Part two:
With Barbara gone, Alfred lived alone in their little rented unit in a dingy suburb. Adam was off in another town, filling in for their late circuit overseer. The guy had just dropped dead one day from a heart attack, and Alfred couldn’t help but think of so many other circuit overseers he’d known who had never made it to 70. But the new system would be here before Adam reached that age, Alfred reminded himself dutifully, even though he was starting to doubt it. But he focused on his hope for Adam. Adam would see the new system alive, even if his mother and father arrived in the sleeping carriage.
Between circuit work and Adam’s local congregation duties, he came and visited his father. Alfred was still able-bodied, but lately had been unable to dig himself out of the hole in his heart left by Barbara’s death. He dutifully went to every meeting at the Kingdom Hall but somehow it seemed different now, like although he was surrounded by a hundred smiles, they seemed painted on and he felt remote. He was part of the crowd but somehow peering at it from a parallel dimension, as if he could see them but they couldn’t see him. He’d taken himself off the pioneer list because he just could not face random strangers every day of the week. After 30 years of it, three of them nursing Barbara through her cancer, he was just dog tired. He heard from the platform and Watchtower every week about how now was the time for Jehovah’s people to be doing even more for the kingdom, but his mind slid around what he was hearing like ice on a car bonnet, and he just wanted to sleep.
“Dad, think of all the encouragement you give the brothers and sisters!” Adam too missed his mother, but the more he felt it the more he ploughed himself into his religious career. He felt his father should do the same and keep pioneering.
“Dad, the time now is so reduced. This system can’t go on any longer. It just can’t! People are streaming to the mountain of Jehovah, and think of all the lost sheep you’ve brought into the Truth. There are so many more out there dad, and the time left is reduced! I miss Mum too, but we have to keep going if we want to see her again.”
Alfred’s tiny lounge room was littered with relics of his life. Wedding photos. Old Bibles. A photo of him with the Sydney Branch Overseer. Watchtower bound volumes from 1967. 1972. 1975.
Ninteen Seventy-Five. The lettering on the dusty-coloured bound volume leapt out at him. Adam was continuing on about a how much the Faithful and Discreet Slave (aka the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses) cared so much about the brothers, which was why they continually exhorted everyone to keep as busy as they could in the preaching work and avoid not just hobbies and recreation, but in putting too much emphasis on their own feelings.
Nineteen Seventy-Five. Dim memories of that year stirred in Alfred’s mind. Adam was very young so he didn’t remember the excitement of that time. The waiting, the brothers selling their houses, the huge push for pioneers – and the disappointment. Nothing happened. The world continued, and just as in the days of Noah men were marrying and women being given in marriage, but unlike Noah, nothing happened. Alfred himself had been caught up, but prided himself on his faith when he stayed loyal to Jehovah’s Organisation when others he knew didn’t, and even one of the Governing Body turned apostate.
It was the end of a world, but not in the way that was preached. It was rather the catalyst for new, stricter policies regarding anyone who ever said the Organisation just may have made a mistake. Alfred had to shun his brother who left over the affair, and while he had always been close to him, he just couldn’t run the risk of his brother’s gangrenous apostasy rubbing off on him. His brother chose to leave Jehovah’s organisation, Alfred reasoned, so he was worse than dead.
Alfred refocussed on the present. Adam was reading aloud from the book of Job, something about being an integrity keeper.
“Adam.”
He stopped reading.
“I’ve been in the Truth a long time. My parents were in the Truth. Mum heard Brother Rutherford give public talks. Her mother, your great great grandmother, came into the Truth after hearing “Millions now Living Will Never Die.”
“Millions now Living MAY Never Die,” Adam corrected.
“No, I remember it. “Millions now Living WILL Never Die.”"
Adam frowned, but let his father continue.
“Adam, your mother was never meant to die…”
Adam cut his father off, “I know, Dad, it just shows that we were never meant to be living in this system, that we were designed to live forever, that the end is getting so close!”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Alfred with a mournful gaze. “What I mean is, we were told you wouldn’t reach primary school. My mother was told I wouldn’t reach primary school. And she too…yet Mum and Nana are long gone.” He was about to confess something to his son, something he felt guilty for even thinking. Adam was flicking through the Bible, running his finger down the columns as though searching.
“Adam!”
“Hang on, Dad, I’m looking up something to encourage you.”
“No son, put that down. Remember I told you that what makes a good elder is not how much you know but how much you care? Just listen.”
Adam acquiesced. He had always been a good boy, taught to respect his parents and Jehovah. While other kids had been giving their parents grief by running off to parties and getting drunk and smoking but smiling like perfect Witnesses at the Kingdom Hall next morning, Adam had always been involved in spiritually upbuilding activities. He hung out with pioneers and ministerial servants and learned to respect the hierarchy.
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