Page 173 of Share with Me

“Are you all right? You’re not getting sick, are you?” Ivan helped her to her walker. Then he walked with her to her bedroom at the back of the small house.

“I forgot my Bi—never mind. I’ll read it in the morning.”

“I’ll get your Bible for you, Grandma. Did you put it in the usual spot?”

“No!”

Ivan was taken aback.What is going on?

“No, Ivan. Tonight I am going to recite some verses I already know by heart.”

“Sounds good to me, Grandma.”No need to be uptight.

Ivan helped her get to the bathroom where she brushed her teeth and combed her hair. Then he put her favorite nightgown on the bed, and left Grandma in her bedroom.

He returned to the kitchen and put away the leftovers in the refrigerator.

I can’t believe that cost fifty dollars.

* * *

The house wasquiet save for the water from the faucet and clinking dishes in the sink and his memories of Brinley drying plates in December. He remembered how she had disarmed his concerns and allayed his fears of being looked down upon as poor. Sure, but what had she really thought?

Forget her.

It could never be.

He wished the dishwasher wasn’t broken. It was hard to wash everything by hand, but the latex gloves kept his hands dry. He tried not to use his left hand as much but he had no choice. His wrist throbbed as the soapy water sloshed over the plates and silverware. If he turned it the wrong way this and that, a sharp pain in the wrist made him wince.

He tried to get his mind off the pain by thinking of something else. He thought of the things that Grandma had said to him this evening. She had always been a teacher. Even now at such a grand age, she had not stopped teaching her grandchildren.

Never forget that God is always faithful no matter what happens to us.

Had he forgotten God?

In his recent unfortunate circumstances, in his horrifying fear that he could never turn his wrist to reach the strings on the fingerboard again, in his anger over the potential loss of income doing what he loved best, in his inability to see any good in this tragedy, had he forgotten God?

Not in the sense that he had abandoned his faith, but that he was upset that God let all these bad things happen to his life and that somehow he had to fix things himself as if he were taking God’s place over these problems?

Had heforgottenGod?

As he dried the dishes and put them away in the cabinets, the coin flipped in his mind.Has God forgotten him?

Grandma Yun would object to that, but at the bottom of a hole with no way out, Ivan wondered about it. Had God just plain old abandoned him and his family?

Grandma Yun had always been a strong and faithful Christian. Why didn’t God reward her? Why did God allow her life to be so bad and their living conditions so poor?

Sure, Grandma would say their lives were not all thatbad. Someday they’d all go to heaven and things would be perfect.

Yeah. In heaven.

But they were here on earth. Next week, the house payment was due. They had no money to make the payments. All his income from SISO had been used to pay their multiple mortgages. At the back of his mind he wondered if they should have consolidated the mortgages or perhaps paid off the first before the second or third.

I’m a musician, not an accountant.

A headache formed at the top of his head and spread to all sides. He’d better get some sleep and think about this in the morning. A few days from now, he would start his first day of work at Matt’s thrift shop. However, he wouldn’t get paid until the following Friday. And minimum wage wasn’t going to keep the house. It was too little, too late.

It seemed silly to get a performance degree from Juilliard and tour the world only to come to such a bitter end with his music career. Why did God allow this? Had God not given him the gift of music? Why take it all away? He was only thirty years old. What was he going to do the next sixty years if he lived that long? He had no other skills except music.

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