The Five-Thousand-Year-Old Man and The World-Traveling Yawn

Dad was in the hospital and we came down to Florida from New York City to visit him, possibly for the last time. It wasn't planned that we would say our goodbyes then, but we wanted to be around incase the situation presented itself. Really we wanted to be there to support Mom throughout the entire process. Dad didn't look as pitiful as I had expected but it was strange to see him like that. Emaciated and tangled in wires. By the look of things, he was getting better and in high spirits at the time. Ready to get out of the ICU, ready to strip off the wires and tubes, ready for real food. Somehow, while sitting there in the hospital we all got talking about Ötzi, the mummified iceman hikers found in the Italian Alps a few years earlier. Mom had read a story about Ötzi in National Geographic and was fascinated by the whole ordeal. It was a hot summer, she told us, and much of the ice on that glacier had melted away. Some people were hiking up there and found the iceman perfectly intact, relatively speaking. They say he is five thousand years old. Do you know they looked in his stomach and found out what he had been eating the day he died? They can study that kind of stuff and find out what time of year he died too, by seeing what fruits and oats were in season. They also discovered that he was murdered. They found an arrowhead lodged in his back. I find it so incredibly fascinating, she exclaimed. I thought back on the stories they taught us in Sunday school, the story of Cane and Abel. It was getting late and Dad let out a deep yawn. -- The yawn traveled around the room, as yawns do. A nurse walking by carried the yawn from our room in to the hallway, passing it on to a colleague in the hall. Soon enough the yawn had spread through the entire hospital. The yawn was carried from the hospital by a doctor in residency. His wife came to pick him up from work and they took turns holding the yawn as they drove from the hospital to a nearby restaurant. At dinner the doctor and his wife handed the yawn off to all the occupants of the restaurant and from there everyone took the yawn their separate ways. It took the yawn only twelve days to meet all of the people on earth. In these twelve days, the yawn had flown overseas via telephone, radio, and television, it had visited every continent, every country, and every city. It had made it's world trip and had come back to it's home in Florida. It was carried into a church where a funeral was taking place. I was at the pulpit, speaking with watery eyes. I watched as the yawn floated up through the pews and made its way to me. -- Is it a true story, Dad asked. Yes, answered Mom. It's the story of the five-thousand-year-old-man. -- It is a true story. And it is our story. It is the inescapable truth and experienced by all. It is the story of life.