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I stood on top of the washing machine, staring wide-eyed out of the shed’s small window. They had shot my daddy. For some reason the policemen had come to my house and shot my daddy! He was lying on his stomach in the front lawn. I saw the blood all over his face as the policeman pulled him to his feet. I tried to scream to him, but I could barely breathe a whisper. He kept his hands behind his back as the policeman helped him into the backseat of the patrol car. I hoped the officer was taking him to the hospital.
There I stood, swallowing the bitter ashes left behind by an angry fire, though my own hands were much too small to strike a match.
The sky darkened. Pretty blue and red lights splashed dizzily over the grass. I sat alone in the front seat of a police car and stroked my puppy, the little black one with the white wires jutting from its chest. I turned the controller knobs to make him bark and jump, but he did nothing. A policeman opened up the car door and slid into the seat behind the steering wheel. He smiled and asked my age. Looking down at the shiny black eyes of my dead puppy, I poked three chubby fingers up in his direction, quickly dropping my hand back to my lap. In dark silence he drove me to a house I had never seen before, and left me cowering behind a stranger’s chair.
The lady didn’t talk very much, but she was kind. Once, in the middle of the night when ashes rose up from my insides and spewed forth in a scream, she held me. Her coffee-colored arms felt strong and warm as they wrapped around my cold, sweat-soaked nightgown. My stay in her home was short lived, only a few days to let things “settle down” in my world. An eerie thing about ashes is that they never really “settle down” anywhere. They lay still and wait, eager to distribute their dirty, dry mist on the breeze. I was happy to learn that I would soon call my great-grandma’s house home, but the reason why was heavy with sorrow. The three-year-old fabric of my life was to be altered, yet again. My father had neither been shot by the police, nor driven to the hospital by an officer. He had been taken to prison; and my mother had been taken to the morgue. An argument had erupted, and two hot, young tempers had flared. A loaded shotgun stood too closely by. Consumed by the fires of anger, my father pulled the trigger, ending the argument forever. The blood on my father’s face was the remnant of a tender embrace. An apology, hoarse with sincerity, spoken too late.
I did not go to the funeral, but later attended a family gathering. It was there that the ashes, disguised as a tantrum, kicked and screamed their way out of me in violent revolt to the sight of my aunt in my dead mother’s dress.
The world turned. Home was many state lines from where it used to be. In silent agreement, we never spoke of the past. It hurt too much. I found the silence hurt even more.
By the time he reached twenty-five years of age, my father had already served his time and was coming home. The morning he arrived, I ran barefoot out on the lawn to meet him. He held me up close to him as my feet dangled miles above the ground. We smiled at each other nose to nose. I knew by his letters that he loved me much. I believe he loves me still, although he keeps his distance. Maybe he fears his ashes will overspread me. Little does he know, thirty-one years later, I still sometimes feel them coursing dryly through my veins.
I praise God for placing the plump, age spotted hands of a godly great-grandmother upon me. She set me gently upon the potter’s wheel and covered the dry ash with Christ’s blood. Prayerfully, she molded and shaped me, nurturing my transformation from ash filled urn to empty clay pot; a vessel created for holding salt, light, and living water.
Beauty for ashes- a precious gift received from a merciful savior.
…To give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness… Isiah 61:3 KJV
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