It's About God

Michael Markosian
Emma Lou Thayne
Volume 23, No. 2

Dear Michael,

It’s about God. Here I sit in my dear old rocking chair "perch" under the pines breathing in the canyon morning so obviously offered by the hand of the God I so thoroughly believe in. How could such beauty be otherwise created?

That our time here is brief and often touched with sorrow like the loss of Louie or the death of your grandpa Markosian is part of some ineffable happening over which we have little – if any – control and which God observes with sometimes the same pain we experience.

Maybe this is very like how my father was in watching our tennis matches as we grew up. Somehow I’ve always believed in a Father in Heaven – and a Mother in Heaven – not unlike wondrous extensions of my own here on earth. They never missed one of my brothers’ or my tennis matches, sitting often in the high bleachers at the old Salt Lake Tennis Club on 9th East. Tournaments, especially the finals in the late 1940s before we all married, attracted like a baseball game crowds that filled those covered bleachers.

Sometimes it was hard to spot our folks high up near the top, but we always knew they were there not missing a shot. Father, a great sportsman, had a motto that he sent us onto the court with: Try hard, play fair, have fun. We knew he’d be disappointed if we didn’t do all three. And we knew he and Mother were rooting for us no matter how the game went.

Father watched with his own kind of attention. He kept columns in a notebook as the sets progressed: Placements, Errors, Aces, Double Faults. We knew he did and that we could choose to see his fact sheet or not after the match. We knew the final score would have nothing to do with his or Mother’s loving and welcoming us with open arms when we won or lost.

Of course, how we played the game was up to us. He knew we knew the rules, had practiced our strokes, and had been tutored in strategy. Our equipment was in good shape; my brother Rick strung racquets in our basement and kept the stringing at the right pressure in our wooden racquets to be kept in a press in damp weather to avoid warping. I washed, starched, and ironed our tennis shirts and shorts – even the shoelaces. I loved the sparkling clean feeling of going onto the court to hit the first white balls out of the can, opened by a key on top that fit a round of tin to curl off and release the so good smell of vulcanized rubber and the stiff fuzz of three brand new balls.

Of course, each match was a new challenge, sometimes scary, always exciting and full of the dry mouth and sweat of wanting to do well. Down there on the recently rolled and lined clay court, with an umpire sitting on his mounted chair at the end of the net, we spun for serve, and the rest was up to us.

We knew that the sun would be bright and in our eyes on an overhead on one side; that the wind could come up and play havoc with a toss or a lob; that on a crucial point we could freeze with the nerves of a "steel elbow"; that confidence, always so tricky in competitive sports, would wax and wane, determining more than any skill who might win or lose. 

Father and Mother knew all this too and would have loved to warn from the sidelines, "Don’t lob into the wind" or "Keep your second serve solid but sure" or "Don’t go for a winner till you have the right set up" or "Don’t rush the net on a shallow approach shot." All of the "should’s" and "ought’s" and "never do’s" they knew but had to simply watch as we played and made our best shots or pathetic errors. Still, we never doubted that they were there or that they watched with love and yes, no doubt sometimes aching, as we did what we could in that game we so much wanted to win.

When it was over, there they were, right there smiling, arms wide to take us in, knowing how much the game had meant, how much we’d wanted to win, telling us "Great game" no matter what. Tears, disappointment over not playing well, frustration, embarrassment, even wanting to give up were acknowledged and understood but never allowed to blot out the good shots, the good sportsmanship, the satisfaction of competing.

So, my wonderfully talented and thoughtful Michael, I feel exactly the same about a loving God who knows that a Louie has died and that a very dear child of His is suffering a terrible loss. Exactly how the cosmic game of being born, living, and dying is set up I can’t be sure, only that I never doubt the love and caring implicit in the watching from high up in some non-earthly bleachers. And I also know with everything in me that the soul of each of us – and why not Louie? – will be welcomed with an understanding we can never begin to comprehend.

I loved your poem about your loneliness and grief over Louie’s so tragic death and your invoking a loving Jesus to come to you. Oh, Sweetie, I know He will. He is there, in private, "reaching our reaching." Keep that knowing with you, dear Michael, as a comfort in any game you play in this so beautiful and so unpredictable life.

Know how loved you are. And know how many of us both here and in Heaven are rooting for you.

I do love you, more maybe than you can possibly know.

Always,

Granma Grey
(Emma Lou Thayne)

return to table of contents