The Offering Plate
Six year old Madelyn considered Uncle Mark one of her friends. Neither she, nor Mark, ever noticed the age difference, the 25 years that stood between them, never an issue. They often colored together, neither of them speaking a word. Both sitting at the table, their lips pursed in concentration. They took their art work seriously. They always worked away at a picture of a Disney character and used various forms of media- crayons, colored pencils, watercolors, chalk, to create.
They used their art as a way to symbolically communicate with each other. At various times, they were forced to be apart so that any bacteria or virus that Madelyn unknowingly carried would not invade Mark's fragile system and reek havoc on the careful work his immune system accomplished. One particular spell, while Mark was in the hospital for a few weeks, Madelyn used the offering envelopes at church to write him some sort of note with a picture of her and a lop-sided heart. When I visited Mark, I made sure to bring the notes she wrote so I would not have to answer to my six-year-old when I got home as to why Uncle Mark didn't comment on her latest letter to him. Mark, even at his sickest, always received her letters and pictures like they were the absolute neatest thing he'd ever laid his eyes upon.
On the Sunday following Mark's death, Madelyn asked me for money to put in the offering as she did every Sunday. When the plate was passed, I noticed two envelopes in the plate and both bore the unique signature of "MADELYN." I asked my daughter why there were two envelopes, I could see money in one of them but couldn't tell what was inside the other envelope. Madelyn told me that she wrote Uncle Mark a note and she was confident that God would give it to him to read.
She wrote, "Dear Markepoo, I love you. The Mark will go. Lopsided heart, Madelyn."
I knew that the sentence "The Mark will go, had something to do with the fact that she had been learning those exact words in kindergarten now for the previous month. The, will, and go, were all what I knew to be Madelyn's "sight words"- word that she was supposed to recognize and write by memory. It wouldn't be too strange that Madelyn had written Mark the latest of what she was learning. She often shared some detail of her life with him. She would call him on the phone to discuss getting in trouble at school or losing a tooth. Still, I couldn't help thinking that maybe those sight words also held some other meaning. After all, it was Madelyn who told Metra and I that Mark would be better in ten days. On the tenth day after the proclamation was made, Mark's fight was over, just as foretold. Perhaps the silent bond between the two artists- one 32 years old, and the other six years old, was stronger than death. The two were linked together in a way that was un seen- so I discounted it. I merely pegged it as a love between an uncle and his niece. Nothing extraordinary.
Perhaps love is, in its purest form- stronger than death. My six year old knew this about her and Mark's love, why didn't I?
posted by Catmaster @ 10:06 AM
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