I had never met him.
I had never even met his Nephew except a half an hour before his memorial service.
I expressed my condolences and asked if he or anyone else might want to speak during the service.
The Nephew said he would be sharing some thoughts.
I had a small opening welcome and short prayer and then invited The Nephew to come forward to share and he did so much more.
He told that his uncle was a World War II vet who never much talked about the war. Recently as his uncle declined and had to be placed in a nursing facility and later, on hospice care, he began sharing his story.
The Nephew shared a story his uncle told him within a week of his death. He had become very restless and no matter what medications were administered, he wasn’t calmed.
The Nephew shared he went to see his uncle one early morning before he left for work, after what the nursing home staff called and stated, it was a fairly difficult and anxious night.
His uncle, who had been fairly confused, told The Nephew of an early morning during the war.
He said that he was lost from his platoon and was wondering through the forest in the fog when he came upon a German soldier propped up against a tree, sleeping, with his gun nearby.
When the German soldier awoke and went for his gun, it was too late. The Uncle already was standing over him with his gun just inches from the soldier’s head.
The German Soldier begged him not to pull the trigger and asked him, “Do you have a family? Do you have kids?”
The Uncle said he did and the German Soldier asked if he could see pictures of his children and wanted to know if he in return could show him pictures of his kids.
They shared a moment.
They talked about families of loneliness, of missing what was most important to the both of them.
Two, tired, weary, fathers/husbands/sons/soldiers, they shared a moment, a moment of compassion, of humanity, of Commonness.
The Uncle, handed back the pictures and received the ones he had just shared with the German soldier and asked him, “Do you believe in Heaven?”
The German soldier nodded and agreed that he did believe in heaven.
The Uncle then said, “Maybe we’ll meet again there.”
And he pulled the trigger and fatally shot the German soldier in the head.
Psssssssssst: Come back to me.
We are in the middle of a memorial service of a man I had never met, hearing a story from The Nephew, another man I had never met, and I, like the forty or so others, for the first time, heard THAT Story.
You want to talk about ‘hear-a-pin-drop-silence?’
The air was sucked out of the room. . .and before the next breath could be taken, before any of us could dare believe what we were about to hear next, The Nephew asked, almost in unbelievable horror, “Uncle…How, HOW HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO LIVE WITH YOURSELF?”
He related that the Uncle, just above a raspy whisper stated, “Who says I have?”
The Nephew shared that there was an awkward silence between them that early morning in the nursing home. He said The Uncle with a tear running down the side of his cheek also shared, “Every day I ask God to forgive me. . .and every day He does.”
The first thought I had when The Nephew sat down after sharing was, “How do I respond to that? What am I going to say?”
Funny, my first thought was about ME, huh?
“EVERY DAY I ASK GOD TO FORGIVE ME AND EVERYDAY I HE DOES,” I echoed and then, I echoed again.
Our lives are a mixture of all different colored threads…some much darker than others…and yet they all make up this thing called, “The Tapestry of our Lives.” All of those loose-ends, those dangling strings, those jumbled, tumbled up knots that make up the BACK of our Tapestries also, most definitely, CREATE the FRONT of our Tapestries as well.
This happened a few years ago and it hasn’t left me yet.
My biggest Wondering is often,
WHICH OF US ISN’T THE UNCLE?
Which of us, asking forgiveness, believes we actually receive it–
F O R E V E R ?
Sometimes…GETTING is the Hardest type of Giving!
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