Essay Prompt: The loss of innocence often involves enlightenment, discovering that one is not as wise or foolish, heroic or cowardly, generous or selfish, as one thought. Choose an experience that taught you something about yourself. Be certain to describe/show what you thought you were before the experience. Make us see, hear, feel, taste, smell the enlightening experience and how you were enlightened. We need to see, feel, etc., what you were like before the experience, what the experience was, and how you changed. Don’t generalize. Be specific.

Remember, your specific memories, with their specific sensory information, and your specific impressions, are the textual support of a personal essay. So just like I expect you to back up your literary interpretations in discussion with evidence from the text, you must provide specific, concrete examples from your life to show the reader your transition from innocence to experience. Tim O'Brien's narrator, in "How to Tell a True War Story," which incidentally is a work of fiction, says that a true war story "makes the stomach believe." I love that line, and I think it applies to all good creative writing, fiction or nonfiction. Your job here is to make your reader's gut believe in the truth of your experience.

* (the final draft of this essay was revised and submitted on the day of my mother's funeral)

Losing My Religion

            About six months ago, in a small funeral home chapel in Hickory, North Carolina, my brother Scott and I were taking a seat in the back of the room. Those who didn't know wouldn't have guess we were related; I am skinny, clean-shaven, and look like my mother; he in contrast is stocky, has a trimmed beard and mustache, and resembles his father. We had come there for our parents because my mother was very sick and neither could attend. It was a memorial service for our Uncle Joe, who had passed away a few days earlier, mom's only other surviving member of her immediate family.

            It had been quite a day for my brother and me so far, and it was only 2 pm. The morning had been spent in our mother's intensive care room at a university hospital where, along with our father, we shared a grim secret. My mom was recovering from removal of a cancerous kidney, and the operation had gone well. That was the good news, but of course there was bad news too. The cancer had spread to her liver and been diagnosed as inoperable.

            Terminal, in other words, and that's enough to take in on a given day, isn't it? “Your mom is going to die soon”. Our mother didn't know it yet, but she had just a few months left to live. Although staggered by the news ourselves, we decided not to tell her until we got her back home, based on the medical staff's recommendation. “One crisis at a time” was their reasoning. Sadly, she would also not get the chance to say goodbye to her brother. Scott and I were there in the North Carolina foothills, on a bittersweet chilly but sunny September afternoon, to do it for her.

            As soft pre-recorded music played in the background, and the last of those paying their respects filtered in for the service, I tried to prepare myself for the tears and heart-tugging emotions these memorials always induce in me. I also braced for a dreaded component I suspected would come at some point, but hoped would not. This would be the vulgar Southern Baptist practice of tacking a sermon onto the end of a memorial. A preacher closes the funeral service with an entreaty to a captive congregation that they be sure of their own salvation. Their need to be “right with the Lord”, in order to reunite with Uncle Joe and other departed family and friends in Heaven, and not instead be looking up from Hell, facing eternal regret. It's such an opportunistic ploy, preying on the emotions of mourners, and I've always despised it. This wouldn't be the last time, of course. Remember my mother's plight...

            While that may sound harsh to some, the episodes I'm relating bear heavily on my heart, both then and now. Many people look to some deity in sad times like these, when Death, both present and future, is staring them in the face. Belief in a God and a promise of eternal life can be a great comfort to those who grieve, but I don't have that to fall back on, nor want it. That is a conscious choice. The innocence of belief and faith was lost for me decades ago. Do I wish it were true, and that my departed relatives and friends “live on” somewhere and are happy? Wouldn't I want that more than anything for my dying mother? Well hell yes, of course... but I do not believe what my parents and other Christians believe. I require evidence if I am going to believe in a God, or a heaven, and there simply is none.

            Uncle Joe's service was typical but impressive for most of its duration, mostly due to an eloquent eulogy given by his daughter. She gave just the right mixture of her father's history, sharing the many accomplishments of his personal, military, and professional life. There were anecdotes that ranged from the humorous to the heart-rending. When she was finished, an old gospel song was sung by the congregation, a pastor led us in prayer, and the sense of closure seemed to have found its perfect moment. But then another preacher heads to the podium, and my brother and I exchanged a quick defeated look. Here comes the goddamned sermon. If thought could make a man go mute, I would have wished at least a temporary case upon this “Bible-thumper”. I was there to say goodbye to my uncle and express condolences to his family, I didn't need to hear that Jesus could save me. He cannot.

