FINDING FATHER
FINDING FATHER
The sparkle in his eyes had been extinguished a very long time ago.
The spring in his step had been supplanted with a shoe shuffle glide that bore him paper-thin soles on his blown out shoes.
“Can you help me find my father?” he asked the lady who clutched her purse to her bosom and scurried off in the opposite direction.
His pockmarked face was adorned with drinker’s tattoos and an unkempt wooly gray beard that hadn’t been trimmed since he’d stopped shaving.
“I’m looking for my father,” he said to the man in three-piece suit, lowering his head in anticipation of the rejection that was sure to come. When he looked up again, the man was gone.
His many layers of soiled and tattered clothing reeked of loss and despair. A few of the garments had been assimilated into his being and revealed to all what he was and not what he had once been. Once worn proudly, they had become unrecognizable, stiff with grime.
“I’m trying to find my father,” he shouted and crumpled to his knees on the busy sidewalk.
He fumbled inside his faded denim pants pocket with filthy fingers and extracted a small card that had been folded and unfolded countless times over the years. The ink in its creases had been obliterated but the picture on the card was still identifiable as one of Jesus. He held it out with both hands at arms length so passersby could see it.
The tears he cried rolled down his cheeks without cleansing his skin beneath.
People darted by averting his gaze as if the most important task in their lives was to avoid contact with him. They shunned him. No one stopped. No one spoke.
The pain that exploded in his chest sent him sprawling headfirst onto the littered pavement. His body shuddered violently and one of his shoes was jettisoned off his now bare foot into the gutter.
He held onto the card until he didn’t need it anymore.
He’d found the Father.
Just wanted to say your blog is kinda awesome. I always like to read something new about this because I have the similar blog in my Country on this subject so this help´s me a lot. I did a search on the topic and found a good number of blogs but nothing like this.Thanks for writing so much in your blog.. Greets, Bojan