ALIVE: Chapter 97, Joachim

The journey back to Nazareth had been as difficult as Joachim and Anna feared it would be. Joachim was not able to hold the reigns for so many hours at a time. Because of the monotony of the long ride home, from time to time he dozed off and his guardian angel had to wake him up lest he fall off the camel. Neither could he walk beside the camel for long. But with perseverance and compassion on the part of everyone from the leader of the caravan, down to the children who also had a hard time, after frequent rest-stops, they finally arrived in Nazareth.

Joachim and Anna were exuberant in their gratitude to their fellow travelers, as exuberant as they were exhausted. The porter relieved the other camels of the burdensome luggage and placed the bags on the cart, on which Joachim and Anna also perched themselves and were ferried to their empty home. 

Once inside, both Joachim and Anna plopped themselves on their bed, before washing, before prayer. They both fell into a deep sleep which lasted the rest of the day and throughout the evening and the night. 

Joachim and Anna awoke together at daybreak at the same hour refreshed, but wanting of a long warm bath. As fortune had it, their servant who had been watching the home came to the open window, welcomed them and asked if he could do anything for them. “Yes! Thank you, please fetch us water for a bath, plenty of water!” 

Anna looked in her jar relieved to find enough water there to boil for tea. She poured all the water she had into her largest pot. Then she built her kitchen fire and when the flames were just right, she set her largest pot on the grill hoping she had enough to heat the bath water when it arrived, and to make the morning tea. As she scurried around she thought about the blessing of water. If they had lived by the sea, they might have taken water for granted, but not in Nazareth. Their village well was the center of the community. Their precious well. 

Joachim prayed while waiting for breakfast. He was grateful that he had memorized so much of the Torah and the prayers in his youth. These words comforted him. They formed a life line to the Lord who had delivered him from so many perilous situations during his long life. The words also connected him with all of his people, his parents and grandparents, his friends and his enemies who prayed the same words through all the generations. The words united them with each other. 

When the servant returned with two large pails of water, they thanked him profusely and asked him to please pour most of it into the tub. After the servant departed, Anna poured her boiling water into the tub while Joachim stirred it and kept testing the temperature until it was just right. Then he filled the pot again for later. Anna bathed first so she would be able to make breakfast while Joachim bathed, and so he would have the luxury of more time to soak. The couple were so very happy to be in their cozy home again. 

Anna prepared a nourishing breakfast of gruel with honey and mountain tea, and set her table with her favorite cloth and the dishes that her mother gave her as if they were celebrating something more than their return from Jerusalem. 

Just as Joachim sat down to enjoy his gruel, they heard a knock on their door. Joachim stood slowly, still sore and opened it to find Deborah with a basket of eggs, a warm loaf of bread, and a jar of goat’s milk. She was so glad to see them back home safe and sound. “How was your trip? How is Mary? Tell me all about it, but not now. I will leave you with some food and in a day or two when you are ready, let me know and I will be back to hear it all.”

“Oh Deborah, thank you! What an angel you are.” said Anna walking up to the door to receive the treasure. “Yes, there is much to tell you later.” The ladies hugged and Deborah slipped away. 

…

That morning Mary woke up crying. Her soul was deeply grieved and yet she could not remember her dream and what made her so sad. She sat up for several minutes in bed trying to recall what it could have been. To shake it off and calm down, she got up and washed her face.

That day Mary prayed for her parents every chance she could. She sensed the difficulty of the journey back. Nazareth was so far from Jerusalem and her father appeared so weak. She began to feel badly that their love for her, and her own desire to be with them forced mama and papa to endure such hardship. 

Her guardian angel whispered in her heart that the hardship of the journey blessed her parents because it was for love, and that the Lord will reward them into eternity because they cared less for themselves than for their daughter. This suffering was the gift they offered to the Lord. Seeing her and enjoying their time together was the Lord’s gift back to them. Mary argued with this message in her heart because she only wanted her parents to be peaceful and comfortable. 

Five years later, when pregnant Mary was riding from Nazareth to Bethlehem on the ass, bobbing up and down and she was so uncomfortable, she recalled the many journeys of her elderly parents. It seemed to her on the donkey that her discomfort would never ever end. 

For seven years her old father and mother endured those awful camel rides until her father’s death, OH! Mary suddenly realized that, that his last journey, when he was so frail, could have been the cause of her father’s death!  

