The day before

Day by day....This is how we are called to live our lives.  Truly even hour by hour...minute by minute.  Live as if there were no tomorrow.  Let tomorrow take care of itself.  My Dad's last day....I have wondered many times what he did.  I know he went to work.  I know he tried to call me.  I know he saw my brother.  Between times I have no idea what he did.  How did he fill that last day?  I think he knew something was coming.  He made the comment to my uncle that morning ' If I go missing, you need to look out for this guy...(Mr. B)'  Why did he make THAT comment?  Did he have a bad feeling that just wouldn't go away?
   What were Mr. B's thoughts this day?  I go to an analogy of a magnifying glass.  These are wonderful inventions.  Some of us use them occasionally.  To look at something more closely, study it.  Some of us use one daily, in our work, reading.  There are so many uses for one but left in the hands of an unattended little boy with  purpose, a magnifying glass can burn and torment many of God's creatures.  If left out in a dry field of grass in the sun, a simple handy object, like a magnifying glass, can create a torrent of fire.  You would not figure such an unassuming object could cause destruction.  Fixation, of any sort, can also destroy.  I think God had given Mr. B an out.  Let him come close to killing, but not be able to, just so he could think about what he was doing.  So that maybe he could have time to ponder the damage it would do.  Not only to our family, but to himself and to his own.  Obsession kept him from making that connection.  I am quite sure he thought of little else but what went wrong that morning and how he would correct it the following day.   I have thought of him as Gollum in the movie "The Lord of the Rings".  How he was driven to do anything to stay 'near' the ring, 'The Precious'.  In the movie, we never see what he looked like before his encounter with the object of his obsession. His hands and feet suggest that he was possibly a hobbit there are even suggestions that elude to that possibility.  What he depicts is an ugly, tormented, twisted soul, the product what fixation can do to a living being.  The things one will stoop to, to obtain.   How demented our souls can become when we seek after(obsess over) a thing, or person, as we are supposed to seek after our God.  We are asked to seek first God's kingdom and then expect His blessings and plans for our lives.  Was he ever told about that?  I am sure, if he was, he didn't listen.

   My Dad spent the evening at my brothers home.  He was on his couch, playing with his grandson, Brennon. He probably watched some TV as he dozed.  He liked to do that.  Spend time with us in our normal, everyday lives.  He loved his family, loved being with us.  I never heard my Dad say that he needed 'alone time' ( though I need it often and rate it highly).  He was content to do whatever we were doing.  He often invited himself to suppers, our outings, or he would just show up and 'be' with us.  I miss that.
   Anyway, there  has been speculation over my father's whereabouts this particular evening.  LET me dispel that now.  I will be clear.  HE WAS NOT at a diner having a fisticuffs with ANYONE.  There might have been someone in a diner, somewhere that evening, with a similar story, but it wasn't MY father.  I love living in a smaller city.  People are so friendly and nice.  I do not love, though, how some of them take gossip put it together with more gossip and run the story as if they missed their calling as a writer at the Daily Bugle.  I guess they think they are doing the world a favor passing along info, when in point of fact, they are hurting the people and the families of the people they reference.  My Dad spent the evening in a living room, at my brother's home.  He left and went to his home and went to bed.
   As my father's evening was ending, Mr. B's was just beginning.  He drove out to my Dad's, (not sure what time) parked closer, got a chair from the porch, placed it in the garage, sat and waited.