You’ve learned enough lessons for a lifetime!”
“Please sit,” Elisabeth said, reaching for her. “Protect that baby.” Joyce sat and Elisabeth helped straighten her blanket and coat. She sighed. “Maybe I put Bruce on too high a pedestal,” she said. “Maybe I made him the center of my life instead of the Lord.”
“So Bruce suffers for that? I wondered if you’d let him go after we were married, but you’ve been great. I’m telling you, I don’t like this. If anything happens to Bruce, I’m not going to forgive God.”
“Oh, Joyce, don’t say things like that.”
Joyce did not respond, and Elisabeth hated that the accusation of the Lord hung in the room. But could she argue? If Bruce died in such a senseless, random, capricious way, what would that say about God? Did faith, prayer, commitment, obedience count for anything?
It was refreshing that her daughter-in-law felt free to speak her mind, but Elisabeth would not express her own doubts in front of so new a Christian. “Joyce, no matter what, we’re going to trust God and believe that he loves us.”
Joyce hunched her shoulders and pulled her coat collar higher on her neck. She looked at Elisabeth. “No matter what?”
Elisabeth nodded, wishing she felt as sure as she sounded. “Absolutely.” God, handle this one right.
Joyce shook her head, her hands deep in her pockets. “You’re telling me that if Bruce doesn’t pull through, you’re still going to say God knew what he was doing.”
“It won’t be easy.” Elisabeth felt like a weakling.
Joyce turned away. “God had better give Bruce back to me in one piece,” she said. “All Bruce talks about is serving him. He believes he has been exposed to all kinds of tragedy just to make him a better pastor.”
“That’s why God will spare him.”
Joyce faced her again. “What if he doesn’t?”
Elisabeth felt as if she were swimming against a strong current. “Don’t upset yourself,” she said. “Think of the baby.”
Joyce threw off her blanket and stood again. She paced ponderously. “I am! This baby needs a father!”
“We need to pray.”
“I’ve prayed enough!” Joyce said. “How many things does Bruce have to go through? He’s given his whole life to God!”
A nurse appeared. “Excuse me. The doctor has sent word from the operating room that you might want to have someone called. Your pastor, or …?”
“Why?” Joyce demanded. “Is Bruce going to die?”
“They’re still working on him, Mrs. Bishop. Is there someone you’d like here with you?”
“Pastor Clarkson is away this week,” Elisabeth said.
“I’d rather have Chaplain Phillips anyway,” Joyce said.
The nurse went to call him.
Elisabeth said, “We really should keep praying.”
“I’m prayed out,” Joyce said. “God’s going to do what God’s going to do. If Bruce pulls through, you’ll thank God. If he doesn’t, you’ll say God’s ways aren’t our ways. What’s the difference?”
“Oh, Joyce …”
But Joyce had fallen silent. She put her feet up on a chair and leaned back, supporting herself on her elbows behind her.
Half an hour later, Elisabeth decided that, as usual, no news was good news. “They must be making progress.”
Joyce looked at her with disgust. “Are you just incurably cheery? They’re probably fighting to keep him alive.”
“We have to think positively.”
Joyce shook her head. “Maybe our car wasn’t totaled. Maybe tonight was good for our baby. Look at it this way, it gave you and me some time together.”
Elisabeth couldn’t hide she was hurt.
“I’m sorry, Mother. I don’t mean to be this way.”
“I understand, honey, but don’t blame God.” How Elisabeth wanted to follow her own advice.
As she returned from the washroom a few minutes later, Elisabeth recognized Ben’s voice. He was talking with the surgeon near the elevator around the corner.
“Talk with Bruce’s mother first. She’s strong and can help his wife.”
“Yes,” the doctor said. “The widow will need her.”
Elisabeth’s knees cracked hard on the hard floor before she knew she had fallen. She cried out, “No, no, God, please, no!”
Ben and the doctor helped her to the waiting room where Joyce quickly stood. “What? Tell me!”
