Meet Merlin Fargus...
Good with the kids, good with the ladies.
Not too short. Not too tall.
Not too skinny.
Not too fat.
Not too anything really.
He's one well-rounded dude.
The kind of guy you'd take harmonica lessons from.
You know the sort; small hands, very dependable.
Level headed and trustworthy.
Unfortunately, bad things DO happen to good people. Thanks to a
faulty O2 sensor, Merlin's car lit up like the fourth of July out on Route 32 about a month after he bought it. (Don't worry, Merlin made it out alright.)
Sadly the car didn't fare so well.
Boy oh boy, you should have been there!
Nearly three weeks later, Merlin had fully resigned himself to moving on to a newer and less char-broiled mode of transport when his phone began ringing off the hook. It was Dennis, Merlin's friend; a largely unappreciated and undiscovered automotive-repair-guru.
Now, if you're keeping score, Dennis is not the sort of fellow one would aspire to be. Despite his uncanny ability to "hear" what a car is "telling him," Dennis' obsessive penchant for loose women and nut-covered caramel apples... coupled with his utter refusal to brush anything on his body, made him out to be quite an unseemly fellow on many levels. But damn, if he couldn't fix a car!
And that's just what he did.
Dennis had managed to actually get Merlin's old car running again! Oh sure, it would never feel the warm rip of asphalt beneath its tread, but the hum was undeniable as her motor shimmied in place in the protected space of Denny's mom's garage, just behind Denny's mom's house, where Denny lived... with his mom.
Merlin had to see it for himself. So he subsided to Denny's request and popped in to visit, the bag of complimentary White Castle's in tow. As Denny inhaled 13 greasy, "hamburger-ish" confections, Merlin ambled in circles around the engine with his hands clasped behind his back. It really was impressive. She sounded better than he had ever remembered.
Denny managed to push some sound through the cheesy-mush in his mouth.
"Ooo Unt Er Bath?"
Merlin slowly turned back to Dennis.
"Denny, you know I've moved on. Why would I want her back?"
I think it was a French fry that was going in when Denny shrugged back.
"Besides," Merlin continued. "can she even run outside of this garage?
Is she road-ready? Will she ever be?"
"Pwobably noth," Denny belched.
"So then," Merlin summed. "Nicely done. Very impressive. Great work!
But I'm just through with her. You've gotta understand."
Denny smiled as he placed the straw of his milkshake in the toothless hole that he seemed to have cultivated just for that reason. The sputter of a dying milkshake followed. Denny didn't mind. Merlin was impressed and that was payment enough.
Science has never been able to find the Merlin Fargus in all of us.
Don't kid yourself... science has looked.
But no organ, no tissue, no fluid seems to contain any tangible evidence of that thing in each of us that determines right from wrong, good from bad, or up from down. It's been called the unconscious observer. It's who you really are in the sense that it lasts longer than your fleshly bits ever hope to. It's the "you" who sits at the wheel of your brain or your heart and steers the vehicle you call a body into an endless possibility of directions.
There's no microscope that can find it. No chemical strip that can confirm or deny its presence. No luck at tracking it down whatsoever. In a very real sense, one might surmise that the "you" that makes you "you"... doesn't require a physical you in order to exist and be... well... YOU!
So here's a thought...
WHAT IF your Merlin Fargus...
...was as attached to your body as a driver is to his car?
WHAT IF your Merlin Fargus...
...could abandon its car if that car became less than useful?
MUST your body die before your Merlin Fargus can elect to move on and go elsewhere? Is there some mystical glue which causes our Merlin Fargus to remain attached to our bodies, even if they can only function in the vacuum of Denny's garage or by the warm sputter of a breathing machine?
IS IT POSSIBLE that Terry Schiavo's Merlin Fargus jumped ship a long time ago? That perhaps Terry Schiavo wasn't in the hospital all that long at all? Perhaps it was only her old ride, decrepit and worn out, made to last only by machines and medicines that kept her family company during those horrible years.
Last year's model.
No longer useful.
Left for scrap by the side of a road while Terry (the REAL Terry) moved forward on her eternal journey in the quest to know God.
As I think back to the babies that Adrian and I have lost to miscarriage, and then, as I gaze upon my beautiful children, tenderly sleeping in their beds tonight, I wonder...
Did we really lose anything?
Is it possible that our first child, lost to miscarriage, merely detached itself from a defective body and awaited the next viable ride that would come along? Could it be that Samara... the same Samara that we know and love and cuddle and adore... is the exact same soul that we thought we had lost?
Could it be that our first child, whom we thought we had lost, rests quietly beside us tonight... content with the body that she was finally able to arrive in?
No loss.
Only a delayed meeting perhaps.
We lost our second baby to a miscarriage a number of months ago.
This morning, we discovered that our new baby (who is doing splendidly thus far) is to be a girl. Once again I am left wondering, was our meeting only delayed by the miscarriage and did we lose anything at all?
Bodies die. The soul lives on.
Has she been waiting?
Has she finally found a way?
I cannot wait to find out!
