A woman at church

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction." — 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

There is a woman at church whose husband is dying and she has not said the word dying to anyone, including me, but I know because I know what it looks like when a person is carrying something they cannot put down.

She comes on Sunday mornings and she sits where she has always sat and she sings the hymns and she shakes hands at the door and she goes home, and none of it looks different from the outside, but I can see the weight in her. It is in the way she holds her purse strap. It is in the way she looks at the parking lot when she comes out, like she is measuring the distance between here and there.

I know because I stood in that parking lot once. I measured that distance. I carried my purse strap the same way and I sang the same hymns and I went home to a man who was still alive and I did not say the word either, not to anyone, not for a long time.

She has not asked me for anything. She has not pulled me aside after service. She has not called. I think she does not want to say it out loud yet because saying it out loud makes it the thing that is happening, and as long as she does not say it she can still believe it is the thing that might happen, or the thing the doctors are wrong about, or the thing that belongs to some other family.

I added her to my list. Her name is there now, in the back of my journal, in my handwriting, and it will stay there until something in me says it is finished. The list does not fix anything. It does not stop what is coming. But the carrying is the practice, and the practice is what I have, and she does not have to know I am doing it.

I will not say anything to her. She will tell me when she is ready, or she will not tell me at all, and either way I will be in the third pew on Sunday morning the same way she will be in hers, and we will sing the same hymns and we will mean them differently and that is the church doing what the church does, which is to hold people who are carrying different things in the same room at the same time and call it worship.

Ruby keeps a collection of prayers at her kitchen table. You can find them here.