Everyone I Would Have Asked Is Gone

There were four names and she could have told you the order.

Wilf first, because Wilf would have done anything and would have made it easy and would have said something faintly inappropriate at the right moment, which was his gift. Then Enid, who was the sensible one and would have known who to speak to. Then Pastor Colley, who was ninety-one by the end and sharp until about the last two weeks. Then, at a stretch, Barbara from the Thursday group, though Barbara moved to her daughter's and then there was the fall.

Wilf went eleven years ago. Enid seven. Pastor Colley four. Barbara last February, and she found out from a card.

She is eighty-three.

She is not friendless. She would want that said before anything else. There are people. A woman called Suzanne rings her twice a week and means it. There is a man from the village who does her guttering and stays for a cup of tea and talks about his marriage in a way that would surprise his wife. She is on a list somewhere and somebody comes at Christmas.

But they are all after. That is the only word she has for it. They arrived in the last stretch and they know her as an old lady, and every one of them is kind, and not one of them was there for any of it.

And the thing she has been meaning to sort out since about the time Enid died is a thing she has genuinely never known how to raise with a person who has only ever known her as an old lady.

So it has sat. Seven years, roughly, and every time it has come round in her mind she has done the same thing, which is to go through the four names in order and remember, one at a time, that the list is empty.

Nothing on that list is diminished

I want to say something about Wilf and Enid and Pastor Colley and Barbara before I say anything else, because they are the people in this and I am not going to walk past them to get to a point.

That was a good list. Four names, in an order, chosen for the right reasons: one who would have made it easy, one who would have known the process, one with the standing, and one at a stretch. That is not a lonely woman's list. That is a woman who was well surrounded for a long time and knew exactly who was who.

Losing all four is a real bereavement and it has happened four separate times, and it is not the same as being lonely, and nobody who has not done it can quite tell the difference.

Now here is what has been true underneath the entire eleven years.

And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.Isaiah 46:4

Count the carrying verbs. I will bear. I will carry. I will deliver. Three of them, in one line, from a God who has just said I have made.

And notice the structure of that sentence, because it is doing something specific: the making is in the past and the carrying is in the future, and the two are joined so that the reader understands them as one continuous action by one person. The God who made her at the start is described as the one still carrying at the far end, and no other party appears in the verse at all.

You are carried, at eighty-three, by the One who made you, and that is not comfort for a woman with an empty list, it is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the reason it is landing on seven years of going through four names rather than on a verse you have probably known since you were a girl.

Now let me say something about the word after.

You said the people you have now are all after, and that they know you as an old lady, and you said it without self-pity and it is exactly accurate.

It is also true about most of the people in most of the great friendships of the Bible. Ruth was after. Timothy was after. The man who carried the cross for Jesus had been in that city about a day.

You are not required to be known from the beginning in order to be known. Scripture puts the carrying in God's hands from the making to the hoar hairs, and the Spirit of God is the one who has kept Suzanne ringing twice a week for however long that has been, which is not the behavior of a God who considers a woman's company closed.

I want to say something about the guttering man, because he is the most interesting person in your account and you mentioned him in a subordinate clause.

He stays for a cup of tea and talks about his marriage in a way that would surprise his wife.

You are somebody a grown man brings his marriage to. That is not a small role and it is not a thing people do with an old lady they are being kind to. It is a thing people do with somebody they trust, and he has been doing it long enough for you to have noticed a pattern in it, and God has not stopped putting people in front of you. Isaiah 46:4 says God carries to gray hairs and beyond, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps putting people in front of a woman who thinks her list is closed.

And here is the practical part, and it is one line, and then I stop.

The thing you have never known how to raise with somebody who has only known you as an old lady: raise it with the guttering man, or with Suzanne, or with whoever comes to mind while you are reading this and who I have never met.

Not because they will know what to do. Because they will know who to ask, and that is all a first person has ever needed to be.

You are carried, at eighty-three, by the same One who made you at the start. Scripture joins the making and the carrying in a single sentence so that nobody can put a gap between them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has kept Suzanne ringing twice a week.