“Please sit down,” the doctor said.
“Just tell me!”
Ben guided Joyce back down. “Mrs. Bishop,” the doctor began, “I’m sorry to tell you that your husband has died due to severe brain trauma. We did everything humanly possible.”
Elisabeth’s knees throbbed and her throat felt constricted.
“I want to see him,” Joyce said.
The doctor turned to Elisabeth. “You too, ma’am?”
Elisabeth couldn’t find her voice. Nor could she imagine seeing her dead son. She shook her head, afraid she would topple again.
“Come with me, Mother,” Joyce said. Ben stayed outside the operating room as the doctor led them in.
“We had to shave his head,” the doctor said, pulling the sheet from Bruce’s face and quietly leaving. The incision had already been stitched.
His face was smooth and pale, eyes shut, lips slightly parted. “Bruce,” Joyce whispered, shuddering. Elisabeth wrapped an arm around her waist. “Bruce,” she said again.
Elisabeth fought the urge to embrace him, to kiss him, to will him back to life. This was the nightmare she had feared every minute he was overseas. And now this. She couldn’t take her eyes off him, knowing the next time she saw him would be in a funeral parlor, surrounded by friends who would try to make it make sense.
Joyce turned abruptly and strode out, leaving Elisabeth alone with him. She was transported to his birth, which seemed so recent. Bruce had been smooth-skinned and still then too. Elisabeth couldn’t stop her hands from shaking, and the muscles in her back and neck coiled. Her emotions scared her. She wanted to scream, to cry, to rail against God. She wanted to grab Bruce’s beautiful body in the bloom of its youth and wrestle it off that table and out of that place to keep with her forever. She didn’t trust herself to cradle his face and kiss his cheek. If she didn’t somehow make her way out of there that instant, she knew they would be picking her up off the floor again.
She felt a strong, gentle hand on her shoulder, and Ben led her out. Joyce scowled at her, then at Ben, as if demanding that they somehow explain. Ben put his arm around Joyce. “Nothing I say,” he began, but she cut him off.
“That’s right. Why would God do this? Why would he let me fall in love with the most wonderful person I’ve ever met, then let this happen to him?”
“It’s not our place to—”
“I’m not allowed to question God Almighty when he takes my husband before our child is—”
“God didn’t take—”
“Who then? What’s the point of faith or any of it?”
Elisabeth’s shoulders slumped. She knew she should worry about salvaging Joyce, her new faith so fragile. But her anger resonated with Joyce’s. She feared what would become of that unborn child, but she was so overcome with revulsion and loss she could barely function.
“Joyce,” Ben said. “God would want you to be honest with him.”
“I don’t want to talk to him.”
“But he wants to hear from you. Do you think he doesn’t know how you feel?”
“If God had anything to do with this,” Joyce said, “he would have protected Bruce.”
Elisabeth couldn’t have agreed more.
Ben insisted on driving them both to Elisabeth’s home in her car, f
ollowed by a squad car that would take him back to his own vehicle. Ben urged Joyce to stay with her mother-in-law until her due date, for both their sakes. Though Joyce did not respond, Elisabeth sensed resignation. Joyce allowed Ben to help her up the stairs.
Elisabeth stood in the front hallway, still in her coat, as if unsure what to do next. Ben descended and said, “I don’t imagine either of you will be sleeping.” She shook her head. “I’m having a hard time with this myself,” he added.
Elisabeth clasped her hands and hung her head. The hollowness of her own voice scared her. “I am just hoping to wake up yesterday.”
“I’ll check in on Will every day for you, and—”
“I’ll be there,” she said.
“Oh. All right then.” He looked at the floor. “I worry about Joyce. Perhaps if we work together on—”
“I’m worried about my own reaction, Ben.”
“That’s natural.”
“Not for me. I’m just at the end.”
He cocked his head and sighed. “I learned a long time ago that words are meaningless at this point,” he said. “Just let me plead with you to make no decisions until you can get some rest. In the meantime, if you need the embrace of an old friend, I’m willing. You know me well enough to know that the last thing I would ever want is to be inappropriate with you.”
