I couldn’t bring myself to pray for my father when he died.  There was nothing holy in his death.  How can there be when he was shot by his own “brothers”?  God was not watching when my father died, According to me, he’d never paid attention to our family in the first place.  So why should I pray to God for my father’s peaceful passage into a heaven which I did not believe in.

Besides, dad would have laughed his ass off at the hypocrisy of me praying.  My father always knew the score.

So why then did I find myself kneeling before the statue of the blessed virgin on the worn floor of this run down church? 

Maria.

Maria believed in God.  It didn’t matter how many times she shot up, Maria always believed that God was watching her and that Mother Mary would take care of her.  Some job she did.  Maria was dead, Mother Mary or not.  Sure she didn’t kill herself.  The drugs and prostitution were what killed her.  The Virgin Mary, whom Maria had prayed to faithfully every day when we were kids, would now be able to watch over Maria more closely. 

That was why I was here in an empty, dust-filled pew.  For once in my life I was where Maria wanted me to be; in church beside her.  The funeral home did a wonderful job.  Maria was Sleeping Beauty, innocent and radiant like the young girl I remembered when she walked down the aisle at her first communion. 

For the only time in her life, Maria was waiting before her beloved Virgin with all her sins washed clean.  And for once in my life, I knelt in prayer, asking God and Mary to take my friend’s soul into their keeping.  I may not believe in God myself, but praying for her to a God I don’t believe in is the last thing I will ever have the chance to do for Maria.