The wind was gentle that morning, but something about it felt heavy. Not with rain, not with storm, but with memory. Caleb stood by the old barn, staring at the horizon where the sun was just starting to press gold into the edge of the wheat. He held a Bible in his hand, worn leather and loose pages, the spine held together by electrical tape. It was his father’s. And today, for the first time since the funeral, he had opened it.
His fingers had trembled.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t read the Bible before. He had. But this one — this Bible — smelled of sweat and hay and late-night prayers. The margins were filled with tiny, slanted notes in blue ink, sometimes smudged. Sometimes blotched by something else. Tears, maybe.
He had flipped through it slowly, page by page, letting his thumb glide over the Psalms, the underlined verses in Romans, the folded corners in Job. But it was the last page that stopped him. Not the last page of Revelation. The literal last page. Blank, except for something handwritten.
It read:
“If you find this, I’m already home. Jesus carried me all the way.”
– Dad
Caleb dropped to his knees in the barn straw and wept.
His father had been a quiet man. The kind who prayed with his eyes open and his voice low. The kind who let his life do the preaching. He had worked that land from dawn to dusk, raised three boys, loved one woman for forty-six years, and sang hymns off-key in church every Sunday. But he never spoke much of death, or heaven, or what he hoped for beyond the soil.
Until now.
Caleb hadn’t touched the fields since the burial. His brothers had understood. “Take your time,” they said. But they knew, just like he did, that it was Caleb their father had entrusted with the farm. Caleb who had stayed when the others left for college and cities and newer dreams. Caleb who had buried him with calloused hands and a heart half-ash.
Now, with those same hands, he traced the last words of his father’s Bible again.
“I’m already home.”
Something in the way he wrote it — calm, settled — made Caleb want to believe it.
But belief was hard lately.
He hadn’t told anyone, but in the weeks after the funeral, he’d started waking up in the night. Not with dreams, but with silence. That kind of silence that hums too loud. He’d walk the halls of the farmhouse and stare at the empty armchair by the fireplace. Or he’d stand in the kitchen where the coffee still brewed at 5:00 a.m., like it had for forty years.
He had programmed it to keep going, out of habit.
Just like his father had programmed himself to keep going — even when the cancer ate away at his bones and his breath grew shallow. Even then, he would open this Bible. Caleb remembered seeing him on the porch, the old blanket draped across his knees, head bowed. Lips moving. Eyes closed.
Caleb never asked what he prayed for.
Now he wished he had.
That afternoon, he took the Bible to the porch. Sat in the same spot. Same chair. Let the wood creak beneath his weight. A sparrow landed on the railing, twitching its head like it was listening. The wheat swayed like waves in the sea. And the Bible, opened to that last page, fluttered softly in the wind.
Caleb spoke into the quiet. “What did You show him, Lord?”
There was no answer, not in words. But the breeze passed over him, gentle. And the verse from Isaiah came to his mind — not like a shout, but like something remembered:
“Even to your old age and gray hairs I am He, I am He who will sustain you.”
He didn’t know if it was coincidence or the Spirit. He only knew that it was the first verse he had memorized as a boy. His father had taught it to him.
That evening, Caleb walked the fields for the first time in weeks. The tractor hadn’t moved since July. The weeds were stubborn, but the soil still smelled good — rich, waiting. He knelt down and grabbed a fistful. Let it fall through his fingers like ashes.
“Alright,” he whispered. “Alright, I’ll try again.”
In the weeks that followed, he found himself returning to that last page often. Not to read it again, but just to feel it. Like touching a scar that somehow healed you.
One night, while thumbing through Leviticus of all places, a photo fell out. It was yellowed, creased at the edges. His dad, much younger, standing next to a rusted tractor. One arm around a woman with a dandelion in her hair. His mom. On the back, in the same slanted handwriting, it said:
“The Lord is my portion, says my soul.”
Caleb smiled. “Lamentations,” he said out loud. “Dad, you always did like the strange ones.”
But there was something about that verse. Something deep.
The Lord is my portion.
Not the land. Not the harvest. Not even family.
God.
And that’s when Caleb understood. The last page of his father’s Bible wasn’t a farewell. It was a signpost. It wasn’t meant to be read in grief, but in trust.
Jesus carried me all the way.
One morning, a month later, Caleb drove into town. Picked up seed. Stopped by the diner. Old Miss Edna was sitting at her usual booth, sipping decaf and working on a crossword.
“Haven’t seen you in church,” she said without looking up.
He sat across from her. “Wasn’t ready.”
“You ready now?”
He didn’t answer. Just pulled the Bible from his coat and laid it on the table. She smiled when she saw the binding.
“I remember that Bible,” she said. “Your dad used to read it before every Sunday School.”
Caleb nodded. “He left something on the last page.”
Miss Edna didn’t ask what. She didn’t have to. She simply reached across the table, patted his hand, and said, “Then you best keep reading.”
And he did.
The next Sunday, Caleb sat in the back pew. Alone. No one said much. Just a few nods, a few hands on the shoulder. During the hymn, he opened the Bible — not at the last page, but near the middle. Psalm 46. His father had underlined almost every line.
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”
Caleb mouthed the words.
Later that spring, the wheat grew again. Not as tall as last year, but strong. He could see it from the porch every evening, glowing in the light. The chair next to him stayed empty, but not cold.
Sometimes, he would read aloud from the Bible. Not to anyone, just to the wind. And sometimes, the wind answered.
Years later, when his own son found the Bible on the same shelf — taped, torn, but whole — he flipped to the back.
There, beneath his grandfather’s words, was a new note in different handwriting:
“Me too, Dad. Jesus is still carrying us.”
