Bible in a Closet

As I cleaned out my closet, I wondered when the piles upon stacks upon teetering towers of clothing would finally bury me. Fortunately, that moment never came. What was certain was the inevitable weight of my mother's stare at my back.

"Son, you need Jesus. Look at this mess."

You'd think my mother thought Jesus was the janitor of SkyMall or something. She never failed to quote his name at least three times in the average conversation. Hell, it was probably more than that. At any rate, Jesus was some Godly Custodian who made me look like a wretch, like me, who was once lost, etc.

The point is, Mom loved some Jesus, and was mad I couldn't find Dad's Bible.



The leatherbound visage of Christ was somewhat of a family heirloom. Mom made a point to tell me (at length) how much of a disappointment I was to my late father, God rest his soul. And, yeah, I felt pretty shitty about it. But, for the love of Moses, can I just go on being a sinner who wants to forget about the general disapproval I received from my parents throughout college? I was only home because Dad was dead, so it really baffled me that she wanted me to stay for more than five minutes.

Finally, after a helluva time wading through all of my shit, I found the goddamn Bible. It was leatherbound (remember, the visage of Christ?) with gold letters engraved on the front cover and spine: THE HOLY BIBLE. It smelled like old people and book-glue. It was a family heirloom. I lobbed it to Mom, who scrambled to catch it before it caught the floor. (Would we have to burn it? I hope so.)

She hooted and hollered as I dusted off my khakis. Yeah, I should have just handed it to her, but it was too much fun to see the color drain from her face as the Bible flew through the air in the same way a brick graces the surface of an Olympic swimming pool. As I passed her, on my way out of my room and my parents' house, she stopped me.

"Brian," she said, tears flowing as rivers down the canyons and craters of her face, "take it. You need it more than I ever will."

Damn. I took it, kissed her forehead, and left for good. The good: I wasn't being beat with a paddle on the way out. The bad: I was entrusted with my Dad's old Bible, and I had no idea what to do with it.

**

"You know, you could just burn it."

Patrick was my kind of man. He would rather burn a Bible than, say, give it to a homeless kid. In fact, I figured if I mentioned that, he'd criticize me for poisoning the minds of future generations. Good one, internal Patrick.

"I can't just do that -- I mean, I could, but what kind of person would that make me?"

"A stand-up guy, Charlie Brown."

This went on, until we finally decided to just throw the damn thing in our closet, and forget we even got the thing to begin with. It was pretty easy. Time went on. We did non-Jesus things for a very Jesus-like amount of time. The only thing Jesus-y was the use of "Jesus" as a prefix in my afore mentioned thoughts. This went on. I got a dog. He got hit by a car. And then I realized I needed Jesus.

**



My mom was not doing so well. She had caught a bout of cancer and, while there was a lot of fight left in that bitch, she didn't see the point to taking copious amounts of drugs which will make her more miserable than she already was. Checkmate, Mom.

So I searched frantically for the Bible, and hoped she would accept me back into her life as she did her Creator.

The hospital room the miserable, twisted fucks at St. Augustine's Memorial Hospital put her in was criminal. There was practically twenty yards separating her from the very Godly and reverant chaplain, who happened to go to the same Baptist church as my mother. It was a match made in heaven. And Hell. All at once. She required his services often, and requested I not be present for their meetings.

"Only the Godly can walk this hallowed ground," she said, toward the end. The funny thing is, if the woman gave half a shit about her life, she would have taken the goddamned medicine instead of spiritually groping the hospital chaplain.

I remembered him from high school. He had some really off-the-wall Tourette's tic where he would flick everyone off. It was quite endearing, but I put it past him because he was sick. Mom just couldn't put it past her that science was smarter than praying her problems away. She died, and then some guy in a priestly smock was sending his condolences to me.

"What a lovely Bible, Brian," he said, as I sat down a couple hours after her passing, "that is the kind of thing that's passed down, generation to generation."

I could have been an asshole then. I was gay. I was an atheist. I was kind of happy my mother was dead, and this guy had wasted so much time trying to connect with her for the final moments of her life. I did (kinda) feel that I owed him something. But I couldn't place it. I looked down at the Bible, and I felt a warmth pass through me which is unexplainable by modern science or theology. I felt something. For the first time in years, I felt something from nothing.

It was then, I realized the most important lesson my mother had taught me. You could hate someone or something for as long as you wanted, but until something spawned from that hatred, you're as good as the next loser.

"Yeah, I'm giving it to the kid I adopted with Patrick," I said, walking away from that chaplain, "hopefully he'll find something of use with it."