LJ Idol Season 7: Week 19; Mirage

My Dearest Bernice...

The letters always started out the same way. He tried to write to her whenever he could, letting his beloved wife know that he was still alive to see another day. Today we are blessed with technology like Skype and cell phones, but in those days you had to rely on an old fashioned handwritten letter to communicate with your loved ones from the battlefield.

It’s never easy to be married to someone in the military, not then and certainly not now. After all, you never know from one day to the next if they will come home walking or carried back in a coffin.

Arthur Lenox was married at the age of 17, shipped off to war by 18. That’s how it worked in those days after all. While the war only had a short time left, those going into battle often didn’t know that. They didn’t know how long they would be fighting their way through a World War, something that most of us can only understand by reading history books on the subject.

The painful wait for the letters to arrive was often followed by even more uncertainty since all the details of the letters were blacked out, or he merely said he couldn’t talk about their missions or give any clue as to where he was at the time. He could be in any number of countries, fighting any number of battles. She was told to follow the news reports on the radio to learn about the battles that were fought, but she would never know if her husband was on that battlefield or not, Once, he was hospitalized and wrote home about it, but the military blacked out the reason in his letters to her, leaving poor Bernice to fear for the worst. It turned out to be mumps and he was fine. She wouldn’t find out these things until afterward, leading her to constantly fear the unknown and praying for the war to end.

Every once in awhile, a photo or some negatives were included with the letter. This would bring Bernice great joy as photos were few and far between in those days. She was like a child in a candy store, staring at the images of her brave husband in his military uniform with his gun resting in his arms.

However, here was the one photo that was different. Arthur mentioned nothing special about the photo, just that it was taken shortly before something terrible had happened and that he was pretty severely injured, but alive. He was hospitalized for a few days after the fact, others were killed. But the image itself? He mentioned nothing more than it being a photo of himself outside of his foxhole. He either didn’t pay any attention to the photo or didn’t notice the ghostly figure that was situated behind him, with his hand resting upon his shoulder.



She asked about the image, but Arthur didn’t know what she was talking about. He wouldn’t be home for months, but when he finally came home and saw the image, he was flabbergasted. The photo didn’t look that way when he sent it to her, he would swear he didn’t see the obvious figure standing behind him at the time he sent the photo.

He also swore the man situated behind him appeared to look just like his brother. His dead brother. He cherished that photo as a sign that there were angels in this world, and that he was spared from the deadly mission simply because his brother was there to watch over him. No one could tell him any different. He told everyone that this photo was of him and his Guardian Angel.

Now, you may believe whatever you want. Defective photo? Another image somehow overlapping it? Perhaps. There is any number of explanations for such a thing, but one could not persuade him to think any differently. To him, this was his proof that he survived that day not out of pure luck of the draw, but because some divine power was watching over him that day. Why would we try to argue when we could not disprove his theory as well?

In a way, I like to believe that too. I want to believe in such things. Just as I want to believe that my father watches over me to this very day, I want to believe that his brother is the man in the photo with his hand on his shoulder, that he was there to protect and watch over him that day.

It’s no secret that I consider myself agnostic. I have been a follower of several different faith’s in my lifetime. I was raised Catholic, converted to Paganism in high school and that followed me through most of my early 20’s until I became cynical with any mention of “divine” powers. Blame it on seeing too much hate and ugliness in the world. I wanted to believe that nothing good came from this life and that humans had no purpose but to breed and destroy the planet. I settled on an agnostic/atheist viewpoint, purely logical and scientific in every way possible. Life after death? Prove it. A higher power? I don’t believe in something I can’t see with my own eyes. Since no one could give me a logical reason for any of it, I wrote it all off as fairy tales that I wouldn’t waste my time worrying about.

However, somewhere along the line...Through my divorce, watching my family lose what little they had to a house fire, being thrown amongst some of the wealthiest and most spoiled kids you could imagine in a close minded Southern setting...Somehow, through all that, I realized that perhaps there are things in this world which one cannot simply explain through science or logic. A small twinkle of an idea at first, and then I realized something...I wanted to believe in something larger than myself. I wanted to believe that life had a deeper meaning beyond overpopulating the planet and destroying everything which crossed our path. I wanted to believe in something that I eventually deemed as “magical”.

No, not Harry Potter type magic. real magic . The magic of the universe and everything to which we can’t explain. It fascinates me to no end these days. I love the unexplained. While the old me would try to find a scientific explanation for every divine instance, now I relish in the thought that perhaps there is more out there to which our human brains simply can’t comprehend.

Yes, I want to believe that my grandpa was right about the image. To me, it represents hope that maybe we really aren’t alone in the Universe and that perhaps our souls do have a deeper purpose long after we leave our body behind.

Maybe it’s because that’s what comforts me or helps me fall asleep at night. Sure, it very well could be a big part of it. However, a larger part of it is deeper than that. I have discovered that being a spiritual person is a beautiful thing. There is beauty in the magic around us, and there is nothing wrong with accepting that sometimes, we really don’t know everything about the world around us. Maybe, just maybe, it makes life more interesting if we don’t.

By the way, Bernice and Arthur stayed married for the rest of their lives. They raised 5 children, which went on to create many more grandchildren, including me. My grandpa was awarded a Purple Heart after his death, something my grandma cherished deeply until she passed away as well. They are buried side by side at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis, MO. They lived out a beautiful life together, growing old with one another and sharing in many joys with their family. My grandpa said he owed it all to his Guardian Angel that saved him that day.

And perhaps if it wasn’t for the ghostly image in the photo, I wouldn’t be writing about all this today. But I guess that’s something we will never know.