One Star Watt

On Sunday I attended a family memorial service for the dimpled, red-headed baby that my uncles lost this fall to Type 1 Spinal Muscular Atrophy. I can’t put words to their experience, but last night I read the following passage from Edward P. Jones’ story “In the Blink of God’s Eye,” found in the collection All Aunt Hagar’s Children, and it seemed to speak to Sunday morning and to my little cousin’s life.

In Jones’ story, a Washington, D.C., preacher has just returned from burying his mother. “I’m next,” he realizes, “in that long death line that started with our Daddy Adam. And with Mama Eve.” But in the cemetery he “blinks” and suddenly he is not afraid, even though he has now lost both parents, “the whole fortress” between himself and death. He returns to D.C. knowing what a “good human bein my mama was, and how heaven was lucky to have her.” He no longer fears, and he says to his congregation, “I tell ya I just blinked and it was all laid out to me.” Here is the conclusion of his sermon:

“So we forgive you, Mama Eve. God did that for you, so how can we do less? I stand next in the long death line under that eternal gaze of a just and fair God who just blinked, just blinked a few times, I tell ya, and in that little bit of blinkin my mama had lived her seventy-nine good years. Just a blink in God’s eye. But O what a wondrous blink!”

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