The Resurrection, Part 1

Death is all about desire

Image is AI generated. Story is 100% human.

What most folks don’t understand is that people come back from the dead for different reasons. It just depends.

You’re probably familiar with the story of how Jesus came back from the dead after three days, right? Even if you’re not a particularly religious person, I’m assuming you heard the story. It’s pretty popular, and you can see why. Supposedly the Son of God gets nailed to a cross for trying to save humanity, then dies, then gets laid to rest in this cave behind a huge rock. Three days later, the guy is gone. Or resurrected, as they say.

Jesus had a point to make, and I’d say he made it pretty effectively. Because say what you will about Jesus or Christianity, or whether or not you believe, the fact of the matter is that we’re all still talking about that stuff nearly 2,000 years later. And now you’ve got millions of folks from all around the world (probably hundreds of millions throughout the years if we’re going all the way back to when he first got past that rock) who are committed to worshipping this guy on a regular basis.

Never would have happened if he hadn’t come back from the dead. Jesus knew that, which is why he did what he did. Had to get folks’ attention, and man if that didn’t do the trick. So mission accomplished.

Anyway, I doubt you ever heard of Virgil Williams. I mean, you may have heard of a Virgil Williams, but most likely not this Virgil Williams. Even if you had gone to school with him or lived in the same neighborhood, you may have never noticed him. Or if you did, you probably forgot him soon as you saw him. Virgil was just invisible like that; not a Big Deal like Jesus, but he still existed. Lived right here in Detroit over on the west side near the Lodge and 7 Mile. Same one-story red brick house where his mother and father raised him. Both of them dead now; his mother a school teacher, Dad worked at GM. Only child. Short, stubby kid, built kinda like a tree stump from a pretty big tree. Same dark brown color as the bark, and skin just about as rough.

So right now you’re probably wondering hey, so if this guy Virgil was so forgettable then how come you’re remembering him in so much detail? And that’s a fair question. The answer is I’m not much different from anybody else, which means I wasn’t paying much attention to Virgil either, and I’m his next door neighbor. So I noticed him a bit more than most, but still not that much. Guy never said hardly a word; just left his house early in the morning to go to work (I’m assuming), then came back home same time every afternoon around 3. On the rare occasion I was outside when he was coming back home (I was almost never outside early morning for any reason), he might glance in my direction real quick, grin real funny, then nod just as quick. It looked more like somebody invisible had slapped him in the back of the head the way he nodded. I would nod back, maybe wave, and then he’d be gone inside the house.

Then came that day when Virgil got himself killed. Saw it myself. Virgil always caught the bus to and from wherever he went because he didn’t own a car. Bus let him off right over there on the corner. It was a nice day in the springtime so I was sitting on my porch enjoying it. Had a day off. Virgil starts to cross the street and is about halfway across when this dented-up dark red Camaro comes screeching outta nowhere around that corner as the bus pulled away. I still can’t figure why I hadn’t seen or heard that Camaro before it just showed up, but I saw where it was racing down toward Virgil, almost like it was aiming at him, and I jumped up outta my folding chair hollering at Virgil as loud as I could, trying to get him to run, jump, fly, whatever to get out the way. But it was too late.

But sometimes death can play tricks on you…