On that donkey, Mary realized that she was being given the opportunity to suffer as per parents had when they came to visit. The thought of sharing the same kind of suffering as her parents had removed the sting of the horrible ride to Bethlehem. Surely, the Lord allowed the discomfort of her ride for hours and hours with the baby in her womb kicking her and jostling within her to remind her of the sacrificial love of her own papa and mama and perhaps the sacrifice of parenting in general. 

As those thoughts flittered through pregnant Mary’s mind the angel hovering around her added, “Blessed Mary, your father rode to his death, but you are riding to the birth of his seed. The circle of life. The Lord is perfect in all His ways.”

...

Sewing class gave Mary more time to ponder than during any other hours of the day. The other classes taught her practicalities and the law. Whereas their calls to prayer developed within her the discipline of restricting her thoughts to worship. 

…

After breakfast, Joachim announced that he wanted to return to bed. Anna sympathized with her old mate, glad that she had recovered her energy and said, “Of course my beloved. Shall I fetch you another blanket?”

“Yes, please. I have a chill that feels like it is coming from deep within me.” His exhaustion came with the benefit of not thinking about Mary or his herd, or anything but his body’s need for sleep and warmth. 

Anna opened her trunk where she kept the blankets and pulled out two of them. She took them over to the bed where Joachim was waiting for her. He smiled at her and said, “Thank you my beloved. I won’t sleep for long.”

She spread one blanket over him at a time, and then tucked them all under both sides of him as a kind of hug from the blanket and then gave him a peck on the cheek. “Sleep sweetly. I will be quiet.”

Joachim replied, “I love you.”

Anna said, “Of course you do. Now sleep and I will prepare you a goat stew for supper. Would you like that?”

“Yes.” said Joachim and rolled over with eyes closed. Soon he was in deep sleep. The chills, the morning light, the morning sounds of children in the streets, the parents hollering to them from afar, chickens cackling, roosters crowing all dissolved in sleep’s silent darkness. Joachim woke up in a new world. His mother was there, his father standing behind her. Joachim approached them and said, “Is that you mother? Where have you been? I have been looking for you.”

“Never mind that child.” said his mother. “Let me look at you.” Then his mother inspected him but he wasn’t an old man. He was rather a very young man. “Oh my boy, you are as handsome as ever.” Then his father appeared and spoke up, “We have come to take you on a journey. It is time for you to leave.”

“I have been waiting for this.” strangely, Joachim had no sense of his body whatsoever, neither the sleepiness of it, nor the chills or soreness, nor the breathlessness. He felt light and real. Oddly, he felt more alert than ever. He was not afraid, but he wondered why not. He should be afraid, shouldn’t he? The place was so bizarre.

Joachim‘s guardian angels were proud of themselves for creating this comfortable illusion for him at God’s behest. They were told that Joachim was a very important man, but they didn’t know why. There had been nothing unusual about his life, or his manner that they could tell for which would he would rate such care. But they followed orders and gave the man time to adjust before his final journey to Hades. The angels removed all thoughts of Mary or Anna or his herds that would have pulled him back to the earth’s thin surface. 

“Come son. Follow us.” Suddenly Joachim was hiking up his familiar mountain huffing and puffing; the climb was harder than it had ever been before. He was following his father and his mother who seemed to be at ease, whose careful steps dodged rocks and roots. Higher and higher they went. But as he looked around for the horizon, instead it grew darker as if he was deep in the forest. He could barely see his parents anymore. Instead he came to a massive iron gate. He stopped in front of it and looked around. His parents were gone. Joachim knew that he was to be on the other side of the gate, but he didn’t know how to enter. Besides a massive lock, there were heavy chains tightly wrapped around the bars next to the lock.  By now fear gripped him. He squeezed his eyes shut and cried out, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” Joachim fell to his knees and covered his head with his arms becoming a large egg of a man. Demons circled around his head and shouted accusations of selfishness, of laziness, and even of murder. A big strong demon pushed his soul through the locked gate into the prison of Hades.

Inside was a human cage where all the souls of anyone who ever lived were held captive. Joachim saw shadows in the dim darkness of thousands of people. He heard weeping and screaming. He called out for his parents but as loud as he tried to yell, he couldn’t hear sound come from his own mouth!  Yet, he could move through the crowds.

