So(ul)journ!

Joe’s dead.

 I’m kind of in shock. I guess I shouldn’t be. Joe didn’t look so good before I left on my renewal leave. He’d been a portly fellow, but by then, his clothes hung loosely over his once stout frame. Suspenders (bracers in England) kept his trousers from falling to the floor when he stood up. I remember looking at him and thinking, he’s not looking too good.

“You alright, Joe?” I asked him on my last Sunday. “You’re fading away.”

He gave me a sideways, wry smile and coughed a bit. “Slowing down, I guess.”

“Hey, tell your family to get ahold of us if something happens while I’m away, okay, Joe?”

He nodded. “Sure thing.”

“All the best, Joe. See you in a few months.”

I didn’t think that would be our last time.

When I got back, we were thick in a mailing campaign. A letter addressed to Joe came back with the post office’s yellow label: Undeliverable – DECEASED. I stared at it for a moment, wondering when it had happened.

I decided to go to the community where he lived and checked in with the resident manager’s office. I pulled the clergy card, explaining that letters mailed to Joe had come back with news of his death. I think they took pity on me—privacy rules being what they are—and told me what they knew.

Joe had died in a local nursing home at the beginning of September, about a month into my leave. His health had deteriorated, and he’d needed specialized care. The resident director assured me she had visited him there. “He would call us up and give his status,” she said. “He worried about his rent and had me come over to get a check.”

But no one heard from him after that.

She went to visit him in mid-September, and that’s when the nursing home told her he’d died—two weeks earlier.

Joe sat on the last pew (the one furthest from the front and closest to the entrance door to the sanctuary) in the seat closest to the center aisle. Nearly everyone coming to worship would have had to walk beside Joe as they entered the space.  I can still see him sitting there. Even in the good ol’ days, he wasn’t very mobile, so we’d bring communion to him after everyone else was served.

     “The body of Christ, the blood of Christ, for you, Joe.”

      He’d nod his head, eyes somewhat down turned.

Joe’s been gone for over two and a half months now. No funeral. No celebration of his life. No military honors, yes, he served our country’s interests in the military.  No place to pay my respects.

Joe’s gone. But I still see him.

I’m like that kid in the M. Night Shyamalan movie: “I see dead people.” Not in a supernatural way, but in the way their presence lingers in my memory. I look at the pews, the seats where someone used to sit, and in my mind’s eye I can see them. I fill in the gap that remains, and there they are. 

People, being creatures of habit, sit in the same place week after week. I don’t think they realize how they imprint themselves on those of us who stand up front, looking out. . After nearly ten years, I can look out at the congregation and see a load of souls who once occupied those seats.

     Their absence doesn’t erase their presence.

Joe’s empty pew reminds me of so many others. The ones who chose to leave. The ones who got upset and went elsewhere. Consumer mentality seeking a more comfortable, familiar, gospel-ly message or music style. Maybe their love one died and it’s too hard for them to stay.  Some probably faded away thinking no one missed them–not true, I do. I remember where they sat, their leaving, I sense that, while they could return at any moment, they likely won’t. It’s a whole different level of grief, one filled with so much lost potential and possibility and filled with, “I wonder,what if?” 

I remember standing before a previous congregation at a funeral. She was much loved–a sort of surrogate mother since my own had died–she offered to be such. I had been her pastor for years, and in that moment, no amount of faith or proclamation could still the ache in my heart. I remember saying to those gathered:

    “You know, the longer I’m here with you all, the harder it gets to stay because it is starting to hurt too much to “so long” to the souls in my care.”

“So long, Joe … this is a hard one!”

Joe’s seat is empty now, but his presence remains. The connections we make in this life leave traces that ripple far beyond our seeing. Joe’s life mattered, and somehow, in ways I may not fully understand, that still matters.

Isn’t that true for all of us? In the spaces left behind, in the lives we’ve touched, who’ve touched us. There’s a quiet reminder: we matter, and so do those we carry with us. In this moments, I wonder, “Who sits in the pews of your memory? What traces have they left for you to hold?’