Innocence

The following is a short story I wrote about two years ago. While it may seem a bit bleak, I feel us confronting death and our knowledge of our mortality helps free us to live with more joy. I wanted the story to be difficult. Walking by faith means you are walking by belief and not by sight, and so the things you see are not what everyone else sees. You go to those things despite their blindness. I look to the martyrs who walked into lion's dens with song and smiles and have to believe they saw something no one else did.

I also like using the word 'Innocence' because it means so much more than the surface implies.

Luke 18:17 'Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not recieve the Kingdom of the Creator as a little child, shall in no wise enter therein.'

Many of us have been tainted by our hard and difficult experiences in life, horrors no one else will ever know. To make peace with the Creator and the Savior, is to die to that old wisdom, be born again in the Spirit, and approach as a child.

Now that I stand near a narrow door that will soon open and summon me into its prepared keeping, I find cause to preserve my fondest memories in hopes that my experiences will not be lost.  I have grown weary of telling the tale for not few but none believed.  Perhaps this last testimony will give some of you pause and a heart to search the deeper depths of things.

            Years ago, my wife and I attended the gravesite of her deceased grandfather for the first time.  Near the place we sought, we happened upon a granite dais just sitting out in an open field.  A young man in his early thirties, black skin, morning stubble, sat on the stone with a year old child.

            When the man saw that we had noticed him, he seemed pleased by our curiosity and invited us to approach and share in his joy.  Being childless ourselves, we welcomed the opportunity and happily climbed up on the pedestal.

            The man introduced himself as Robert and said that the babe was called Innocence.  One look into her light blue eyes made us comprehend the name.  She was picture-perfect, a rare beauty, playful, alive and free.  We selfishly held the child in our arms as if she were our own.  We embraced her, we smiled at her, and we made every silly face we knew.  It was a great day.

             But as great days often do, they come to early ends.

            The sky which had been perfectly clear all morning suddenly became thick with a gathering of gray clouds.  A light northern breeze cooled the air around us.

            Robert was fighting back tears in his eyes.  We didn’t know what to think.

            Innocence gave us a little hiccup that brought a small bubble of spit to her lips; she made another smile, turned her head, and died.  Her perky blue eyes just rolled back in her tiny head and her arms went limp and dangled without life.

            My wife and I cried in shock, we did not know what to do.

            Robert was quite calm.  Sad, he swaddled the small babe in a pink blanket and placed the bundle of joy on the center of the stone.  He climbed down off the dais and asked us to follow him.  We could not believe he wanted us to leave a dead baby here but he urged us to obey this simple request.

            “Walk a mere ten steps with me,” He said, “and then do what you like.”

            Arm and arm, my wife and I turned our backs on the child and walked with Robert ten steps.  I was so deep in thought, so consumed by regret; I did not look at Robert until the last two steps were made.  The strange young man was no longer young, but an old man with a cane, his morning stubble grown out into a full and aged beard.

            I turned around to see what my wife was already seeing.  The granite dais we had enjoyed was gone and replaced by graves as far as the eye could see.  It was a lonely cemetery again, stark, cold and bleak.

            Robert, a dried up tearstain still evident on his cheek, smiled.  He led us slowly back ten steps to the place we had come from.  There was a small, rectangular marker with a lamb sculpture on its mantle.   There were no dates inscribed, only a single word, a single name, Innocence.

            “I was as you saw me when I came upon this place years ago.  Another couple such as yourselves invited me as I invited you.  Innocence remembers me young, so in her presence, I am.”

            “How is this possible?” I asked.

            “How is life possible?” He answered.  “Innocence cannot tell us what she does not know.  She just knows she is happy.  She comes back here every year at this time, for one precious hour.  As difficult as it is to repeat her death, time and time again, the fifty-nine minutes I spend with her carefree spirit are worth it, wouldn’t you agree?”

            We could not argue with that conclusion and quickly resolved to meet Robert here again the next year from the start.  This time we saw it all.  We saw the dais come up out of the ground and watched Robert walk the steps back into his youth.  As a family, we enjoyed one another’s company and snuggled with our Innocence.  That day passed all too quickly and once again our baby died.

            When we hugged Robert goodbye, it was for the last time.  He went into his eternal rest later that year in a nursing home.  The nurse said that Robert spoke of seeing a child in his room and spoke insensately of his innocence.

            My wife and I made the child’s granted hour a pilgrimage.  Our visitations became religious in nature and we never forsook our duty.  No one believed us.  No one ever beheld the wonder that we saw.  When we brought them with us to the graveyard, they said it was as if we fell down dead for an hour and they could not revive us.  After that, we did not care to share out tale anymore.  We went on without them, year after year after year after year.

Then my wife got the cancer but we still went.  I looked forward to our journey together, watching my wife walk those ten steps from crippling pain into vigorous youth again.  She was so beautiful in the presence of Innocence.  I see my dearest love now, holding the baby, smelling her hair, kissing her head, embracing her close to her chest, singing softly, laughing joyfully, never wanting to leave, never wanting life to end.

It did end.  Leave me she did.

Today I am on the dais alone, attending our child one last time.  In her small hands I imagine all of the glorious works yet to come, all of the hopes and dreams of a million children.

How soon will Innocence die?

From the doorstep of a place without end I implore you to go and find your child, seek her out and keep her close.  Find your Innocence again.

Life is not measured in personal loss but rather in the allotted years, in the gathered months, in the precious hours we coo, we laugh, we sing and we smile, together, family.  It is in this curious relationship we discover purpose and meaning.

Happy is what I am.

Happy is what I will always be.

Innocence is smiling at me with her blue eyes and I am smiling back.

It feels great to be young again.