Eleazar, also known as Lazarus.

In the summer of my twentieth year, I met a man on the hill.

His way was heralded by a mob of shrieking, grubby children fleeing ahead of him; their eyes gleaming with terror and excitement. "Unclean! Unclean!" the children cried. This was to warn the villagers of the presence of a leper so that they could keep well away from him. I stood by the spring and watched as they approached in clouds of dust.

The man shuffled slowly, but was more than the required 150 feet behind them. "LAZ!" They shouted, "LEPER IS COMING. LEPERISCOMING." They dashed past me before I could respond, so shrugging, I bent down to sip the clear cool water burbling sweetly from the ground. If I were a Hellene, I might have called it the Nectar of gods, but I'm not, so let's just say the water was revitalising to a man who had worked through noon in the fields.

When I had had my fill, I looked to see if the leper had come any closer. He had not. The man had stopped moving, but he stood and looked up the hill at me. His face was mostly indistinct from where I was standing, for the sun was now in my eyes. What I could discern though, was that he was wearing a bundle of grey rags, cloaked in the dust of cities. His limbs were all intact, but grey like his rags, and I wondered how the children had seen fit to call him a leper. Perhaps it was the way he carried himself: stoop-shouldered and head bowed like a perpetual supplicant, as if he had hidden the human in himself too well to find it again.

"Bro-t," he began when he perceived my gaze, but he caught himself and called out instead, "Master, in your kindness, spare a drink of water to a poor beggar. Please." "Come and drink then brother! I am no master! The spring is free to all travellers," said I. "Nay, I can't." "Why not?" He moved his feet awkwardly and looked down. "Nay, I cannot drink whilst you are there." I was suspicious, of course. "Why not? Do not tell me you carry the flesh-eating sickness with you?" There was silence. I cursed my bluntness. He looked at me in desperation. My heart fell as a cloud moved to block the sun and I saw the white patches and lesions on his face. I was never one to deny a man a drink, but to knowingly allow an unclean person to touch the common spring was dangerous. He would contaminate the water. The village would be unclean. We would die an indecent death.

Only sinners were plagued with leprosy.

My face must have given my thoughts away for he grunted and turned to walk in the direction he had come from, then paused mid-walk. "Well then, I wish you peace," he said shortly, and continued on his way. "Wait man, stop. Please stop." In a fit of unthinking, bitter shame, I grabbed the clay cup from the side of the spring, filled it with water, and running, thrust it into his hands.

I never forgot his eyes when he took the cup. They were so tired, so cautious, and then a spark of hope. For a moment I saw the man he had so carefully hidden away in his beggared state. It was my turn to look away for I was heartily embarrassed by how I had thought to deny a simple cup of water to a man clearly in need of a drink. And I thought to myself how easy it is to overlook the person behind the matted hair and rags and funny accent. How easy it is to ignore someone because you fear the cost to your comfort and safety. How easy!

Thus was one summer's day in my twentieth year.

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I find myself thinking about the man on the hill from time to time. I hope he's met my friend. If there was anyone who saw the human person beyond their externals, it would be my friend, Jesus. Someone once described him as having "a sea of love in his eyes." And I think that's the truest thing about him. That's why I was hoping he'd have come to see me, you know, before I died. I knew that he had some trouble with the authorities and Bethany isn't the safest place to be (kind of) radical- they tried to stone him- but I had hoped he would have come anyway.

Maybe dying wouldn't have been so scary if I could have fixed the image of his face in my head, and the eyes looking at me with so much love...he's the kind of person it's difficult to look at straight in the face, not because he's good-looking, but because when you look into his eyes, you see the age of the universe in them. And you think to yourself that if somehow this man has watched the birth of the earth, there's nothing he won't understand about you. Those puzzling, beautiful eyes.

