Promised to God

I never intended to write anything like this.

Although many of the best things that happened to me were never intended. Struck down mid-stride by the supernova that is my spouse, Karen. There I was, 56 and unshackled, holding out my wrists to be claimed. A stopgap job at a law firm, a match, a spark, now 28 years in and the law still delights me with its most structured of flames. Karen’s desire for a Jewish wedding; I convert to a new religion, which was also a returning to the terrifying faith of the soul that stood at Sinai all those years ago. One day driving down the street 15 years ago, the still small voice told me I could no longer live as a woman. My life thereafter sung in another key.

Then there were the things I intended but could not do. Ways closed to individual effort, trees fallen across roadways, a storm obscuring the summit on the last day for climbing. Getting sober on my own was a bust — it took God to lift that affliction. Other intentions thwarted; children asked for but withheld, sometimes their absence still haunting me. How old would he or she be now? The judgeship I had once sought, interviews, thin rejection letters. A divorce, shared custody, my adored stepson gone from my daily life for good.

And now this, the thing there is no word for, a parent whose child has died. A reverse orphan? The same cut-off-ness, but this time the severance is from the future, not the past. How I wish I could have pulled Isabel from the abyss, the way her mom snatched her up at the last second when as a toddler she waddled toward traffic. She’d played soccer and softball, all the women in my family lived forever, my mom still on her riding mower at 94. Bel’s heart stopped, or her lungs, something about her body quit while she slept, and she was gone forever.

These were the words her mother said to me, on the most awful of days: “Bel is gone.” I knew what she meant even before my mind could process the words. Like it had always been what was going to happen, and on some level beyond human consciousness, I knew it. I surely didn’t intend to be the parent who gets that call, although I suspect all parents fear it. Rightly so.

Then again, maybe I did know, recklessly promising Bel to God even before she was conceived. Even her name honored my pledge. I was 34, foolish and desperate for a child. I was Christian enough then, praying hard in church, wrapping my heart around the story of Hannah sobbing in the temple. The priest Eli saw Hannah praying silently and accused her of being drunk. She spilled out her heart and in turn received a blessing. Almost immediately, her womb is opened. I too prayed silently, crying in the pews, tears and snot flowing. I cannot claim complete ignorance. I read the whole story before I made my vow. When Hannah’s beautiful, perfect child is still very young, she dutifully delivers him to God. A loaner, not an outright gift. I admit I knew even then, that with my vow Bel too would always be God’s only. Not mine. I rationalized it; maybe everyone belongs to God, after all. After 22 years I no longer thought about what I had done.

Once as a three-year old, Bel told me her three favorite things were dogs, camping and God. Bel was unchurched. I had no idea how she knew God enough to love him/her/them like that. Even without her being exposed to religion, part of me expected Bel to eventually take vows, or otherwise devote her life to God. When she was a little older, maybe four, she begged me to visit the Catholic church by her daycare. Here it comes, I remember thinking. Once inside, she looked around with horror at the life-sized sculptures of saints, Jesus hung up there, paintings. “I want to go home,” she said, in a tone that meant it.

By the time she died, Isabel had not made any formal movement toward God that I know of. But at her memorial I learned of her countless small kindnesses, her befriending of outcasts, her courage in standing up to injustice. The next year I read about a nun in a small rural community, no one really, but whose body was found uncorrupted years later when they went to move it. The Vatican was consulted. People made pilgrimages to see the body. I wondered whether Bel was a holy person of some kind; how many of those around us are? Maybe that ordinary woman in line at the grocery store in her cheap shoes, or the left-handed boy playing baseball in the park. We miss it constantly I suspect, only sometimes finding out because of what they leave behind.

Sometimes there is no other possible outcome, especially where promises are made to God. What a humbling thing, to be a Hannah, to be trusted with what is lent. What a strange, holy path. Invested totally in the raising and the loving, yet holding lightly, knowing the day would come. Bel is not mine and never was, but our love for one another other was something. Love is what I got, time together, being a dad, a nobody carrying a holy life along until God called in the debt.

Having had that holy walk, that unremarkable walk of an ordinary person, who am I now? One who remembers the dead, I thought once. A human grave marker. I am that, for sure.

Then for some reason, I began to write. The narrative structure, like my life, everywhere in pieces, not even a forensic expert could piece together where the blast occurred. I didn’t care. Anything and everything got put down, no shame, no self-censorship, no goals, no intentions. What the Hell is this? I wondered, reading my work. I sat down later and read it again. There is a structure after all, but it was fragmented, twisted, with missing parts. Exactly like what remained of my self. I found myself deep in Torah, marveling at what I did not know. I wrote about politics, my mom, sex, death. Ideas arose, fully formed. I wrote a short story, a humorous essay. I pitched ideas to news outlets. I submitted to literary journals and was published, often. I did not intend any of that, either.

So, I walked a holy path for a bit, not alone like the prophets or saints, but with Bel and those who loved her, and later, Karen. I was lucky that Bel was around long enough to hold one of the poles to the Chuppa as I circled my beloved on our perfectly stormy wedding day. You can see my girl there in our wedding photos, looking bemused.

I think I did right by the Almighty. My biggest fault is that I couldn’t let go, not gracefully like Hannah did it. Bel had to be pulled from my grasp.

And still, I hold on. I fear finishing the book of which this essay is a part, I fear accepting Bel’s gone-ness. I fear returning to the self I was before she came, unbound by the cells of my body that walked outside me for a while. I can no longer frame my search for meaning and joy as something she would have wanted. She wouldn’t have wanted any of this.

It is for God again and always, to send me another commission. This one is finished. How wild and wonderful it was.