We Are Brothers

Ishmael held his mother’s arm as they approached the corpse of his father. He gazed into the lifeless face of the man he last saw when he was seventeen years old. The same words were exploding over and over in his mind, “It’s too late, it’s too late, it’s too late.” He was controlled now, but tears were streaming down his face, tears of remorse that he had not come before and made his peace with his father. He spoke softly to the father who was no longer there. “You gave me my life, but I was not the chosen one; I emerged from the womb of an Egyptian, Despised for being who I was, and for who I was not; You loved me, I know that you loved me, and I loved you so; But you were not allowed to love me as you should; I craved to know you as my father and my friend, But only secret rendezvous did you attend; And when I grew jealous of the doted one, You cast me to the desert heat, My mother to the wolves of barren places; But God, your God, He rescued me, When earthly father spurned the care I know he felt; And in wild regions of the land I’ve dwelt, With violent spirit and bitter heart, Until today I’ve learned my fate, To live forever knowing this, That when I came, I came too late!” He reverently knelt by his father’s corpse and stretched himself across the still warm flesh and washed it with his sorrow. Then through heart-felt sobs he made his peace. “Forgive me father, as I forgive you. Too late or not, let this be settled now. Let us not carry this beyond the grave. Let peace be our portion, here and hereafter.” Isaac and Ishmael prepared the body of their father. They wrapped it in its linen shroud and cut wood for the coffin. They tenderly laid the last remains of the patriarch in its last tabernacle and carried it to the field, The Machpelah, down the twenty-four stone steps, through the two outer caves and laid it side by side with the discolouring coffin of Sarah. Isaac affectionately touched the place where the body of his mother lay. In silence the brothers backed away from their dead, mounted the steps and stood together in their father’s field.