59/365 History of a lunchtime

I may have been 25 but I was so young. Naive, really. I didn't think about the chances of miscarrying and so when it happened to me, I didn't have a back up plan. My doctor reassured me that this was the kind of miscarriage that you wanted to have. I got caught up on that sentence even though she explained what she meant. What it meant was that I could get pregnant. But what it meant to me was something different.

I ran through all my friends pretty fast. It's hard to continue to grieve with someone for very long. Everyone else was ready to move on and think about the future. I was caught in a loop. Some hard things were said to me, things I carried around a long time until I finally decided that it wasn't worth the hurt.

I called the rectory. Fr. Bill answered--he answered twice in the entire history of my calling the rectory. The first time was when I was looking to join the parish. This was the other time. I told him what had happened. It was summertime and so I wasn't at school and I frankly wasn't at church much. He asked me to go out to lunch.

I sat on the stoop waiting for him to pick me up. We went to a place a few blocks away. I had chicken salad. We talked about pain, but more than that, we sat in silence. He had a book for me to read. He was so sorry.

He dropped me off at my house, but as I was getting out of the car, he took my hand. "Don't isolate yourself. Call me if you need anything. You are very dear to me," he said emotionally, not at all strange.

"And you, to me," I replied awkwardly. I let go his hand and got out of the car.

I thought about that lunchtime a lot. How he didn't offer excuses, platitudes, or solutions. He listened and didn't gloss over my experience. Years later I look back at this as the best moment I ever had with him as pastor.

Because things would soon enough not be good moments. But that doesn't negate this one.