So this is my first post and I’m not really sure how this goes, or what I expect to get out of posting my thoughts on the internet for all to read. I guess what I’m hoping is that just by getting my thoughts out and having someone, anyone read them I’ll feel a little bit better about everything I keep bottled up in my brain. Before I get started, I’d like to give a quick shout out to Mickey V for convincing me to do this and also to let her know that should this somehow come back to bite me in the butt I’m totally blaming her.
Anyway, on to the topic of the day, which has actually been on my mind for a long time: religion. For the longest time I just told myself that I believed there was a god, but presumed to know nothing about him or her and, therefore, adhered to no religion in particular. Recently, however, I have come to the difficult realization that I am in fact an atheist. And as difficult as that was to come to grips with, the more difficult part was telling my wife.
I knew she wouldn’t like it, but I hoped that in one of the most difficult moments of my life she would comfort me and show me some understanding, even if she had a very different point of view. The reaction I got was the complete opposite of what I hoped for, but that’s a matter for another time. During our conversation, she asked me what had triggered this change in me and initially, I said I guess I’d always felt this way, but didn’t want to admit it to myself. Having had more time to think about it, I don’t think that’s true.
I can pretty definitively say now that the moment I lost my faith is when my mom passed away sophomore year of college. Now it’s been about 5 years since then, but not a day goes by that I don’t think about it. I think it’s her life and the way that she died that’s got me denouncing my once shaky faith. A little background on her will put her life in perspective. My mom suffered from Lupus since her early 20s and as a result she spent most of her days and nights on the couch in our living room; the medicine she took caused her to gain a considerable amount of weight and so she couldn’t really make it up the stairs that well. She didn’t work and spent a good deal of her day watching TV and sleeping. Needless to say, when I think of her as a child, dreaming of what her life would be like, I become almost inconsolable, knowing how none of her dreams would come true.
Now when she died, I was off at college, my older sister had moved out, and my dad and younger sister had run to the store. So the image I get of her final moments are of her sitting alone in our house, on the couch where she had been imprisoned for much of her life, grabbing her chest, looking around, calling out franticly, hopelessly for help and finding no one. She didn’t get to say goodbye to anyone or tell us how much she loved us. She didn’t even have anyone there to hold her hand and tell her everything would be ok. I think of how scared I would be if it were me, how totally alone I would feel.
I remember writing something to this affect when it happened, hoping that the pain, sorrow, and fear would dull over time; that I’d one day be able to think about her without getting so utterly depressed. But I can tell you that when these thoughts come to me today, the pain is as fresh as the day I got that fateful phone call. And that’s why I’ve decided that the faith I once had is gone, because I just can’t believe that God would let someone suffer so much for nothing.
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