A ghost like figure of a young man approached him. “Welcome my son. We have been waiting for you. Blessed are you among men. Joachim looked at this person with extreme curiosity. He said, “Who are you?” “I am David the shepherd boy become king.” Joachim could hardly contain his enthusiasm. “There are others who have been waiting for you.”

“Wait!” Before Joachim would let David take him through the crowd he said, “Who am I that you have been waiting for me?”  David replied, “We have been told by an angel to whom it was given the message of hope that your seed will release us from this prison of death.”

Astonished Joachim gasped and thought, then it’s true! But it doesn’t make sense. I have but one child and she will forever be a Virgin!” David replied, “I don’t know anything more. Come, your mother and father and many others are waiting to welcome you.” 

David and Joachim weaved through a crowd of souls milling around aimlessly. Back and forth around and around, with nothing to do. It looked to be a most disagreeable existence to Joachim. In one pocket of people Joachim instantly recognized his uncle Reuben who had died when Joachim was a young man of twelve. He loved his uncle who spent time with him playing ball and roughhousing. Behind him stood a curiously familiar young woman. “My son, my son!” “Grandmother?! Is that you? You are so young.” She replied, “My soul has always been young, it was just my body that grew old. Let me see you!” She gazed admiringly at her precious grandson, always so kind and helpful. Joachim hadn’t yet been able to see himself. Joachim was much younger than he was when he first went back to bed that morning after breakfast, but not as young as his grandmother. His grandfather entered and in desperation said to Joachim, “King David told us that you are blessed and that your seed will free us, but we don’t know how or when. Do you?” 

“Grandfather, one day I hiked up the mountain behind our field, you know the one. I fell asleep and then I heard a voice telling me that my seed will free us from Hades, but that is all it said, and I don’t see how that is possible since I have only one female child. We presented her to the temple when she was three years old and she wants to remain a virgin.” Joachim's grandfather looked disappointed and said. “My agony is surpassed by that of those who have been locked in here for hundreds of generations. I saw Noah once. I found him crying, “My dove, my dove, oh where is my dove! My blessed dove; how long have I waited for you to return with the olive branch in your beak!” So sad. You don’t want to know. But son, now that you are here, let us sit and wait together.” David interjected, “I will leave you.” David turned to Joachim and said, “Welcome my son.”

...

Anna let Joachim sleep because she knew how tired he was. She busied herself with cleaning; how dusty the home had become in her absence. Then she quietly left the house to shop and visit. She spent all day out in her village shopping and seeing people who stopped her to talk, and she spent a good while at Deborah’s home always conscious that she was letting Joachim get his much needed rest.

When she returned to her home at sunset Joachim was still sleeping. She heard his heavy breathing that erupted in snoring from time to time. She was prepared to make the goat stew but wondered if he would wake up to eat it. Anna decided to put it off because by then she was very tired too. It had been a long full day, rather than light a candle she decided to indulge herself by also going to bed early. She quietly undressed, put on her nightgown and slipped into their marriage bed next to her husband as she had every night for the past sixty years. 

Anna woke up at daybreak as usual. The roosters were crowing, and other birds chirped so loudly so that she didn’t notice until she looked closely at Joachim to see that he was pale and still. She touch his face and then his cold hard hand. He wasn’t breathing! ‘Oh my God!’

Joachim was dead. Anna was shocked. When did he die? After the shock settled into reality, Anna quickly got out of the death bed. She did not expect him to leave her so soon. He died so quietly and peacefully. As frightened and overwhelmed as she was, her first inclination was to kneel by him and covered his cold hard hand with her warm hand and pray. She knew she was unclean now that she had touched his dead body, but she didn’t care. This body was as her own, so familiar was every part, his fingers, his arms and legs. How sorrowful to lose it, as if she lost her own. 

She closed her eyes to reach deep into her spirit to look for him there. After a few dark empty moments she recited the prayers for the dead.

Then Anna arose and dressed quickly. She left the house and went to tell the village priest who lived in the temple East of her home. Although she walking so quickly and with determination, no one stopped to ask her if anything was wrong. There was no time for that, so quickly did Anna flitter by them. When she arrived at the temple Anna knocked on the door. She could hear activity on the other side of the door and she listened carefully for someone approaching. When the priest opened the door, Anna apologized for the early visit and announced stoically that Joachim had died. The rabbi immediately thanked her. His wife overheard and rushed to the door. She told Anna to come in and she would make some tea while her husband, immediately marshaled his men to remove the body, and to prepare it for burial before sunset.