The names of the living

"Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer." — Romans 12:12

Yesterday was All Saints' Day, and the names of the dead were read aloud at Trinity, and today is Monday, and Monday is laundry.

I stripped the guest room bed before the coffee was finished. Dan and Beth left after lunch yesterday, and the pillow on the window side still had the dent of a head that was not mine. I carried the whole bundle down to the basement and started the machine and stood there a minute in the cold listening to it fill, which is not a thing I usually stand and listen to.

The clock says I woke at half past five. My body says it was half past six, that I overslept, and it will not hear otherwise. It will take me a week to stop arguing with the clock. It takes me a week every November, and every November I am surprised.

The prayer this morning was the list. Edna's hip. Dan, home now, with the children back in school. Hannah. The boy. The woman at church. Henry. Pastor Holloway, who read every name yesterday and did not stumble on a single one, which I noticed and was grateful for. The children in the class.

Yesterday I said the names of the dead. This morning I said the names of the living, and I could feel the difference in my mouth. The dead names are finished. I say them the way a person touches a photograph. The living names are not finished. Every one of them is still in the middle of something, still driving or deciding or hurting or getting better, and when I say them I am not touching a photograph. I am putting a hand on the shoulder of someone who is still walking.

Paul says persevere in prayer, and for a long time I heard that as a hard word, a word for gritted teeth. I hear it differently at seventy-seven. To persevere is only to keep on. It is the washing machine filling in the cold. It is Monday after Sunday. It is the same names in the same order on the morning after a day that asked a great deal of me, said because it is Monday and Monday comes.

The machine has stopped. The sheets need to go in the dryer. The list is said.

Lord, the dead are with you. The living are still with me. Keep them both.