The Atomic Priest VIII

(A Continuation of The Atomic Priest II...)

And since isolation has always been my greatest fear, it was comforting to learn that I would not pass on alone.

Now many near death experiences eventually come around to explaining how the individual [soul] embarks on his or her journey back into the host body--the vessel which contains the soul, one of the great mysteries of God. Some explain instantaneous arrival back into the vessel while other explain a sort of trip backwards from the breath of God to Earth itself.

Much like my life, my transition back into human form was rather mundane, something like a dream within a dream, as Edgar Allan Poe once described. When I opened my eyes I was oblivious to any real pain. They had enough morphine pumping through me to dull that obviously dreadful aspect of the human condition. What I do recall with absolute clarity is my mother's face looking down at me--swollen, red, wet, inconsolable, surprised, tired, worried. My father's countenance was similar, however, I detected a kind of rage that only fathers whose sons have been lost to the bastardization of the practice of medicine can endure. Still, they were both relieved; they both spoke coherently enough for me to make out the following words and expressions: love, we love you, oh my God, we love you.

And then I saw my surgeon and heard what he had to say. Now, you may think that my surgeon, a certain Dr. D*********, would have shared similar feelings and emotive responses--similar to the thoughts of gratitude and/or horror my parents carried within their hearts and minds. But this was not the case. As is the fact with too many surgeons and doctors and praticiens de médecine these days, Dr. D. [let's call him Dr. D., shall we?] had little to offer in the ballpark of emotional response because, let's face it--he is (or was) a doctor, a person who practices medicine like a rancher slaughtering so many cattle to meet his status quo, his quota for the month, the year, the lifetime his license allows him to practice under the tenure of his time as such--Dr. D. really didn't give a rat's tooth whether I lived, died, went insane, or sued him collectively following either or the other. It was no skin off his nose or the noses of his sterling team of human-devouring lawyers. No. So...when I saw my surgeon and heard what he had to say in his broken English, a language secondary to his native tongue of Phillapino, it really didn't strike me as anything beyond a poor joke.

"Richard!" he exclaimed with a plastic smile only Seventh-Day Adventists can achieve (after years and years of practice, naturally): "Richard! You are alive!"

And for some reason I attempted to smile back through the tubes running down my nose and throat and respond in kind.

But I just didn't have the strength. Nor did I care. I just wanted to turn back and head Home. Because it was at that moment that one of the many things God spoke to me came flooding back when I watched the tears run down my mother's face, nose, cheeks, and dribble from her chin. It was something He said to me that I was unable to shake loose.

"It will not be easy. But I will always be with you."

What won't be easy? And why?

And Lord God...how is it that You will always be with me when You've got so much to do?

And when can I come back Home?

There was something else as well.

Something about those who claim to love me turning their backs on me.

Why?

Why?

(To be continued...)