             And this would not be the last time I felt this way... Fast-forward to this very day, April 25^th 2015, the day that my own mother's funeral occurred. Again it is my brother and I, and now my father, my wife, my son, and numerous other family and friends all gathered to honor her life and say goodbye. I wrote her obituary three days ago, just hours before she died. I then wrote my personal reminiscences of her (and ghost-wrote them for my brother) to be included in the eulogy. And I did the thing I am most proud of, which was performing my personal arrangement of “The Sound of Music”, the eponymous song from her favorite movie, on solo guitar.

             My contributions to her memorial were the only secular examples. Everything, and I mean everything else was about Jesus. Does anyone care to know my general impression of how my mother's pastor manipulated her memorial today to his own agenda? (As in how newly-converted Christians are his livelihood)? I'll sum it up succinctly: to Hell with Jesus! This day should have been about my mom,and not some self-serving preacher hijacking the occasion.

            As a man in his mid-fifties, I've experienced a large share of blows to my innocence over the decades. Finding out that I was no longer going to be the only child, or learning the truth about Santa Claus; these were among the very early ones. Although fairly (and even humorously) innocuous in hindsight, those really hurt at the time. I learned in elementary school that children could be cruel, both to me and to others, and that I was capable of such behavior myself. This fact would only be reinforced in the middle and high school years. The clothes one wears, their ethnic background, any quirks in appearance or personality; these will earn a student labels, nicknames, or worse that can sting for a lifetime. It is a rude awakening from the unconditional love that many of us received via our parents.

            As intense as the changes of childhood or young adulthood might be, for me the most profound transformation occurred later in life. It is the loss of something I don't believe is possible to regain, nor that I would even necessarily want back. What I refer to is the demise of a belief in a God or an afterlife... or in the words of REM lyricist Michael Stipe: “losing my religion”.

            There is no singular event in my life that ended my Christian beliefs, and in fact I sometimes doubt if I ever possessed them. The simple fact is that my parents were/are devout Christians, and I grew up in that environment. Three times a week there were church services to attend, including Bible school, and my participation was mandatory. If you are indoctrinated from age three that there is a God, and that everything in the Bible is true; and if you love and respect your parents who follow these tenets, it is a natural progression to have the same beliefs. This is how religions have passed from one generation to the next for millenia. Who was I as a young child to question anything? I did not.

            There is a consensus among many intellectuals, which eventually included yours truly, that knowledge becomes the downfall of faith. I was a precocious child, and very interested in the sciences. The more one becomes acquainted with the principles of various branches such as archaeology or astronomy, and concepts such as evolution, the less convincing many religious worldviews become. The fundamentalist belief that this planet is only seven thousand years old, and that all life sprang from some Garden of Eden, and then survived a world flood in an ark- to say that modern science and its overwhelming evidence refutes this is quite the understatement.

            History likewise shows us that some almost unimaginable atrocities have been perpetrated in the name of religion. Inquisitions and the burning of witches, genocide and the takeover of native peoples' lands (such as America's “Manifest Destiny” mindset), and outright wars; these acts and others have occurred over and over, and persist to this day. The Middle East still teems with religious zealots. Israel, supposedly God's chosen people, has plenty of nuclear warheads but doesn't want their Muslim neighbors to. Christians here in the U.S., where supposedly a separation of church and state exists, still pass judgment and laws against those they deem immoral, such as the LGBT population. When seen from these negative perspectives, you have to wonder how and why organized religions still exist.

            But then I think of my parents, extended family, and their many friends who have followed a faith for their entire lives. People I love and respect, and who have never treated me with anything but compassion. This is where it gets complicated. My father and mother love me very much, and have been exceptionally good parents to me and my brother. That love included their desire that I share their belief in Jesus Christ as the son of God, and that he died for our sins. They literally believed that if I shunned this that I will be punished eternally. No parent would want that, so I understand. I have a strong belief that no “God” would want eternal damnation for His “children” either. The science fiction writer Robert Heinlein summed it up well; “Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child” (Heinlein 15). Ironically, my own father turned me on to the book that quote is from...

