The Whistling Kettle

Faith

He was dying.

We both knew it, we had always known it.

We had hoped and prayed that the cancer wouldn't spread, that maybe, just maybe he would be one of the few miracles that our world ever saw. If God could save a little girl, why could he not save my Arthur? If God could save her parents from that suffering, why could he not save my children from theirs?

My faith, my once strong love for the Lord began to fade with each day that passed, with each shaky breath my love took. Our daughters watched their father turned pale, watched the bones become visible under skin and watched the golden hair fall from my love's head with each treatment. They were kept awake on school nights from the sound of Arthur vomiting in the bathroom, from the shuffling of my feet as I hurried from the kitchen to him.

I had never resented God. Even when he took my parents when I was a boy, even when Matthew died just years ago, I did not resent him. I stayed faithful, I raised my girls in his word, and yet..

Had I done something to deserve this?

My Arthur died in the spring of 1982, and with it, he took whatever faith I had in a God.