Being dead is a lonely business. For one, there's no one to talk to. Even if there is, conversation tends to repeat itself and run dry. I met another has-been from the village just the other day- an old lady who died on her deathbed surrounded by hundreds of loving relatives and two mongrels who used to pop by her table from time to time. What stood out during the mourning period was the lack of grief. It was a happy funeral. Sure, there was the pre-requisite display of grief, but once the funeral wines were served, the gloom was dispelled, and love blossomed between more than one couple.

"I thought I'd be in Sheol by now. It kinda hurts seeing all the happiness around me and not be able to take part. I feel like they've all forgotten me. Those are my children, Sarah, Ruth, Judith, Saul, Joshua, James. My grandchildren are over there, Mary, Hannah..."

"Maybe this is Sheol, just the aimless floating around of the has-beens. Maybe this is our underworld. I thought it would be a lot more peaceful though."
I was thinking of the funeral preparations over the past day and seeing my sisters weeping all the time. It was weird to see my body all wrapped up with linen and spices, but the worst was not being able to tell my sisters not to cry. Especially Mary, she got the most emotional, and Martha, busy, efficient Martha briskly drowning herself in work. I wanted to tell them how funny it was to be able to eavesdrop on anyone now that I was dead, but they couldn't hear me.

"Maybe. Now look again, those are my children, Sarah, Ruth, Judith, Saul, Joshua, James. My grandchildren are over there, Mary, Hannah..."

The old lady repeated herself more and more over the course of the day even as she began to look younger. She eventually disappeared. I don't know where she went to, but I stuck around a bit more. When you're new to the world of the dead, you'd rather stick with the familiar. So when everyone went to bed at night, I went to the tomb and sat beside my body. It was gross, but at least I couldn't smell a thing. Our people leave the bodies out for at least 3 days so we know for sure the person is unarguably dead. I was unarguably dead, but my sisters were still hoping I was somehow alive. Honestly, that was heartbreaking.

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"I wonder why he hasn't come. I sent him an express message!"

"What did you say?"

"I said, 'Lord, the one you love is sick.'"

"Well, that should have made things clear enough. It's too late though," said Martha, "if only he'd come earlier, Laz wouldn't have died then."

"Don't." Mary said.

"Don't what! I'm so anxious and worried about everything! The Lord should have been here by now, Laz wouldn't... And you know our Lord would have been safe here with us. He and his friends would have a place to rest their heads. Laz would be alive and laughing."

"Don't." Mary repeated, "Don't blame him."

"Oh Mary, I'm not blaming him. It's just so hard..." But Mary had walked off by then, her eyes rimmed with red. Brisk and efficient even in her bearing, Martha stood alone, her dark, upright figure in stark relief against the sand-coloured walls of the house. Her shoulders sagged. "Ah Lazarus, my brother, why did you leave us?"

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In between the evening of the third day and the dawn of the fourth, when any hope of me waking up finally ran dry, I drifted off to sit in my tomb. I was frustrated with my inability to console my sisters, or to have anyone recognise me. I was invisible, and I wasn't enjoying it one bit.

"Hello old buddy," I greeted my lifeless, wrapped up body. "Ain't no body here but me." A pause. "Ba-dum-tush." In the cool, damp blinding darkness of my grave, I was overcome with sudden anguish. I wept for my sisters because they sorrowed from their hearts, and the man on the hill who knew what it meant to be utterly alone. I wept for Jesus because all he was doing was healing people and letting them know love but all they wanted was to blame him and kill him, and for the village children because they had to grow up and learn hatred and heartsickness and how to cry.

Then I wept for myself, for my loneliness, for all the things I never had the chance to do, or never dared to do, or was ashamed for doing, for the fear I had felt both in the past and now for my future, and my silly pathetic body I no longer had control over, and the worms and maggots that would eat me to dust.

I was sad.

When I say I wept, I don't mean it metaphorically or literally. Crying is a physical action, but when you're a spirit or soul, you don't have the relief of tears. All you have a huge crushing sadness boring a hole in the place where your heart once was. A big, empty gaping void. It's as if you were collapsing into yourself. I lay down as best as I could in my metaphysical form and for the first time, wished that I was really and truly dead.