“I know, Ben.”
“May I, then?”
“No. But thank you.”
“May I pray for you?”
She shook her head.
“Need help up the stairs?”
She shook her head again.
“I’ll be thinking of you,” he said, stepping past her into the frigid night.
Elisabeth left her coat on as she pulled herself up the stairs with a hand on the banister, aching all the way for Ben Phillips’s encouraging embrace.
She sat heavily on the edge of her bed, kicked her shoes off, and lay on her back, her feet still on the floor. She did not move until dawn. Neither did she sleep. Nor pray.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Elisabeth might have suspected something the next morning, had she not been so debilitated by grief and her tenuous grip on God. It seemed logical when Joyce asked to be driven to Bruce’s and her apartment to pick up a few things.
Elisabeth offered to help, but Joyce asked to be alone awhile. “Sure. Shall I pick you up on the way back from Kalamazoo?”
“I’ll call you,” Joyce said.
Elisabeth wanted to leave her with some encouraging comment, but she was empty. Her own prayers were laced with such bitterness and anger that she felt like Job’s advisers and feared cursing God. What did all of it, any of it, mean? Were the promises of Scripture lies? Where was abundant life, the joy of knowing God, things working together for good?
She tried to pray for Joyce, but that just frustrated her more. Joyce was one of the reasons Bruce should still be alive. What would become of her faith?
Elisabeth felt a dark foreboding as she entered the State Hospital. Several regulars appeared surprised to see her and offered condolences. She could not speak. She merely nodded and continued toward Will’s room. How could news travel so fast?
The orderlies had learned to leave Will’s room the way it had been the night before. They knew Elisabeth liked to open the drapes and blinds herself, to freshen the room for Will. He hadn’t moved for years and never acknowledged anyone. Several times during the day someone would come to turn him, roll him over, helping to prevent bedsores. Still, Elisabeth’s routine was to speak to him and hold his hand and caress him.
Her knees still smarted as she moved slowly down the corridor. The darkness of the room fit her mood and she did not move to open the drapes. She left the lights off and went directly to the still form beneath the blankets. Elisabeth was used to Will’s appearance by now, but somehow he looked even smaller this morning. On his side, his bony hips providing the only rise on the bed, he lay in a fetal position. As she had done for years, she dug beneath the cover for his balled-up fist, forced it open, and let it close around her hand.
She leaned close, unable to tell in the darkness whether his eyes were open. His breathing was deep and regular. “Will,” she whispered, “we lost our baby. I’m glad you can’t take that in. I hardly can. How I would love to drift into unconsciousness myself. But I wish you were here to talk with me. Explain to me Psalm 37 and those verses I have loved so long. I can’t pray. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I’m angry with God. I don’t understand him. I can’t imagine there’s another thing I need to learn from tragedy.”
Weak from fatigue and grief, Elisabeth released Will’s hand, drew the blanket up to his neck, and sat in a reclining chair near the wall. Still bundled against the cold, she kept vigil over the barely alive remains of her husband. Her body ached, her spirit was numb. Sleep would be such sweet relief. Was there any escape from this despair? How could she look forward to her grandchild, due next month? Was it possible to survive this monstrous grief so that somehow she and Joyce could raise that child in Bruce’s childhood home?
She was nodding, nearly dozing, when Ben Phillips tiptoed in and pulled a chair next to hers. Elisabeth barely acknowledged him. He took her hand in both of his, and she was transported to the first time she had felt his grip. So warm, so firm, so compassionate.
“Can we chat a minute?” he said quietly.
She shrugged.
“Joyce asked me to handle the funeral at Christ Church. I spoke with Pastor Clarkson, who understands.”
Elisabeth nodded. She was surprised to find herself actually grateful that this ugly responsibility was now Joyce’s and not hers. She hoped someone would just tell her when to be there.
