Midwife to the Very End
He was an old man and good, so that when he died his bed was surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. There wasn't a dry eye in the room. Some of them shared his faith. Others were fellow pilgrims and friends, but not Christians.
As he took his last breath, a smile appeared on his face. It was a subtle smile, barely there at all. It came from deep within him, breaking the surface like the emergency buoy of a sinking sub.
The smile came at the moment when he knew the truth.
And he had lived such a life that no one knew what the smile meant. Perhaps he smiled because it was all true. Many in the room hoped so. Or perhaps he smiled because nothing was true, but he had lived so fully and well that his life stood against nothingness and held its own.
He might have smiled because he had waited so long, and now he was one of the sacred guardians of the great mystery. In any case, it was a fitting tribute that his final smile induced the labor of doubt and welcomed the birth of faith for all present.
And when he was good and dead, every prayer in the room was the same prayer, whether offered to God or just offered.
"Grant that I might live the kind of life that deserves such a noble death."
rlp
This is a work of fiction
9:54:18 PM 
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