Free Pieces of You by J F Elferdink

say to me: ‘I see into you and I love you more.’“
    The boy was shaking but he carried on.
    “I wake each day waiting for him to call to me. Then I remember that he was put in a box and the box was covered with dirt. You know, Ban , it hurts more than when the mule stepped on my foot last year. This pain is in my heart. It must have broken into more pieces than my foot.”
    Now tears were pouring down the boy’s cheeks and he began to wail, a sound that pierced the invisible listener’s soul.
    Consumed by a grief he feared would cause his heart to stop, Mark got to his feet and looked around. In the same moment that Mark stood, the boy stopped crying. For a few seconds he seemed to be searching. Evidently not finding what he was looking for, he walked away…but more quietly as though he had found some comfort nearby.
    Mark wanted desperately to cross the line between his reality and that of the boy; to reach out and embrace him but, as he was thinking this, the participants in the memorial service and the boy whose thoughts he had read were suddenly purged from his vision. 
    In the next instant, Mark was standing between Bob and Zachri but he was not the same man any more. He could not have verbalized the change but he was absolutely certain that his companions knew. He no longer wanted to tell his side of the story; the evidence for his defense had been shredded.
    A boy very much like Martin had lost his father in a senseless battle.
    Bob turned to Mark and, looking into his eyes, touched him tenderly on both shoulders. Then he was gone.
    Before Mark could cry out to Bob and beg him to stay, Zachri whispered in his ear.
    “It is time to return.”
     
    As Mark tried to put his surroundings back into focus, he realized he was in the bed in the Swiss Clinic with tubes and straps connecting his body to various pouches and equipment.
    He could move his eyes but nothing else, as he focused on his son sitting by his side. He knew that Martin was speaking to him and he knew, just as clearly, that the experiences with Bob and at the memorial service in Vietnam had occurred.
    Inexplicably, he had been granted the power to cross time and space barriers. If, in the last few minutes or several hours — he didn’t know which — he had not been mentally present in this room with his son, how could he have been here physically? The question disturbed him enormously.
    Hearing Martin now was like tuning into a radio station and just catching the final few minutes of the program.
    “Her reply was that she still expects to see you before you have the surgery to remove your right kidney. You’d better wake up soon, Dad. I don’t know what to say to Janine and I know she ’ s expecting another e-mail. I’ve been trying to be positive in my messages, but this is the third day you’ve been lying here without responding to words or touch.
    “ Dad, I need a sign from you that you know I’m here. The doctors are still saying there is a chance for a full recovery, but two days ago they said ‘a good chance.’”
    With that statement, Martin reached toward his Dad, as though to shake him and noticed a little moisture at the corner of Mark’s right eye. Touching it, Martin put his finger to his mouth and tasted saltiness.
    Bursting into tears, he didn’t know whether he was crying from relief at what he believed might be the sign he had requested or because his Dad might be feeling as discouraged as he was.
    The note he sent to Janine conveyed guarded optimism; he wished he felt it.
     
     

15
MATCHLESS VISION
     
    After reading Martin’s email, I clung to its message as a promise. That night I had a dream, but not a typical dream. Without knowing how to categorize it, I will call it a vision, a rather mild word for what occurred. I awoke feeling gloriously fulfilled.
    Recording it in a journal is almost an extraneous act because what I experienced is stamped indelibly on my mind. Interpreting it through language is like