Witness in Death

Dear Sissy,

You won’t believe this. Ok, you will. You remember Forti, the Greek guy? Well anyways his name is Foti, but he tells people it’s Forti because it’s easier to pronounce. “Like the number,” he’ll say. Well, I asked him what it meant—“the one who gives light,” he says. So I tell him that’s what my name means. Aaron means something like “enlightener.” Or so I have been told. Or maybe I made it up. Even if it’s not true, it’s still a good story…

ANYWAY. Back in the summer, Foti and got into it when he said the whole church and God thing was ridiculous. Well, you know me, I won’t take that and so I said something like, “The ‘whole’ thing? Please. I can buy that half of it is ridiculous. But the whole thing?” We went back and forth and I was working him over about choice and consciousness. We parted and I knew he’s one of those guys you can argue with heatedly and he’ll be ok.

So, for the next few months, he’d stare at me from the porch. He’d tilt his head back and take a drag on his Marlboro, thinking I was perverting the neighborhood. Then Big Doug’s house burned down, and he was blown away that we were helping them the way we were. After that, he’d wave at me when he drove down the road. And we even talked in his house, when he needed to ask someone about an ethical question. He asks me, the man who believes in totally ridiculous things!!! Then when we were putting in the garden, he was freaked out. He really got on a tear about the cost of produce and I think he was happy that we are going to make kids eat their vegetables…

[Sissy already knows all this story, but she’d listen anyway, because early in our relationship, she’d say, “you already told me that,” but then she realized that I always start at the beginning every time, working it over in my mind…]

Well, Foti was in Greece visiting family for a month and now he’s back. He was there when AC Milan beat Liverpool in Athens. Dog. So, we were on his porch, just talking and he asked me where I live. I said Shelbyville and he wondered why. I told him you had been sick and needed treatment at UL. He asked what was wrong. It was that awkward moment (for him, not so much for me) when I said you had been dead for three weeks.

His eyes welled up with tears and he said, “I am so sorry, my friend.” I told him I appreciated that. We were quiet a few moments. Then he said, “My mother died of cancer. She was 48, but still too young.” He asked if I wanted coffee. No thanks, not a coffee drinker. Tea? he asks. Sure. So his wife, Rebecca, from India, makes me Indian tea—like chai, but Starbucks are a bunch of losers compared to this stuff she gave me.

Foti says, “Speaking freely—after your wife’s death, and you still believe in God?”

“Absolutely.”

“How? How do you believe in a God who takes such a young woman, when so many others really deserve to die?”

“ah, that’s a big question…”

“I know,” he said with a laugh, as if maybe he were proving his point.

“I’d have to believe He took her, to go where you are.” There was some silence. Then I said, “There is evil, sickness and death in this world. Only a fool would deny it. And I suppose it’s strange that I have spent so much of my life thinking about this very issue. For a long time, I believed there was no god, there could not be, if people dear to me might die. I can’t explain what changed other than that first, I came to understand that logically, there is no escape from the existence of God. And then, I had a personal experience of Jesus’ presence. And all I can say is that I am painfully aware of evil, but my life with Jesus is good.”

Some more silence. Then he said, “When my mother died, it was all hill-down for me.”

“How old were you?”

“13. I had to move to Germany because that’s where my dad was.” Ah, a bit of the story is revealed. Germany was not a good place for him. At least not going there. What a huge change, to go from Greece where you are known, to the latent racism of Germany against its “guest workers.” You remember how when I was a kid, some folks would think I was a Turk or Greek, and more than once I had to run like hell to get away.

“So, was your mother’s death the thing that turned you against God, or was it a long process.”

“A process, yes, but that was pretty big. And then, the final straw was Akhilleos.” Akhilleos is his son. Achilles in our language, and I know how much you love Achilles. And I always liked Odysseus. Wanted to name John or Joe Telemakhos, after Odysseus’ boy.

Akhilleos is a beautiful boy, almost 3. He had a port-wine stain birthmark that was removed a few months ago, and his left eye is cloudy. Foti told me he was born with too high blood pressure in that eye. “It’s almost gone. Why would God do that?” Rebecca is a Christian, and Foti told me she wonders why this happened.

I did not presume to tell Foti that Akhilleos is fine.

“It doesn’t make sense. I see all these drug abusers, drug dealers, and they are doing fine.”

“Yes, that’s true. It’s a big mystery. But we believe that God is good.”

“Well, sure that’s what you believe.”

“We’re up front about that. The Psalms talk continually of how the wicked ‘strut freely about’ while the righteous are oppressed.”

Around this time, Rebecca came out and I thanked her for the good tea. Here’s another person you would have loved to know, Sissy. You and your tea. Erin won’t get out her tea pot because she says it’s still too soon after you died, and she wishes you had taught her more how to use it. She says she remembers you told her that “life is too short to re-use tea bags.”

I asked Rebecca about where she was from in India. Hyderabad. Know the name, no clue where it is. She says it’s easy enough to be a Christian in India, if you are just a common person living your life. But if you are a preacher, there is persecution because they don’t want anyone converting from Hinduism

Foti said, “If I ever become religious, I will be a Hindu.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it is man-made and convenient,” Rebecca said.

Foti was displeased. “No, because they accept everything.”

“Sure enough,” I said. “I hear they have shrines to the Virgin Mary there, anything that could be an appearance of the Divine. They’ll accept anything about Jesus except His claim to be the only way.”

“All religions say it’s us or nobody,” he said.

“Even Hindus? Yes, even them,” I answered my own question. “it’s a matter of truth. Things are true or not. There’s no neutral ground on the truth.” Foti once told me he preferred neutrality to good and evil.

I asked Rebecca if she had a church. She goes to a church a little ways out. “But I don’t really know anyone there.” I invited her to walk down the street to our church. “You’ll meet people from right here.”

I had been there a while, and things were winding down. Foti, for all of his skepticism, tells me that a family has moved in next door with three kids, and maybe I should see them…

So, Sissy, I remember your sang froid when you were diagnosed with acute lymphocytic lymphoma, and you said that all you wanted was to be a witness for Jesus. As you went through treatment you wanted to strengthen others. If you were healed, what a great testimony. If you were not healed in this world ( John an Theo are working me over because I said you lost your fight with leukemia. They say you conquered death, and they are right) then you went on to be with Jesus. And so you were a great witness to so many who encountered you—through what you believed, but also in how you persevered.

And then this morning. I was up at the garden to see what kind of rain we got. Foti was on the porch, waving at me. I went over, welcoming him back again, talking about soccer. We get to talking about you. And he and I are getting close enough for him to feel for me, to remember his own sorrow, and to think about your boys. He is one of those boys who lost a mom. And then, he was honest enough, wondering enough to ask if I still believe in God. Wow. If he never comes to Christ under my ministry, I will still say that this is the most powerful evangelistic conversation I have ever had.

I wanted so much to say to Foti, but how could he hear it, “We have this moment, where we have become much deeper friends through our sharing, because my wife died. You will know that I do not believe out of stubbornness or a need to cope, but because of an experience with the Risen Jesus. All my wife wanted was to be a witness for Jesus. She has died, but has given us this very moment. Jesus said, ‘Unless a seed of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’”

One day, we’ll hear about Foti coming to Christ. He will find peace about his mom not in spite of evil, but because of God. And he will find that Akhilleos is fine, in spite of his problems. Steve always said I was lucky when I found you, and Howard always said you would be a great help to me in ministry. None of us had this in mind, but how powerful is it that you were there on Foti’s porch?