Crossing the Great Boa

Why did I choose "greatboa" as my blog address? Because something about Dad's death last year took on new meaning for me.

A few weeks ago, I went to see "End of the Spear" in the theatre, a movie about a real event from 1956. Five married American couples (some with kids) were in Ecuador, hoping to make contact with violent natives for whom murder of neighboring tribes was the norm. There were no grandparents in that hostile environment: no one lived long enough in that revenge-steeped community.

The Americans' spiritual beliefs compelled them to reach out in love to these warring tribes. After weeks of many drops of supplies from an airplane to build friendship and trust, the five men landed and met the villagers face to face. Shortly after, they were speared to death.

Before seeing the movie, what I knew about the story was pretty much limited to this: five friendly American male missionaries died from the spears of the natives, and then the missionary wives returned and made inroads with the natives.

When Mom learned that this story had been turned into a movie, she told me she had a file folder full of articles about the event. Ever since she heard of it in 1956, she'd kept whatever article she came across, from then till now, on that event and on developments since then, including Life magazine's multipage spread on the event back then. Amazing! We put the collection of 40+ articles on eBay. Two competing bidders turned out to be relatives of the five American men who died in a massacre presented in the film. The winning bidder was one of those relatives. Her father once had a collection of articles but lost them in a tragedy. She had been searching for some time for anyone who had articles...and searched just that week on eBay and found our listing. We were all so delighted to have made that connection. Articles of great meaning to Mom had ended up in the hands of those to whom they also had great value.

The old story I was vaguely familiar with was reason enough for me to go see the movie. The commercials for this movie added an additional lure, that of presenting the story from the vantage point of one of the sons who was going back to the village in the 1990s and would learn "what really happened."

In the movie, one of the natives expressed his struggle with "crossing the Great Boa". The phrase was used frequently in the movie. Sure, there were large boa constrictors in their rivers, but it was clear that "crossing the Great Boa" had some spiritual significance in their culture. Eventually, the native expressed his anguished thoughts to someone: he did not want death and burial to be the end of his life. He wanted to cross the Great Boa. His culture believed in something beyond death. If I understood right, he connected greatness and personal accomplishment (e.g. warrior status, defeat of enemies) with crossing the Great Boa. The parallel in my culture is one being in turmoil over their uncertainty about going to heaven.

Mom was with Dad last year when he died. I was with him the night before. In the days prior, his communication went from weak to nothing as his condition deteriorated from his cancer. (What a weighty loss for all of us to no longer be able to communicate with him. Those of you who have lost a loved one understand, don't you?) In his last days, if his eyes ever opened, they were blank, not focussed.

Just before his death, he bolted awake. Mom watched his eyes became clear and focussed as he looked at a couple different places in the room and quietly said, "amen! amen! amen!" Mom asked him, "What do you see?" (Her own mother, when asked in an alert moment before her death to identify family members in the room, named them all and also included Jesus. When asked again, because of the surprise of that answer, she repeated the same.) Dad never looked at her nor replied. Mom told him it was okay; he could go. A tear rolled out of the corner of his eye. Soon, he died. (The only tears we had seen before that were not of sorrow or even of physical pain. They were only tears resulting from joy welling up within him, simple humble delight in the love of friends who visited him.)

The movie was built around the son of one of the male missionaries who died. We got to see him grow up with the female missionaries who continued on. Then the end of the movie was about the son's return to that land to once again be with the natives he'd grown up with some 50 years earlier.

[Spoiler alert: The next paragraph tells how the movie ends.]

The adult son was talking with the native (long since a friend) who had killed his father long ago. The native wanted to tell the son a secret he had kept to himself, something that happened as the father was dying from this native's spear. Bright light had shined all around and both the native and the father looked up, seeing the heavens open and seeing heavenly beings. The native told the son, "I watched your father cross the Great Boa."

What a thing to observe. Tears rolled down my face in that theatre as my soul was flooded with joy in having a better understanding of what Mom got a glimpse of: Dad crossed the Great Boa.