Kingdom Stories – The Day it Rained Silver

God’s Kingdom is a place for telling stories. There are stories worth telling because they are true. Then there are stories worth telling even though they are not true, because they are born from the creativity of creatures made in the image of their Creator. They don’t tell the story of the Kingdom, but they reflect the beauty and truth of the Kingdom. This is one of those stories.

The day it rained silver we woke up late. I asked you if you wanted coffee and you said, “Yes!” before I even finished the question. Normally you would argue with yourself for at least five minutes. But the night before you’d said, “I never want to sleep again,” just before drifting off. I suppose it wasn’t just tired rambling. You drank seven cups of coffee that day.

When I went to turn on the news you grimaced and said, “Please, just leave it alone.” You were right, of course. What could they possibly say that would change the course of our day?

Here’s something you would have found funny: Afterwards, all the news sources were playing interviews with different science “experts” trying to explain away what happened. It’s like you always said, they can’t accept things that don’t fit the paradigm. There are things their science just can’t explain, mysteries beyond measuring.

We spent the morning playing board games. We did a round of all your favorites, and even a couple of mine. Just before lunch you asked, “Do you think the kids will call? Should we call them, just one last time?”

I shook my head. “I think yesterday was our last goodbye. Let them have today for each other. Be happy that they’re still best friends.”

“Yeah, they always have been,” you said, tears welling up.

“C’mon, let’s have something horribly unhealthy,” I said, and headed to the kitchen to make some lunch. “Pizza, ice cream, burgers… what do you feel like?”

The strange dim glow of the sun cast a radioactive glow across the kitchen floor, a sign of the death to come.

The strange dim glow of the sun cast a radioactive glow across the kitchen floor, a sign of the death to come.

There’s something funny about eating a meal you know doesn’t matter. You want to just indulge yourself completely, but it’s not as fun as it sounds. You end up with a stomach ache sooner or later. You had a stomach ache before we even started, but you always got stomach aches when you were anxious.

Darling, I can’t tell you how much I wish I could freeze that moment. All those nights we sat on the couch eating ice cream and talking, and there we sat that day, eating it straight out of the cartons and reliving our marriage and our boys’ childhoods. If I could have just that one hour back.

Why didn’t we make love that day? I suppose we had so often in the weeks leading up, that day all we wanted was to sink into our friendship with each other. We pulled out a book and took turns reading chapters to each other. When the power went out, we lit candles all over the room; you said you didn’t want to read by the bizarre end-of-the-world light streaming in from outside.

You set the book aside and curled up into me and said, “Can you just pray for us? I want to pray, but I just don’t have the words.” Did you know that I didn’t have the words either? I thought maybe you could tell; I was just rambling with whatever came to mind. But I think it was enough just to open our hearts.

I had so hoped that the peaceful acceptance we’d found during the day would last until the end. But as evening came on and the sunlight from outside started to fade, you got so anxious, so angry. I held you as you screamed and raged and panicked. I stood in the doorway as you changed your clothes three times, saying you just needed to feel comfortable, finally settling on pajamas. I waited while you slammed cupboard doors and tore everything out of the fridge and freezer and then announced that you weren’t going to eat anything ever again.

I sat you on the couch and rubbed your shoulders until you said you didn’t want to be touched for a little while. “Would you like to go for a walk?” I asked.

“I don’t want to go out there,” you whisper-sobbed, and I nodded.

“I get it,” I said. “I’m just going to look at the water, one last time.”

You fluttered your fingers, which I took as “go ahead.”

I went out the back door and down the steps to the dock. The sun was a cold, gray steel orb resting on the horizon, its vague, flinty glare hammering out the message, “This is the end.”

I never really understood the science of it, not the way you did. But all their models and predictions had been true up to that point. The sun dipped behind the water, the sky blackened, and I thought how all humanity was about to be on its knees facing the undeniable. I debated going back inside, to just hold you and be close to you at that moment.

Was I waiting for trumpets to sound, or just an unrelenting cold to set in? The voice of an archangel, or my own last gasp?

But the waves of the water rolled in gently and a salty breeze comforted me. I’ve always loved the sea. Staring into the greenish water I struggled to tear myself away. I remembered hearing a preacher talk once about facing death alone, and everything in my heart suddenly felt tight. Was I waiting for trumpets to sound, or just an unrelenting cold to set in? The voice of an archangel, or my own last gasp?

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The space of a heartbeat. A moment later and I would have been running back into the house to wrap myself around you and whisper how much I love you. In that space I caught a glimpse of something in the water. It was a fish. It just swam by like it was nothing, but it shocked me and I stared, looking for another.

That’s when the rain began.

It came as every rain does, a few droplets at a time, a cold one down your neck and then one in your eyeball and one right in the tickly place on the top of your head, and then in a rush it all starts to pour down onto you. But this was not like any rain you’d ever seen before. It shimmered and glowed with a silver light all of its own. The sky that had been so dark just a moment before was illuminated, and the rain bathed everything in light.

I cupped my hands and collected a pool of shining silver, so bright it hurt my eyes, but I couldn’t take them away.

“Darling, you have to come out and see this!” I yelled, and was about to go find you and pull you by the hand and drag you out into this beautiful deluge.

But then I saw the fish, jumping out of the water in the hundreds, thousands. They were everywhere, leaping and splashing and carrying the silver rain down under the water with them. In the distance I saw a giant shape cresting, and a moment later it leapt as though for joy, the largest whale I’d ever seen off the coast.

Up and down the beach people were coming out of their homes, children were dancing in the rain and shouting and giggling. A little girl yelled, “Look, mommy! A bird! It’s a birdie! The birdies are back!”

Not just one. The air was suddenly full of birds, wheeling and dancing through the air. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing, and I didn’t know if it was the silver rain pouring down my cheeks or tears.

I started up the stairs to come and find you, though I was certain you would have noticed what was happening by now. My phone rang. It was the boys.

“Is it happening by you too?” I asked.

“It’s all over the news! Dad, it’s happening everywhere! No one knows anything, but it’s amazing! Is mom there?”

“I’m outside; she’s in the house. I was just going back in to find her.”

“Call us! We want to talk to her too!”

I hung up and raced inside.

You were on the couch, curled up with your head on a pillow, your eyes closed.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to sleep ever again, darling,” I chuckled, sitting down next to you.

I put my hand on you.

I shook gently.

But you were gone.

All night I sat by you and watched as the silver rain poured from the sky, never getting any dimmer, the whole world engulfed in argent luminescence. People were celebrating out on the beaches, swimming and laughing and dancing and crying and kissing. The end of the world had not come.

The rain stopped around 4:00 a.m., but the light remained. At about 5:30, the sun rose, bright and yellow and warm as if the last six months had never happened.

At 6:00 I called for paramedics, and I rode with you over to the hospital, though they said when they got there that nothing could be done. They did all the tests and examinations, and the doctor said there was no clear sign of why you died. He supposed that maybe you’d just given up hope and shut down, but I wasn’t sure. The way I figure it, with his estimation and all, you died right about the moment the rain began to fall.

I called the boys and broke the news. They said they’d be on the next plane over. I went home and turned on the news, and some science expert was trying to stumble through a logical explanation for what had happened. Something about how it wasn’t really silver rain, that instead of bursting and blowing us all to kingdom come, the sun had instead slowly reignited. In its limping back to life, the sudden rain refracted the light and appeared silver.

I turned it off, laughing for you. It didn’t matter how they tried to explain it away, everyone knew something miraculous had taken place. Forever after that day would be known as the Day of Silver Rain, or more simply Argent Day.

But for me, it was something different. I don’t know what to call that day.