In That Awful, Awful Hour

“In That Awful Hour” (when the doctor
shakes his head) by the Soul Stirrers
was on my mind, then the film Collision:
Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson
in the back of a limo, it’s dark out, Hitch
says even if everyone believed as he,
God is a figment of the mind, he’d still
like one to believe as Wilson, God is all.
 
Bob Clark, we watched that film.
You emailed Wilson, he emailed back.
Now you teach math at Clovis Community
where I taught. Life is a sobering thought:
that likeness in the casket, of Eric Gray who sat
at happy hour downing shots of Jager.
In that awful, awful hour did he cross over?
Hitchens, dying, said, Don’t pray for me.
 
God’s with you when you cross over or you
take a last breath, and that’s it. Religion
is comfort. Christ is all, or Yahweh, or Allah.
Extinction is comfort to others, the after-this
-there’s-nothing terror or bliss, a thought
like one person saying “I got an F in math.”
Don’t let it eat you up.  In the film Wilson
in one part plays his guitar and little kids
 
stream around him. That’d drive me nuts,
but they were Wilson’s, he loved them.
Hitch was asked what he’d miss most,
his wife and kids. I miss Eric, whose
likeness lay in the silk-lined casket, who
sold me a car when I came to Clovis,
Eric, who never saw Collison, his team
whoever was playing the Dallas Cowboys.

The author is Peter Mladinic. 

Image by Nancy Hughes