Missing G.

I don't know how old G was. Not old at all. She had a sweetness about her, but was one to fly under the radar. She would slip in for our 8:00 Rite One Eucharist until we changed our worship schedule. She came back from time to time afterwards, but not often. We needed to accommodate more than the five regulars. But she never participated other than to soak up whatever she came to soak up -- silence? Holiness? Peace? I didn't get to know her well, because apparently knowing and being known by the rector was not why she was in church. Still, she was warm and gentle, if very private.

Sometime last fall, after being gone for quite a while, which wasn't all that unusual, she came to Bible study, which was extremely unusual. She was thinner. She was thin to begin with. She told us she had colon cancer, but was beating it. She didn't beat it.

I didn't meet anybody else in her family until I began to go see her in the hospital. It was mostly accidental that I found out she was back in the hospital. No one called to tell me. By the time I got to see her she was on drugs that made her loopy, but her sweet self shone through. I got to be with her in hospice care, and then she was gone. I met her daughter but have only talked with her husband on the phone.

It is strange for me to have parishioners who choose to be so private. Who long for their intimate time with God but not for community with the parish. But I'm OK with it. I wish I'd known her better, because I liked her, but I do believe she got from church what she wanted from church.

I offered to do whatever the family wanted to do, but she wanted to be buried in the small town out somewhere on the outskirts of Llano, where she grew up. So I didn't get to celebrate her life the way we typically do when we lose a parishioner. But I feel a loss. She was a quiet presence, but even so, her presence was a gift to all of us who worshiped with her and passed the peace with her even if we did not know how many children she had or what her job was or any of the complexities of her life. It didn't matter. We shook hands -- at church, at least, she wasn't a hugger -- and smiled and said 'Peace' and ate the bread and drank the wine together. Each of us drawn by the same love, each of us receiving it in our own way.

When I got to church today and got about the business of things, I saw that her husband, whom I still have never met and who doesn't go to church, has paid her pledge through the end of this year. My heart melted. It's not about the money. It's about his knowing how much her church meant to her. How much a pledge of her heart meant to her. I wonder how many of our parishioners are like G. In love with whatever it is that they find in the quiet or reverence or community or liturgy or music or whatever it is they come to church for.

Lord knows, there are plenty of people who are at church for attention. Who are very high maintenance. I love them. But then there are the G's who come with their very private hungers and are fed quietly and who leave and may never know how much they have meant to all the rest of us, though we have only communicated with our eyes.