The Legacy of Mr. Smith
It is two days before Christmas. The first Christmas with my three month old daughter and my beautiful wife of three years. I am sitting outside in the cold New Hampshire evening in a red metal chair. It is one of those old chairs from decades ago with peeling red paint and a scallop on the back. I am smoking my e-cigarette and drinking a giant glass of Pepsi. The chair belonged to Mr. Smith, who I never knew. He was a kind old man that lived until he was in his early nineties who lived next door to my wife and her family when she was not even a teenager. I am sitting outside my wife's mom and dad's house in the cold New Hampshire dusk, watching the Christmas lights slowly turn on, one house at a time, down the suburban New Hampshire street. And I am thinking about Mr. Smith. He sat in this chair 8-12 times a day just like I do, and smoked his pipe.
Art was his first name. He lived on a beautiful small town street next to my wife when she was a kid. I have taken in some stories about Art Smith and found out just what a kind old man he was. He had a beautiful garden year after year and grew all kinds of flowers in it. When they were in full bloom he would cut them down and take them to the hospital down the street for the patients there. One time he delivered one hundred and eight dozen. But most days he was not walking down the street with flowers. He was walking up to the corner store and returning with a pint of whiskey in a brown paper bag. It did not cause my wife's family to think ill of him.
You see when my wife's sister was in middle school and high school, she was a quiet kid. She was one of those kids who hung out with "old people" instead of her peers. She would go over to Mr. Smith's and help him plant his flowers and tend to his garden. Tending those flowers may be one thing that helped give birth to art in her soul. She went on to paint beautiful pictures of flowers and colors and every day objects. She eventually became an art therapist, a comforting artsmith. Mr. Smith would pay her for her efforts, maybe because he loved the company so much. He had a son, but his son lived far away with his family and Art did not get to see them much. So he just had his neighbors - my wife's family on one side and a police man on the other side. They lived in beautiful old turn of the century houses that were probably built early in the small town's history.
Art was so proud of his home. And at 90 some, he still did his best to tend to it as he did not want to leave and spend the remainder of his days in a cramped nursing home. So he did the best he could. He invented a giant garden rake that he would use to dig channels in the cleared ground in a cross pattern. First down one side, and then again across the grain. In the grooves he would plant the wonderful little miracles that are flower seeds. He invented a wooden garden bag holder so he could, by himself, hold open the brown paper garden bags and rake the lives in piles around his red chair with his hands and deposit them in the garden bag. He cooked eggs and bacon every morning. And every morning, from their kitchen window, my wife's family looked to make sure his head was bobbing over the curtain as he clunked around in his kitchen making breakfast.
Why am I so enamored with the memory of Mr. Smith? It is because he was a person that had lived close to a century. And he did it with an illness. You see he suffered the same illness as I do: self-loathing. It is the illness of a weary soul. How do I know that given the beautiful nature of the man in the stories that I hear? It is because of his whiskey bottle and pipe. Every addiction is the result of a deep internal struggle with self-loathing. We are kindred spirits, Art Smith and I, and I sit in his red metal chair every holiday thinking about him. He is buried in the giant old town cemetery near the road among all the souls that have been lost to time. It is giant, because there is only one cemetery in town. My town. The town I grew up in and met my wife in when we were in grade school and then middle school and finally high school. The small town with one cemetery to hold the memory of all the lives that have come and gone.
And I feel that if I do not overcome my illness in time, I will be just like Mr. Smith. I will be a kind, but lonely old man with my e-cigarette and red chair, living in some part dependent on the kindness of my neighbors. With my daughter living with her family somewhere far away. I do not yet know what the years will hold. Or if the trajectory of my illness will be similar to the fate of Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith, withering away in his course flannel clothes and labored breathing and sagging skin. I am half way there already. But even if I fail to find the love that should well up within me for myself, even if I fail to find the love that God bestowed on us through the arrival of his Son, I may live long enough to be a Mr. Smith to some shy awkward son or daughter in my neighborhood. It is a long shot at best, being that most people die of self-loathing in midlife due to addiction. But it could happen. Or I could learn to love myself through the eyes of my daughter and wife. But the wisdom of scripture says that is not enough. No human being can actually save another. It is only through the corporate body of Christ, the body of believers, that the kindness of strangers and friends slowly eats away at the self-loathing. And you are healed by one beautiful act of God via his people, the hands and feet of God on Earth. So next time you are wary of shaking a stranger's hand at church, remember Mr. Smith and I. You may be lending your hand to saving a life. I do not know the trajectory of my illness, but with a little faith and trust and a pinch of good old fashioned luck (if there is such a thing), perhaps I will not repeat the fate of Mr. Smith. And that, right there, is the seed of faith.
