Sun obscured by Clouds Photo by Billy Howell
By WILLIAM PRENTISS
Clarksdale, Mississippi
He is God. Why didn’t He protect me? I blamed Him. It wasn’t His fault. Life ain’t fair. That’s that.
No more pleas for them to hear. They can’t. Two years, and only Sis hears. Well, she really doesn’t hear. I talk to God about it. Guess you would call it prayer. He passes on what He will.
Here I am, always, no feeling, no sight, only sound: beeps, grunts, gripes, chuckles, groans and the oft-repeated “how’s he doing today?” I don’t blame them. I don’t know what I look like. All I have are their descriptions.
The inane chatter used to bother me, not any more. Things change when time and body stand still, yet the only thing changed is my thinking.
Comatose, their word, only Sis seems to know that I can hear. She spent the first year telling staff and a dwindling visitor population that I might be listening. She even believed it most of the time, but faith falters with little evidence.
Not until I got over being mad at God for my assault was I able to start communing with Him again. Then, He started talking to her and she started listening! Funny how that works!
He has my full attention these days, and that is a good thing. I don’t talk, can’t, and never really talked to Him before, just conversed with Him in my mind, like I do now.
I spent most of the last two years angry with Him, mad at soft-on-crime politicians, preachers and judges and full of hate toward the kids who beat me up. They were just children, lost as directionless baby geese with parents as immature as they were. Some days I still want an eye for an eye. I want to challenge them and beat them down like they did me, but then, Sis comes in and we have our Mornings with Tolstoy…
MORNINGS WITH TOLSTOY consists of the inner reflections of a man in a coma, the victim of a senseless beating. He can only hear, and no one knows this, but maybe his sister. Sis reads three devotional pieces daily and the internal dialogue reflects his response to them.
Mornings with Tolstoy – The Beginning
Mornings with Tolstoy – Day Two: And Goodness for All
Mornings with Tolstoy – Day Three: Focus on the present
Mornings with Tolstoy – Day Four: Pilgrims
Mornings with Tolstoy – Day Five: Fettered by Dysfunction
Mornings with Tolstoy – Day Six: Limitations of Pride and Selfishness
Mornings with Tolstoy – Day Seven: Empathy, Compassion and the Root of Both
Mornings with Tolstoy – Day Eight: Religion and Intellect
Mornings with Tolstoy – Day Nine: Conscience, God, Others, and Self
Mornings with Tolstoy – Day Ten: Wealth
Mornings with Tolstoy – Day Eleven: Where?
Mornings with Tolstoy – Day Twelve: Civilization and the Inner Self
Mornings with Tolstoy – Day Thirteen: Judgment, Intentions and Actions
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