“Are you all right, Elisabeth?” She turned slowly to look at him, incredulous. “I mean, other than the obvious.”
She wasn’t suicidal, if that’s what he meant. Yet the details of her son’s funeral interested her no more than the sweet relief from grief that a moment of sleep would bring. All she could do was shake her head, and still she had not shed a tear. It was as if her grief was dammed up by an unspeakable rage.
“I have some difficult news, Elisabeth.”
She was so drained she closed her eyes and could hardly open them again. “Ben, I can’t bear another thing. Please.”
“It’s no tragedy, but it’s something you need to know.”
He waited for a response, but she could not communicate.
“Joyce is moving out of her apartment.”
Elisabeth forced herself to look at him. “That’s all right. She can live with me as long as she likes.”
Ben let go of her hand and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “She asked if I would speak with you. She will not be living with you either.”
Elisabeth had to work to keep from slurring. “But surely at least until after the baby comes—”
“She knows your heart is set on that, but she has already moved back to the trailer park.”
Elisabeth squinted, trying to make it figure. “Whatever for?”
“Apparently her cousin lives there with a boyfriend—”
“That’s no environment—”
“I tried to urge her to stay with you at least a while, but she’s angry and dead set—”
“Angry at me?” Elisabeth felt suddenly warm, and when she began to shed her coat, Ben helped her.
“You represent God to her,” he said. “And she’s furious at him.”
So am I, Elisabeth thought. “I need to talk with her,” she said.
“Elisabeth, she doesn’t want to talk to you.”
Elisabeth was disgusted to be brought to the brink of tears over the sting of that insult, when she couldn’t weep over the loss of her precious son. “Can’t she think of the baby?” she said. “Staying with me for now is ideal.”
Ben spread his hands. “I pleaded with her. She’s closed to that. I’m sure your place reminds her of her loss, and she—”
“It does me too, Ben, but I’m n
ot leaving.”
He stood and asked if he could open the drapes and blinds. When she didn’t protest, he flooded the room with harsh sunlight, and she covered her eyes. “Joyce is an adult, Elisabeth. Free to make her own decisions.”
Elisabeth shook her head, stood, and stretched. That made her dizzy and Ben steadied her. She sat back down. “The thought of being alone in that house now …”
“You’re going to get through this, you know.”
Her eyes adjusted to the light. “I’m not so sure,” she said. “My cup is empty, Ben. Where do I turn when I no longer trust where I’ve turned before?”
“That’s grief talking,” he said. “And fatigue.”
“Truth is, it’s a lifetime of disappointment. Can’t anything God does ever make sense?”
Ben stepped to the door and kept his back to Elisabeth. “I don’t know if you want answers or sympathy. I’ve never claimed to know the mind of God.”
She sighed loudly, near collapse. He returned and sat with her. Elisabeth wanted to fall into his embrace, to weep on his chest, to be held and rocked. Not because this man was the love of her youth, but because he knew her, cared for her, and—she hoped—understood her.
“Delight yourself also in the Lord,” she began in a whisper. “And he shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass.”
He smiled. “Precious promises.”
“They aren’t true, Ben! I’ve delighted myself in the Lord my whole life. Do you think it was the desire of my heart to never know my mother? To lose my father? To be kicked out of my own house? To lose all three of my children? My husband lies here only forty-six years old and could linger many more years. God gives me the son any mother would dream of, dramatically protects him over and over, then lets him die?” She raised her voice and couldn’t help it, and with her shouts finally came the tears. “I don’t want to understand the mysteries of heaven! I just want God to make sense one time!”
Ben stood. “Walk with me.”
“Ben, I’m exhausted. My knees hurt.”
“Just to the dayroom,” he said.
Elisabeth followed him there and sat on a love seat facing the east windows where the sun streamed in. Ben sat on a table, blocking the light, his frame silhouetted in the window. “I fought God over this same issue. It’s clear he does not give us whatever we desire, so either we are not truly delighting ourselves in him—”
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