“Joel, I keep telling you that the integrity of a man goes beyond doing things based on feelings, but holding up values that have been imbibed in him through experience and socialization.” she told her son, when she overheard his conversation with his friend. Mrs. Juliana Stevens is a widow of three years, who hasn’t been able to get over the death of her loving husband, and her son, Joel, doesn’t make it easy for her at all, as he constantly made decisons that landed him in trouble. Mrs. Stevens always felt inadequate to imbibe in her son the teachings his father upheld.
The next afternoon, after a hectic day at work, she rushed to the kitchen to prepare her son’s favourite dish, as it was his final examination for the school year. Her tired legs might not have been strong enough to prepare her son’s favourite, but the love that filled her heart surpassed the weariness of her body, so she danced and exalted God, as she moved up and down the kitchen, putting together ingredients that gave off the best aroma. After she was almost through with her special delicacy, she left the dish under low heat and freshened up, and after, set the table for her son’s arrival. She purposed in her heart not to take a bite, till her son got home. She waited for hours, and dozed off ocassionally. She called her son several times, but to no avail. She was worried, and tried to reach his friends, but that also yielded no result. She stood to her feet and prayed till she heard the door open wide, and through the door came her only son, intoxicated with nothing, but heavy alcohol, walking drowsily, with a constant loss in balance, and his mother watched as he constantly stumbled on his own steps, and tears walked down her cheeks, as she helped him to his room. “My mother, my mother” he drunkingly sang.
That evening, the dining table sat in the dining area, as beautifully as it was organized with Joel’s favourite meals. After Mrs. Stevens helped her son to bed, she locked herself in her room and cried out helplessly to the Lord till she fell asleep. Around the hours of three and four, at dawn, Joel woke up to the sound of his alarm, and hurriedly prepared to leave the house for an operation–unknown to his mum. He sneakingly opened his room door and tiptoed out of the room, through the dining area where he saw the love of his mother displayed on the table, which stopped him from going out, but he received a phone call, which led him outside the house. Joel was with a gang that had scheduled to rob a supermarket that dawn, and through the journey to the place of crime, he thought of his mother, but he still remained bitter about the death of his father–pain overruled his love.
Immediately the gang broke into the supermarket, and went on with their criminal operation, Mrs. Stevens’ car pulled up in the parking lot and she stood stiff, as she watched her son, accompanied with a gang of boys, robbing the supermarket of a hardworking woman. Mrs. Stevens reached for her phone to call the police, but a shot was silently fired, right into her heart, and she fell to the ground. When Joel heard the tiny sound of a silencer, he followed the sound, and found the only woman that truly loved him, bleeding out. He ran out of the shop and cried, “Mother! I promise to be a better man!” Immediately, the others realised she was his mother, they ran away, leaving him in the pool of his mother’s blood. Joel dialed for the cops, and when they arrived, all he could say was, “I shot her! I killed my mother!” He constantly cried. They handcuffed him and led him to the passenger’s seat, and from the passenger’s seat, he watched how the medics carried the lifeless body of his mother. Remembering the last words of his mother over the phone, the day before, he mumbled her exact words, as the car drove off, “Every man has a choice. The choice you make has consequences, whether favourable or unfavourable. I trust you to make a favourable choice,” and the tears constantly trickled down his cheeks, as he reflected on these words.
