Joseph’s Bones

Sometime around his 45^th birthday, my nearest brother called me, and there was some urgency in his voice. “Guess what I found,” he said. I honestly couldn’t tell if he was excited or anxious, but since he wanted me to play a guessing game, I quickly calculated that he had stumbled upon something good.

Me: “You found Jimmy Hoffa’s body and have claimed the reward.”

My brother: “No. Not yet, anyway. I found Paw Paw’s car.”

Paw Paw was our mother’s father. Olive Grover Adams – O. G. for short. He holds near mythic status in our memories because of a spectacularly eccentric resume; he was a hobo, a clown, a Shriner, a postal clerk, a legendary practical joker, a World War I veteran, he chewed tobacco and had a pet pig named Stinky. He died in 1969 after a long battle with emphysema. Paw Paw, not the pig.

Me: “You found Paw Paw’s car? Where? Which one?”

My brother: “The ’63 Falcon. Some of his sister’s relatives parked it in a barn twenty years ago. It’s just been sitting there. It’s in pretty bad shape, but I bought it. I’m going to restore it. Then I’m taking Mom for rides in it.”

Me: “That’s going to make her cry.”

My brother: “I know. I’m going to win the Christmas contest this year.”

My siblings and I enjoy a good-natured competition each Christmas to see who can give the most meaningful gift to our parents. My sister won a few years ago by giving Mom and Dad a video slide show. She stole a bunch of pictures from the family album at Thanksgiving, scanned them, and dubbed in a sad soundtrack. Mom cried as soon as the music started. My sister gloated.

I won once by donating money to an orphan’s home in Mom’s name. When she saw that picture of a child holding up a little hand-made “Thank-you” sign, tears bused her cheeks. But when my brother found our grandfather’s old car I knew he had won that year. So I looked for sales on toaster ovens. There was no point in burning a good idea when he had already sewn up the contest.

I congratulated him on his discovery, complimented his initiative and we hung up.  Then I began to think about the meaning of what he was doing. I started writing about my grandparents at about the same age he began restoring Paw Paw’s car. What is it, I wondered, that caused both of us to start reaching for our ancestors – decades after they were gone – at exactly the same point in our lives?  I’ve tried to resurrect them by retelling their stories. My brother was trying to retrieve a part of that past by restoring an old car.

Without actually saying it out loud, I think both of us realized that, barring any unforeseen tragedies and assuming accurate actuarial predictions, we were about half-way through our lives. Give or take a few years. Why is it that a man who suddenly, or even slowly, realizes that his end is no longer too distant to contemplate, begins to reel in his past? I mean, honestly, if you reach a point in life where you can actually imagine your own death, doesn’t it make more sense to focus all of your time and energy on finishing well?

But this phenomenon, apparently, isn’t peculiar to the Vickerys. It’s as old as Genesis.  Literally. At the very end of the Bible’s first book, the patriarch Joseph was dying. He had risen to a high position in the government of Egypt and, through cunning and wisdom, had helped the nation avert an economic and human disaster brought on by a worldwide famine. In his final moments, the family gathered around his bed. It was as dysfunctional a group as you’d see featured on any episode of Dr. Phil today, one wracked by jealousy, deceit and betrayal. But somehow, they’d found a way to forgive.

With his dying breath, Joseph wrestled a promise from his kin. “And Joseph made the sons of Israel swear an oath and said, ‘God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place,’” (Genesis 50:25).

Four hundred years later, Israel, a nation now and led by Moses, left Egypt. They packed up all they possessed and a good deal of plunder from the Egyptians. But that isn’t all they took. “Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the sons of Israel swear an oath,” (Exodus 13:19).

When Israel received the Ten Commandments on the mountain, Joseph’s bones were resting in Moses’ tent. When the people drank water from the rock and ate quail and manna from the Lord, the bones of Joseph were silently reminding them that God had always taken care of his people. For forty years Israel wandered around the Arabian Desert and the bones of Joseph took every aimless step. Finally, 450 years after he’d made them swear the oath, Joseph’s bones were buried in the Promised Land. It’s one of the few promises ancient Israel ever kept.

I’ve concluded that my brother and I were digging into our past for the same reasons Israel dragged those bones around with them for over four centuries. It isn’t that we were afraid to face the future. I think people just know, whether by intuition, instinct or perhaps even inspiration, that they cannot march into tomorrow without making peace with yesterday. That’s why Israel bundled up Joseph’s bones. It’s why my brother broods over an old car and why I borrow stories from familiar history. The past has something to teach the future. The provisions for where we are going are strewn along paths we have already walked.