When Someone Stopped By Unannounced
It was a normal weekday which means I was writing at my desk in the laundry room and I hadn’t changed clothes from the sweats I had slept in and Maile was writing at the dining room table and Gregory Alan Isakov was probably playing on one of the speakers. It was a normal weekday which meant there was much to do and little time to do it in—certainly no time for showering or looking presentable or putting away the dozens of shoes that a family of eight accumulates inside the front door or sitting and talking. Only barely enough time for hot tea and writing and taking the dog out. And writing.
And then our friend Ned stopped by. He is an artist, an author, a dear friend, dropping off a book that includes essays and poetry and recipes, written by his wife Leslie who died nearly a year ago, a book I was slated to talk about on a panel at an upcoming conference. It’s called Tiny Thoughts I’ve Been Thinking.
He could have dropped off the book and stood on the porch the way most of us often do, one foot forward, the other pivoting, already returning to the car. He could have waved as he handed the book to me, smiled, and I could have stared at the book, pretended to read the back cover long enough for him to make his escape. And then we could have waved at each other as he drove away, waved in passing.
These lives. We live them far too often in passing.
Instead,
“Come in, Ned. Come on. Sit with us for a minute.”
“I don't want to keep you guys.”
“C’mon on! Get in here. I’ll make some tea.”
And so he came in and the three of us sat at the large dining room table, the one a friend built for us five or six years ago, the one so heavy we almost couldn’t get it out of the house the last time we moved. It was the same table where we had dinner with Ned and Leslie and six other writing friends the January or February before the pandemic hit, only a month or so after Leslie received her initial cancer diagnosis.
Tables are miraculous places, spanning ages, eons, lifetimes. To think, on that warm spring day we sat at the same table we had sat at when the pandemic first began was almost unimaginable. Impossible.
And we each knew that all three of us had a million and one things to do, deadlines and upcoming conferences (Ned was planning one) and Substack posts to write and books to work on and calls to make and important people to talk to.
But we sat there and time moved slow and the sunshine streaked through the glass door. “How are you?” Maile asked, and it was nearly a year since Leslie slipped away, went and left us, headed to a place where none of us could follow.
I remember how not-quite-a-year-ago Ned wrote,
I’ve given up the pointless chore of wiping the tears away from my cheeks. Can the groom rejoice as long as the bride lays dying? The days may come when the tears stop flowing … or maybe not. Perhaps my new calling is only to weep.
One year.
And now, at the table where the four of us recorded two or three podcasts together, only three of us sit. The empty seat is palpable, but we do not flee from it. We leave space for it. We leave space for Leslie; after all, she is still here—see the book, see the tears in our eyes, see the way we laugh about how happy she would be to hold it in her hands, and how embarrassed at such a fuss being made.
I hadn’t realized it at the time, but when we made time for each other, we also made time for her.
Arriving at someone’s house unexpected used to be fairly normal, at least 35 years ago, when I was a kid living on those backroads, amongst the meadows.
When I was a kid, my family used to cross the cornfield to my uncle and aunt’s house without calling first, because even if we did call, it was a nice day and they’d probably be outside anyway, so we’d walk over to see if they were there, to spend a quiet Sunday afternoon sitting under the deep summer sky with them. My aunt would bring out meadow tea and maybe some cookies and we’d run around in that greenest grass while the adults sat in a semi-circle of aluminum lawn chairs and talked until the moon came out in the dusky sky and it was time for the toddlers to go to bed.
And if we made that long walk and they weren’t home, we’d go to the next house down and see if my grandma was there, and she almost always was, with chicken noodle soup or candy, pinching our cheeks or the gunk under our chin, leaning in close and smiling.
“Hey, hey!?” was the typical Smucker greeting, an exploratory voice shouted through a partially opened door (doors were always left unlocked)—we heard those words at our house many times as well. It was a forthright, unapologetic announcement, checking to see if anyone was home.
Beware. We’re here to see you and to spend some time talking. We won’t be easily turned away.
I miss those days of unannounced visits.
We should go see if Aaron and Beck are home.
I wonder if Jonas and Anne are around tonight?
We should take this pie over to Grandma’s house.
I was only a child. We ran through the setting sun, through the lengthening shadows, through the grass that went from green to nearly purple in the darkness. How many of those visits were adults comforting each other, and I didn’t realize it? Talking about hard things? Helping each other along?
As we sat there talking with Ned, I remembered the last time Maile and I saw Leslie. I don’t think I’ll forget it, not for a long time. We had taken some food in to Ned and his daughters at hospice, and we were given the okay to go back and see her, though she was asleep more often than not.
We walked quietly into the dim room, as if into a holy place, nearly holding our breath. Leslie’s eyes were closed, her breathing deep and distant. Maile took her hand, then placed her forehead on the guardrail of the hospital bed and sighed, and then she cried, and I thought of Jesus crying for Lazarus.
How she must have loved her!
I stood there for a while, and we said our last farewell. Our last goodbyes on this side of that Tree, the one so big a river runs through it, the one bearing fruit for every season, the one where the nations will find their healing.
We turned to walk away from Leslie sleeping in the bed, but I looked back once. And there she was. Eyes open, her self somehow far away, but her hand up, waving goodbye. Her fingers curled open and closed, the way a child waves. And then she put her hand down and closed her eyes.
As we sat there chatting with Ned during his unexpected visit, we talked about life: the possibility of Maile and I buying a bookstore, Leslie’s book, Ned’s recent releases and artwork and his three beautiful daughters. We talked about life without Leslie and soft pretzels and the writing life and creating art.
And then Ned went home.
I’m glad he stopped. I’m glad we stopped.
We can’t keep living these lives simply passing one another by.
Gosh, thank you for writing this.
(Also, I bought his illustrated saint books a few weeks ago. Good, good stuff!)
Beautiful. It’s a little early to make me cry, though.