A hand on my arm

"If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it." — 1 Corinthians 12:26

Something happened on Sunday that I did not put in my letter, because it was not mine to put anywhere.

There is a woman at Trinity whose husband died this past summer, at home, with hospice in the house. I took a dish to her the week of the funeral and did not stay long. I have prayed for her every morning since before he died, and I have never said one word to her about it, because a prayer list is not a thing a person announces.

On Sunday it was All Saints, and Pastor Holloway read the names of everyone in the congregation who had died this year, and the names of the dead people carry in their hearts. When he came to her husband's name, I did not look at her. I looked at my hands. I had decided ahead of time that I would not look. A woman who has just heard her husband's name read aloud in a sanctuary does not need to find a row of faces turned toward her.

Afterward, in the narthex, with everyone getting into coats, she passed me on her way to the door. She put her hand on my arm, just above the elbow, for about as long as it takes to say a name. Then she kept walking. She did not look at me and she did not say anything, and I did not say anything either.

I do not know whether she knows I pray for her. Maybe she only knows that I am a widow, and that I sat near her, and that I did not look. Maybe that was the thing she was thanking me for.

It was the same arm Dan had touched earlier, in the pew, when Earl's name was read. I have thought about that more than I probably should. Two hands on one arm in one morning, and neither of them with anything to say, and both of them saying it.

Paul says that if one member suffers, all suffer together with it. For most of my life I read that as an instruction, as if Paul were telling the church what it ought to do. I read it now as a description. He is telling us what is already true of a body. The hand does not decide to feel the burn on the foot. It just feels it.

I will not call her. I will not take another dish. She knows where I sit. The list is where she stays.

Lord, she touched my arm and kept walking. Walk with her.