God's Anthony

I really don’t mean to seem selfish here, but is it too much to ask that people I care about take a rest from dying for awhile?

I see the quizzical or sometimes blank stares when I take my firm stance on how everything happens for a reason, yet refuse to give someone named “God” credit for it.  The only thing about God’s Will I ever took a shine to was the song from Martina McBride. 

Just before the holidays a few months ago, I came across an old phone number scrawled on a cardboard coaster in a box of personal notes.  It was a number for a friend I hadn’t spoken to in over a decade – don’t remember the whys or whens, but that it was some silly argument or other.  About five years ago, I’d asked the one friend Lisa and I had in common if she knew her whereabouts, as my searching online had come up unsuccessful.  Dori said no, they didn’t speak anymore.  This past December, I had a renewed desire to find Lisa, to know where life had taken her.  It was intense, and weighed on my mind for weeks.  Another search of all the social sites turned up nothing.  Not sure why everyone is so paranoid about The Power Of Google – I can’t ever find shit when searching for anyone.

So, one night about two weeks ago, I’m talking to Dori on Facebook, and we’re reminiscing about the good old days of the bar she worked at and I frequented.  “You know, I still can’t help but wonder about Lisa.” I typed.

“She had a stroke about a year ago.  In fact, she died just last month.” 

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It was a few days before the numbness wore off that I could text my minister friend, Anthony, to ask “Do you believe in God’s will?” – already knowing his answer, but wanting him to ask why I was asking. 

The next day came the answer: “Yes.”

And his ball hadn’t even begun to roll yet. 

I still find it so ironic that I have mad love and infinite patience for a man of the cloth.

It was a week before I received a call from Anthony, telling me he’d been in the hospital for the past several days, with a neck fracture, and his cryptic message lured me to a place I dread more than anywhere:  “I’ll explain the rest when I see you.”  The next day, my frustration taken out on the hospital staff wasn’t all about the revolting parking situation.  The clinical smell, the lurching elevators that only seem to exist in this house of horrors, the heater blasting dry, useless air throughout the rooms in an attempt to warm the patients that really did nothing but make me wonder who didn’t know it’d been 75 degrees outside that day?

Oh.  The people stuck in this place, that’s who.

God’s will.  Had Anthony not had his neck ripped apart by his quack of a chiropractor, he’d not have learned he has cancer. 

Sure, he may have found out at some point, but not “in time.”  In time for what, I haven’t a clue.  He’s explained the prognosis to me with a weak smile on his handsome face, citing the Lord’s grand design for him as his faith that things “will be alright.”

Understandably, he wasn’t asking why I was asking.