Free at last

He was admitted shortly after midnight. He was groaning frightfully. All that night and the following day he groaned with the dolorous urgency of a man about to meet his Maker.  My sister lay on her bed in the next room. She too was very sick but she felt for the groaning man and asked me to pray for him.

I went and found a woman kneeling by the bed of the groaning man, tears in her eyes. The man was now on oxygen; with different tubes fixed on his body, blood everywhere.  What happened, I asked the inconsolable woman and she told me a story that will move you too. 

 The groaning man was a good man who was paid evil for his goodness. His fate was sealed on the evening he returned home from work and found his son fighting with his daughter-in-law. The poor woman had earlier that day sold her beans, and on learning about it her senseless husband with a notoriety for wastefulness through alcoholism had demanded that his wife hands over the money. 

The wife refused because she really needed the money whereupon the cruel fool started beating her up wickedly. Just then his father came and tried to stop the fight. In the process the woman escaped and the furious man turned on his father and struck him twice on the head with a hammer! 

The old man was rushed to hospital in a critical state; the unbearable groans attesting not only to the terrible pain but also to the fight for his life that he was not bound to win. 

I saw him die. He signed off with a mightier groan that seemed to shake the foundations of the hospital. Then I looked at his face and saw a man who had found rest at last! Rest from the utter embarrassment of being betrayed by his own son, and from the unfair sufferings of this world.