My trip to the woods

April 17, 2011

Thank you for a memorable weekend.
Thank you for the many (many!) glasses of wine and the memorable conversations.
Thank you for letting me lean on you, perhaps more than I should have.

Thank you for welcoming me into your home and letting me walk along side you to the dumpster.

I was so deeply touched by all your tiny gestures to make sure I was comfortable and happy. I t was an amazing weekend and I'm so grateful for this shared experience.


These are my attempts at a Thank You note. I just returned from a weekend in Connecticut with a man I met at church. I was helping "Pastor" sort through the weekend home he shared with his wife, who died a little under two years ago. We went through boxes of photos and old books and cleaned the house to make it ready to go on the market. I met Pastor at church, although he isn't my pastor.

The short story is that he is a friend of my pastor who just moved to town a few months ago and has been coming to my church while he searches for his next job. I remember him vaguely from the church Christmas party. But the real moment of friendship came when we had a fairly intense conversation at the going away party of a mutual friend. That's when I found out he was a widower. I had thought he was gay, due to an interest in going with me to see a musical in NYC. So the asexual vibe I was picking up wasn't an attraction to boys. It was grief.

It was a random conversation that led to this weekend. Pastor needed someone to help him go through the house. After my grandfather's death, I've felt useless to my mom and it seemed like this was a great chance to walk with someone the way my mom's friends were walking with her. So it all came to pass that on Friday at 2pm, I started a trip down memory lane. Pastor's memories.

We talked about our childhoods. We talked about books and music. We talked about searching for a sense of vocation. We talked about past relationships. Well, he talked about past relationships. I really had nothing to contribute. We drank a lot of wine. We ate yummy food. We both cried. I had a bit of breakdown and he held my hand through it all.

Tonight, as we were driving through New Jersey towards Philadelphia, I had this sense of returning to reality and a sense that my reality had totally shifted. It was an intense weekend and it had gone really well. He had invited me back for Memorial Day. I am going to help him decorate his new apartment. It's all so new and yet I can't imagine not seeing him tomorrow and him saying, "Good Morning, Beautiful."