Hey y'all,
Found this on H20 by Duncan, thought it was quite believable, sad to say.
In Reply to: Blood: Brother Faithful posted by Duncan on December 01, 2000 at 19:02:15:
After five days they managed to locate a relative. It was a miracle, really, given the very few clues they had to work on. But here she was, Mrs P., the old guy’s daughter.
Joanne P, and Social Services were meeting in a room just off the Main Ward. Doctor James was with them, talking:
“ Oh, we think he’ll live alright. Well, now we do. But he only came out of his coma this morning. It was a nasty accident. Lost his left foot, and he needed a lot of blood, I can tell you, but we caught him in time. We were able to patch him up. He’s still very weak, and will be for a while yet.” He paused. “Uh, I understand you haven’t seen him in several years?”
Joanne nodded.
“Well, you ought to know that he’s been living rough, on the streets, for some time. Can’t tell how long really, - months, or years maybe.”
“You don’t know where my mum is, then?”
Jane, the girl from Social Services said “We understand, Joanne, that your - that Mrs Faithful - has been dead for a couple of years.”
After twenty minutes of talking, filling in background information where she could for the Hospital, Joanne was told she could go through and see her father. He had been found, a filthy and infested pile of rags, bleeding to death by the side of a road. It looked like he’d wandered into the street, completely out-of-his-mind drunk on the strong, cheap cider which was the drink of choice of the local street tramps, and been hit by something very large, a truck or bus. It was a night-time hit-and-run, and he’d been in the street possibly for several hours before being brought in the following morning.
He was lying in the bed, all connected to tubes. She hadn’t seen in him nearly 15 years, and he had aged twice that. He couldn’t speak, and he had an oxy mask over his face. But you could see his eyes were open, he was dully awake.
“Hello, Dad.” Joanne took his hand. It took a minute for him to understand who this was. And then, Frank Faithful’s eyes filled up with tears.
********
Frank had first met Jeanie when they had both started work – on the same day! - at the old Printworks place by the canal. He was on electrical maintenance, she was in accounts. They were both twenty years old, and, for Frank, it was love at first sight.
They were married inside a couple of years, and Frank got a better job on the other side of town. They were blissfully happy. Frank didn’t just love Jeanie, in truth, he was in awe of her. He couldn’t understand why anyone so smart and kind and loving and good would be interested in him. He was not a religious man by any standards, and so he would have laughed at you if you’d said this, but it was true: if Frank worshipped anything in this universe, it was Jeanie. She provided him with an entire structure of security, his whole emotional stability. Maybe someone not as sweet-natured as Jeanie might have turned that situation into a harsh and domineering relationship with her husband. But not Jeanie. She knew Frank loved her and she loved him. And they were fine.
Frank didn’t really object at all when Jeanie started getting interested in this new religion, as far as he was concerned, she was half-way to being a saint already. Jeanie had met a girl at work – one of Jehovah’s Witnesses – who was telling her all about the Bible. Soon Jeanie was taking a home Bible Study and attending their local Kingdom Hall. It really wasn’t Frank’s cup of tea at all, but he was content to let her get involved.
Their first child, a daughter, Samantha, came along the same summer that Jeanie was baptised at a large assembly. This had been the first meeting of Jehovah’s Witnesses that Frank had ever attended. He had read some of the books and magazines that were lying around the house, but had thought them dull and childlike and unconvincing.
But Jeanie’s faith in all this was so strong! And she had always been the smart one. Jeanie kept encouraging him to come along to the meetings, and when she explained about the baptism at the assembly, he felt he’d have to see. Two things he always remembered from that assembly: a quite unexpected and powerful surge of pride in Jeanie when her Big Moment came, and his first meeting with an excellent fellow he happened to get talking to, Brother Tom Longyears.
