Alex Alexandrovich Latipov had given himself that name sometime after his parents passed away. It was his way of creating a fresh start. Or was it an attempt to stay interested in life by making a change? Sometimes he described it as a fresh start, sometimes as an attempt to hold onto life when he had simply lost interest. He often humored himself like that. Life could be so dull, especially when it terrified him. It made him want to sleep. But when he couldn’t sleep, which happened often, he made jokes for himself, like changing his name to Alex Alexandrovich Latipov. He even went to the trouble of changing it legally. When his new driver’s license had arrived in the mail, with that name printed next to his photo it gave him hope. He smiled. Maybe he could do something now. That’s what he thought. Maybe life would notice him now; and he could be happy. Or maybe the world would ignore him and leave him alone, so he could be happy. Either way. Because it had been a challenge being Jacob and he had never really attained happiness when he was that guy. Even that had been an effort to elevate his game, to give himself a bit more gravitas, or sophistication. His parents called him Jake and there really wasn’t anything wrong with that. In fact, he liked the name. But time passed and he realized sometime along the way that Jake had serious limitations. Everyone liked Jake when he was a kid and that was exhausting. But even more vexing was that Jake couldn’t keep his brother from killing himself. He was just a happy-go-lucky kid, a little brother with no power in this world. So, after his older brother shot his brains out, pardon the graphic detail, Jake changed his name to Jacob, because Jacob was a name that commanded respect and one could make things happen, or not happen with a name like Jacob. At least that was the idea behind it. Jacob wanted to have, he needed to have, some control over these things that made him anxious. Particularly the growing awareness that everyone he loved seemed to be dying. This was a real problem. And even though everyone else seemed to insist that this is just normal and that he’d best recognize the natural nature of death, he found himself increasingly having difficulty taking a really nice deep breath, and with the passing of the years he was getting very weary, perhaps for lack of oxygen.
Alex sat on the little wooden bench under the spreading branches of a large oak. The sunlight filtered down through the tall canopy, and Alex found a momentary joy in the movement of the shadows it cast upon his legs and feet. Tiny lavender flowers grew in a crack in the pavement nearby and the color reminded him of his friend. His friend often wore jackets that were that same color, or nearly. This memory flickered through his mind and he smiled briefly, and he thought with somber jurisprudence, “Well, so, I’ll never see him again in this life, that’s how it is.” And he felt proud of himself that he could think such a thing with such a mature absence of emotion. “Maybe I’m really getting the hang of this after all,” he thought. “Jake would be impressed, even Jacob.” Alex smiled as he thought back over the many times he came to this bench, and he sat and remembered, one by one, the people he’d buried in the cemetery just down the path, so close to where he sat. Would it have made a difference if they all died at once, in one swift blow? Like the stories you hear of whole families wiped out in the holocaust, or in a natural disaster. Rather than one by one, a slow drip, month upon month. “My goodness, I prayed that I would come to terms with this, and I thought I had, an answer to prayer, an understanding of it all. I could actually breath again, I felt happy!” Alex stretched out his arms and yawned, really a bit more like a gasp, but it felt good. He laughed. “I didn’t understand anything. I had only been given a momentary reprieve, a year or little more without the death of anyone I loved. Alexander Alexadrovich Latipov is no better than Jacob, he’s just not been tested for a while.” He laughed again, louder and with more attention, assertively; and he approved of his laughter and felt strong again briefly. “How wonderful to laugh at death! How wonderful to be awake and not be tired, and to make plans and dream of something good that will happen in the future, something that I want!” He nodded and let his head drop because it felt so very heavy. Alex pulled his legs up and lay down on his side, placing his head on his arm as a pillow. Jake had slept like this, years ago, and he was alive and at peace, as he had heard his brother laughing downstairs, and his parents talking in their bedroom. Everyone was still alive; nobody was just a memory. Alex envied Jake, as he curled up on the bench pretending to be him. Trying to remember, no, trying to be what he was, not the image of Jake, but the living, breathing person who hoped and knew joy and didn’t have to pretend. “Mmmmm, yes. Childhood. Yes, that is the way of children.” He thought with pleasure, knowing that this was a very adult way of looking at life. “Perhaps there is still hope for me,” Alex thought again. “I will think of Christ, and the resurrection and eternal life and this will make me happy and it will make everything better, it will set all bad things aright again, and I will know victory over death, once and for all!” Alex thought these things triumphantly, and inexplicably he began to cry. Just a bit though, not enough to show, not so that he would betray himself. “There is a club after all. The club of those seemingly unaffected by death, because they know the answer, and it is so simple. They have the words that make everything bad about reality fade away behind a dusty mirror. Yes, that’s the way it is, and I can be in the club too! I will be in it, by God!”
Alex sat up again on the bench. “Okay. Better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.” Did he just say that? Or was it like a song drifting on the wind? It was as though it had floated down to him and wrapped him in its innane, syrupy, stupidity. It made him angry but he wondered if it weren’t true nonetheless. “How far is that true, I wonder? Is it still true after two people you loved and lost? Is it still true after ten? Or twenty? Is it better to have loved twenty-five people and have lost all of them, than to have not loved them at all? Or is it not better to have never lived at all? That might be true. I think death makes me crazy,” Alex considered. “Better to love and die quickly, before death drives you mad.”
“Oh, I am so tired!” Alex stared at the dust on his shoes. Small flying bugs glittered in the setting sunlight. “I’m not nearly finished. When will it be over?” Then he felt remorse. “I’m not supposed to feel that way. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I? What hope is there for the man who cannot seem to reconcile with the one primary fact of life; death? There is no answer but to be someone else. I am not who I once was; and I can’t be who I am. Who can I be? Who must I be? This is a dilemma.” Alex smiled and chuckled. “A dilemma. Ha! An understatement. Funny. An existential dilemma. A paradox. A pair of dice. Yes, I am going mad, I think. Perhaps that is who I should be. A crazy man in a forest, or in a cave. Talking to the animals and the trees. That seems hopeful. Methuselah. Might I call myself that? It sounds wise and understanding. Methulselah understands death and is unaffected by it. He loves all people and is not terrified, or anxious. He can breathe deeply. And he does not become overly sad when the beloved die. Methusalah has conquered death, and he knows how to live!” Alex rose and stood on his feet. The setting sun shone on his face and he was beaming.
“God be praised! I am Methusalah!”
~FS
Prayerful Life 