Column: Guest Column, by Nancy Overgaard

His name was Bozidar, which, in Croatian, means God’s gift. But I found it hard to understand just what kind of gift he was to the world, or the world to him.

He was kind enough as he ambled about on his dilapidated bicycle and his overly used feet. He always greeted me by name in English, which, as a foreigner, I truly appreciated: “Hi, Nancy. How are you?”

I doubt we ever had a conversation longer than that. It may be that I assumed he would not have known any more English than that or that my Croatian would not have gotten us farther either. Or it may be that I did not value the gift.

To be honest, I was afraid of him at first. He seemed to appear out of nowhere — a darkened hallway, a stairwell, a door at church. Perhaps sensing the angst I would not have admitted to, a church member reassured me I need not be frightened of the strange man who often spent his nights on the couch in the youth room. So I ceased being startled by his sudden appearances, yet I never made the effort to get beyond our standard greeting. And it was always he who initiated those brief exchanges.

If I felt anything for him it was pity that life had been so unkind to him. In a country where unemployment was already unbearably high, how could a man like Bozidar ever hope to have a job? And what kind of life was that, to wander about in rumpled clothing, dependent on whatever kindnesses church members might extend to him?

He could often be seen picking away on a cheap guitar, shared by the youth as they called them (a combination of teens, young and middle adults, to us). Yet as far as I could see, he was never proficient enough to accompany anyone in song or play in the praise band. But then again, neither was I. He did show up faithfully for choir. I saw it more as a kindness on the part of choir members to let him join them for practice and performance.

He faithfully showed up for church and youth group and church picnics where members always made him feel welcome. At other times, he might be included in a pickup game of table tennis. What else was there for a guy like him to do?

Such was my perspective until he was gone and it was too late to realize my blunder. As news of his sudden death made its way around — I heard it first by text message — together with more disclosures about his life, it only heightened my sense of sympathy for this peculiar gift.

At 50 years old, he had lived with his mother and brother in a single room, dismal and cluttered, with less than a mattress to sleep on, food dried onto unwashed plates left on the table. When his mother did not show up at the funeral, some surmised it may have been that she did not comprehend her son had died, so limited were her mental capabilities.

Thus, guilt was added to my sympathy, guilt that I had not done more, which is to say, I had done nothing to make his situation more bearable.

And I was not alone.

Bozidar had gone to the hospital with chest pains but was sent home either for lack of funds even in a country with socialized medicine or because they too failed to see the value of God’s gift. There he died, in his own cold, inhospitable room.

My perception changed when I attended his funeral. My first inkling that I had missed something significant about this unusual gift was when I witnessed the crowd streaming down the gravel pathway to his graveside.

Years under communism had left this unusual mark on funerals in this former region of what was once Yugoslavia. They are held in the cemetery, not in the church.

But that did not keep the preacher from preaching the most memorable funeral sermon I have ever heard. Nor did it keep all those people away even on a miserably cold and rainy day. Though almost too crowded to see, it was immediately apparent the entire choir had come to sing for this their member and friend.

The preacher began with Micah 6:8, a passage I knew well but would never have applied to Bozidar until the preacher did. Only then could I see that it fit perfectly. “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

The pastor, who, unlike me, had taken the time to truly value this gift from God, had come to see embodied in him these core virtues of justice, mercy and humility so esteemed in the sight of God. Instead of the pitiful figure I saw, his pastor saw a man who walked humbly with his God and treated others with justice and mercy. By the time the sermon was over, I could see it, too. And I knew that I had missed out on this special gift from God.

Or was he a gift to God? My Croatian grammar not being what it should be after four years in that country, I am not sure how “God’s gift” is precisely to be translated. Is it a gift given by God or a gift belonging to God?

Grammar notwithstanding, I have to wonder whether this man was indeed a gift to God as well as from God. In an area of the world where corruption is rife and justice all too often denied, and where excessive revenge was exacted during war just a decade before, it must have been a gift to God to know he could look down from heaven on any given day confident this one soul, despite how unfairly life had treated him, could be counted on to behave justly, extend mercy and humbly continue his walk with God, whatever he may or may not have understood or liked about his lot in life.

I left the funeral sad that I had missed out on this special gift from God, determined not to do it again.

 

The Rev. Nancy Overgaard is the chaplain at Thorne Crest Retirement Community.