Brother Longyears was entirely the kind of man Frank could look up to and respect. He was everything Frank could wish to be: kind and wise, very friendly, respected by everyone, effortlessly knowledgeable about all sorts of things, but humble too, really charming and a very, very funny guy. He was an elder in Jeanie’s congregation, and in time, Frank agreed to a suggestion Jeanie had made about having a Bible Study with Tom.
As things happened, their second daughter, Joanne, was born three years later, the same summer that Frank got baptised at a large assembly.
And their life settled into a kind of busy, but predictable routine. Meetings and Field Service. Assignments and Bible Studies, Assemblies and more Field Service. Frank was never going to storm into any positions of responsibility in the congregation. He was, he knew, a slow learner, and a dull speaker. Jeanie had to help him with his School assignments (he knew that she could have done his talks so much better than he did), but no one ever knew. Jeanie wasn’t telling.
Probably every major decision that was taken in their life together was actually made by Jeanie – but she kept the kind-hearted pretence of Headship observed. They were, the four of them, every bit the fine upstanding model theocratic family. Eventually Frank was privileged to be appointed as a Ministerial Servant in his congregation.
And he was content with that. He held no aspirations to Eldership. Quite aside from his natural shyness, and his rather astute self-knowledge of his shortcomings as elder-material, there was something else.
There was a piece of Frank, a tiny piece, a small voice that called out sometimes, that knew that none of it - the “New Order” – The “End Times” – Armageddon – The Bible, even? God? –none of it was true. Not really, really true. …Well, perhaps those last two were, but really, he didn’t know. Not really.
This was a place in his mind that he didn’t go much. He kept from dwelling there, he smothered that voice out. He went through all the motions and actions of a good Witness, he upbuilt others, he answered up at the study, he went out on Field Service. When he was debating a householder on the door, and all his mental energy was on winning the point, that voice was silent. When he was arguing for the Truth, he really believed it. It was late at night lying awake in bed, next to Jeanie asleep, when he was truly alone with his thoughts, that’s when he was haunted.
But Jeanie was strong! She had faith for them both! He believed in Jeanie, and he knew he could never say a word about any of those doubts to Jeanie. He wasn’t worthy.
And life went on, and the years passed, and the girls were growing up, and Armageddon was sort-of always just-around-the-corner, but not quite. And, all-in-all Frank and Jeanie were comfortable enough in their life.
Until the day came when everything, their whole life, and happiness, and EVERYTHING, just fell off a cliff.
*******
Frank’s memories of those days in the hospital with Sammie very quickly became just a blur - unlike Jeanie who would remember every moment, every conversation with crystal clarity years later. He knew that Jeanie was constantly reliving the nightmare, and felt powerless to help her. The Elders offered comfort, more than he could.
But at least Jeanie had her faith! What really, really tortured Frank inside was the certain knowledge that he would never, NEVER see Sammie again. He had had just ONE chance in his life to intervene, to do something, to step in, to go against Jeanie (for her own good), to save both his daughter and his wife, and he had failed. He should have overridden them both, and got the life-saving transfusion. He would have been disfellowshipped, but he didn’t care. There was a way back – he was a patient man, it might have taken years, but that wouldn’t matter! Sammie would be alive!
Once again, he knew, he hadn’t been strong enough. He couldn’t find the way to break out. He’d gone along with all of it – the role-play, the “test of faith”, the “marvellous witness for Jehovah”, the “steadfast unto death” …and he had watched his daughter die.
Afterwards, his life simply became an extended exercise in supporting Jeanie. He could NEVER let her know what he felt. When she sounded low, when she needed her faith upbuilding (yes, even Jeanie, sometimes!) he was there for her. He was solid. It was all he knew how to do. He talked her into doing that assembly part, he really thought it might do some good, draw a line as it were, but it had probably been a mistake. He never asked her to do it again, neither would they allow their story to be published in the magazines. It seemed a violation, somehow, of Sammie.