            Such is the dilemma and conflict of being a non-believer amidst a family who does. My brother for some strange reason shares my atheist/agnostic stance, even though he will proudly announce, when the subject comes up, that he has never read a book in his life. (We differ in a few more areas than just our appearances). Maybe it is the fact that we were forced to go to church all those years of our youth, and resented it. Whatever the underlying reasons that my parents ended up with two “prodigal sons” we often endured conversations where they implored us to get back onto the path we had strayed from. I had even contemplated “faking” a conversion to give them some peace of mind in their old age, but it just didn't seem right. What if, despite my doubts, Christianity turned out to be correct? My parents would be looking down upon me in Hell, and know that I lied to them. Fat chance, but still...

            If ever there was a time in my life I wish I could have my innocence back; and believe that God will give my mother a blissful eternity, that time is now. She and my dad spent the better part of their octogenarian lives assured that they would go to Heaven when their lives were finished. A big part of me really wants that to be true for their sake. Tonight is my mother's first night underground. It rained all day today, and it's unseasonably cold this evening. I shiver at the knowledge of where she rests.               

            Skepticism is easy when one is emotionally detached and objective. It's no problem to bash religion from the historical or scientific viewpoint. But this is my mother's and father's religion I'm refuting. The people who gave me life. I simply cannot be empirical under these circumstances because it hits too close to home. My childhood home, where just yesterday the medical supply company came to take back the hospital bed, and the oxygen tanks. They were no longer needed. I think of the hospice nurse I've come to have known in the past few weeks. My mom was her fourth patient to have died in just one day of her watch. I am astounded that anyone could do such services for a living, and yet so thankful that they find the courage and compassion to do so.

            Is my mother's death a loss of innocence for me? Yes, and a profound one. I try not to imagine, at least at this stage of my life, how it is going to get any worse, yet I know that it will. My father is the same age as my mother's at her passing. They lived far healthier lives than I have. He will be alone now in the home he shared with his wife for over fifty years. In a decade or two, my wife and I will be facing this same dilemma. How will we cope with decline, disease, and death? I only know this: there will not be any religion involved. Whoever goes first, we have a pact that no religious personnel will be in attendance.

            At the graveside service for my uncle on that autumn afternoon six months ago, my brother and I stood to the rear of the tent provided for the mourning family. An honor guard was there out of respect for his active duty in WWII. A large number of firemen were there also, because Uncle Joe chose that career in his civilian life. One of their captains rang a bell to commemorate the loss of a comrade. An American flag was ceremoniously folded and given to his daughter, followed by the customary twenty- one gun salute, and then the final and haunting melody of “Taps” echoed across the cemetery. Despite my best attempt to suppress them, tears began streaming down my face. They were not just for my uncle. I also thought of my mother, who was in a hospital bed at that moment, unaware of her fate.

            Today, that fate was fulfilled. Once again my brother and I, both of us non-believers, found ourselves surrounded by well-meaning Christians who took it upon themselves to dispatch a relative as they believed it should be done. Who were we, merely her sons, to question that? Who indeed? Only the two people in attendance (that I know of) willing to embrace the cold equations.

            A belief in a God and a reward in heaven is a great comfort for millions of people. It know it was for my mother before she passed. It will be so for my father in his final days, and even if it is a delusion for both of them, I am glad for them both. Life has some bitter events in store for all of us, whether we believe or not. My parents and other relatives have lived rich lives, and that has all the meaning I need. Even though people we have loved pass away, nothing can erase that expanse of time they were with us. My life, the one I am living right now, is the only one I can be assured of, while it lasts. I can live with that. It becomes all the more precious.

            Have you ever noticed how quiet a graveyard is? If there's a god, I cannot think of a better place where one might hear him. If there has ever been a time that I might want be whispered to by the Almighty, today was the day. I listened. I even asked for a sign. And I heard birds chirping, leaves rustling. But nothing else...

I have abided by the Academic Integrity Policy on this assignment.

Works Cited

Heinlein, Robert A, and D F. Vassallo. The Notebooks of Lazarus Long. New York: Putnam, 1978. Print.