Whatever will be will be -- Contemporary Living

On a warm too cool and windy day in Cincinnati a young man stumbled then leaned against a wall on Green Street and Vine. He fell to his knees and then his body slumped hard onto the sidewalk. He was critically wounded. He was to become Cincinnati’s 14th victim to homicide in the year of 2003.

A large crowd of men, women, and children began to gather around the dying man as their own voices declared to the others as to what they had just witnessed. The police kept the crowd at bay and away from the wounded man, as my fellow firefighters on Engine 5, Bobby Johnson, Reed Papinia, and Captain Pope, and I pulled onto the scene. Immediately, we began to administer first aid.

To search for bullet entry/exit wounds we used the scissors from our medical bag to cut through the dying man’s clothing and we cut through the dying man’s pants and his bubbled feather down-coat. Thousands of tiny white feathers began pouring out onto the sidewalk. One of the feathers landed on the dying man’s eye. I gently picked it off. The man looked at me as if to say thanks and then he blinked fading forever into the unknown unconsciousness.

Taking his vitals we knew this man was in trouble. Quickly, we placed him onto a cot and then into the back of a Cincinnati ambulance. My last touch felt that his body was still warm but… The ambulance departed with lights and sirens blearing for a dead man. The firefighters of Engine 5 turned around and a large gust of wind blew quick and strong through the neighborhood, included Green Street, sending the dead man’s down-feathers flying into the air. It looked like a snow storm. A group of children caught my eye. They were dancing joyfully through the dissolving crowd catching the floating feathers.

I stepped back into the red fire apparatus of Engine 5. My prayer for that dying man on his way to the hospital were strong. My prayers for the children that live in Over-the-Rhine and who chased his feathers that day floating in the wind were much stronger.

Feathers hold meaning; a cloud of them, as from a pillow fight, can signify answered prayers. Feathers given to you as a gift can indicate an increase of social popularity or power. Finding feathers or picking them off cloths, furniture or as happened that day – a dying man’s eye – may predict a life of many small joys.

The day after the shooting, the dying man is gone and dead. But my prayers for the children of Over-the-Rhine and all of Cincinnati and for the world are still alive and well as they find feathers scattered across the landscape of a once upon a time on a cloudy or sunny day. Makes me wonder who is helping them find those lasting true small joys in all there reality from day to simple day.

You know it wasn’t long ago that I would have said that my prayers with the dead man were now gone too… But then after I had died in 2007, I had come to recognize my Ancestors, I pray with them all now… Even that dying man that once carried thousands of feathers with him on the day he died.

Into the darkness of Mystery I come now only to wonder or end my thoughts but I see that I pray with all that is seen and unseen and they too pray along with me.

Whatever will be will be.

And if I should ever die again, I want my funeral to feel like this as they carry me with their minding of heart and Spirit to the local crematorium... One last dance is all that would be asked.