It troubled them when Joanne quit her pioneering, and then started drifting away from the truth altogether. After all the family had been through! But there was no talking to her. Before they knew it, she was married to that truly-awful Mike character, an obvious low-life, a small-time criminal, always in trouble with the police.
Frank remembers the night they had their huge fight with Joanne. Mike was on one of his “disappearances” (prison? hiding-out somewhere?) and they had just found out that Joanne was working selling videos in a porn shop – a job Mike had got her with one of his friends. Jeanie and Frank had decided to tell Joanne that unless she came to her senses, unless she straightened her life out and came back to Jehovah, they’d have no choice but to treat her as disfellowshipped. No contact, nothing. This, it was hoped would shock her into her right mind.
And Joanne simply went wild. The things she said that night, Frank would never forgive.
So from then, it was just Frank and Jeanie, the two of them – both children gone. Actually it wasn’t that unusual in their congregation – lots of the brothers and sisters had similar experiences. It was, truly, difficult for young people to keep their Christian integrity these days, so many pressures from this old world. They had no idea where Joanne was living, but they hadn’t moved - Joanne could still find them. But she never seemed to.
********
Frank’s world simply ended that day he came home and found Jeanie cold and dead, with the photo of Sammie and Jo in her hand. She’d been everything to him – his Rock, his support, the whole structure of his life. That place in his head where he wouldn’t look? Well, he didn’t need to look anymore .The demon came jumping right out at him –
“Look at your Wife! Look at what you’ve done! Where were you when she needed you? Why didn’t you ACT? THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!”
Even before the funeral, he had started drinking heavily. He remembers brother New, sitting next to him during the funeral address. He remembers him saying: “Of course, it was me who was with her that day, and I guess she was really upset at those things that householder said. He was pretty cruel about Jehovah’s Witnesses, but at the time I thought Sister Faithful and I handled things well. We reasoned with him, and I even placed the Understanding booklet ( Understanding the Biblical View of Blood in our Modern Age published by the Watchtower the previous year) with him”, but Frank was three-quarters drunk, even then.
And everything went downhill, unravelling fast. He drank more and more, missed work, missed meetings. Eventually he lost his job and stayed home getting drunk every day. The elders were very concerned and caring at first, but didn’t persevere. There comes a point, after all, when the individual simply has to help himself. Otherwise the elders would have just been condoning wilfully wicked behaviour. They stopped calling.
Bills went unpaid, as Frank’s life continued to fall apart. Eventually, some bailiffs came round from the Mortgage company to repossess the house. Frank went into a rented room. He stayed a total of eight weeks before he was thrown out. On to the streets.
********
Joanne and Frank are talking together, over coffee, in the hospital cafeteria. Frank has been told that, if the consultant gives his okay this afternoon, he can go home today – three weeks after his admission. “Home” means home with Joanne and her husband of the last nine years, Don. Frank has found out that he has two granddaughters, Samantha and Melissa.
“What you never seemed to understand, Dad, was that Mike, Complete-Disaster Mike, was my way out. My escape from the Watchtower. I had to get out, and the only thing I could think of was kicking over everything. I mean, he was an exciting guy when I first met him, but I guess I always knew he was a loser. That marriage was never going to last.” She has no contact with Mike anymore – there were no children - but she’s heard that he is serving ten years for armed robbery somewhere.
Joanne regrets all the lost years. She was devastated to hear about her mother’s death, and the circumstances. She bitterly regrets not being there for the funeral. But she had clearly understood – or thought she had from the evening of the Last Big Fight - that she was never again to make any contact with her parents, unless it was by way of becoming a supplicant asking to rejoin the faith. And that she was never going to do.
Frank has also now met Don, who is absolutely a fine, decent man. It was Don who insisted that Frank must live with them. Don is a member of no church in particular, but he is, in the fullest sense, a Good and Christian man. And the two little girls are so cute.
Maybe, just maybe, Frank will get – in some small measure at least – a happy ending.
Edited by - waiting on 3 December 2000 9:4:13