MYSTERY MEN

For two days, I saw a Unabomber look-alike in a baggy orange sweatshirt wandering around restlessly through the halls of the hospice center where we each had a friend who lay dying. When we would pass each other I tried to see the words printed below an image of planet Earth, but couldn’t quite make them out. My eyes were drawn to his red MAGA hat over his wild, shaggy hair—reminding me of those clown hats with a wig attached. Around his neck was a heavy silver chain with a figure dangling from it.

    On the third day, at the coffee cart, Still unable to make out the words on his shirt, I asked him,  “So, who’s  the little shiny fella there?” pointing to the dangling figure on the silver chain around his neck.

    I learned that the figure was “St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes.” That says it all, I thought, but still haven’t figured out what the “all” was. Did he believe that America needed to be “great again,” but didn’t have much hope that it would happen, or was the lost cause his friend who, like mine, had no options left, except to wait for the grim reaper to swing his scythe?

  I misunderstood and asked, “But Judas isn’t a saint, is he?” that much I knew, but I got the wrong saint, or in this case, sinner.

“No, no, no. It’s St. Jude,” he had said sarcastically suggesting I should have known,“not Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus.

    “Oh, right that's who I was thinking of—for thirty pieces of silver, right?” I said.    

    “Exactly!"

     Exactly thirty pieces? I wondered. 

Just before I bit into my multi-grain muffin, I blurted out, "Well, they say no good deed goes unpunished.”

    “What do you mean, good deed? His was the greatest betrayal in the history of all the world.”

     "You mean the greatest catch 22” I corrected him this time, explaining, “if Judas hadn't turned his friend and teacher over to the Romans, Christ wouldn’t have 'died for our sins,' which was the intended plan all along, if I remember. So, they both ended up hanging from a tree, right?”

    “Yes,” he said, “but Jesus in victory and Judas in defeat.”

    “But…but...” Then I decided to put these mystery men, Jesus and Judas out of my mind. It was starting to feel like a sporting event.

    I poured the third mystery man a coffee, and passed him the cup. We stood eating our muffins in silence. Then, nodding to each other, we moved on into our respective friend’s rooms—to watch and wait at the foot of their beds.

My friend died that long evening, and I wept.

On my way out early that morning, I passed Mystery Man #3 coming down the hall. Our eyes met for a moment in a kind of farewell. As I looked one last time upon his orange sweatshirt, this time I was able to see the words below the image of our lonely, blue marble planet with an arrow pointing to the words: 

“YOU ARE HERE.”