Homecoming Sunday was pleasant at the rural church, with many extended family members returning to see their folks and sit in their childhood pews once more. I was the new pastor who played Master of Ceremonies, hosting former preachers who spoke briefly or offered a nice prayer. People hugged and smiled and sang robustly. The potluck dinner simmered in the fellowship hall, and lovely fragrances of family recipes wafted through the halls into the sanctuary while we held hands and worshiped Jesus.
An elderly couple, with the woman pushing her husband in a wheelchair, slipped into the building unnoticed. The man was stoic in his impeccable but old dark suit, black glasses, and sparse hair parted on the right, carefully combed over his scalp. The woman approached me and said her husband had once been the church’s pastor and was responsible for building the kitchen and fellowship hall, where lunch would be served after the service.
The man never said a word. People watched passively as the woman wheeled him down the hall past the kitchen and into the sanctuary, where they sat quietly through the service. Later, they sat by themselves during the potluck lunch. There’s something quietly heartbreaking about someone being alone in a room full of familiar faces.
I double-checked to note that his name was not on the list of former preachers. No one had sent them a letter of invitation. The old couple must have seen the news bulletin notice and decided to attend.
As they were leaving, the woman left the man’s side to tell me, almost pleading, how hard the man had worked to raise funds and get the fellowship hall built. I thanked them for their service, and she smiled in relief that someone recognized his efforts. I watched her load him into their car and drive away.
I asked people about him, but no one claimed to know him. I never found out anything else about him. It has been years, and I no longer remember his name.
He represents a fear I have long harbored. At the end of my life, when I can no longer stand and speak, will anyone remember me? Would anyone recognize me if I returned to the church buildings where I once preached, sang, hugged, and loved people? Would anyone say thank you for the exhausting years I gave them? Did any of it count?
Of course, many of the people have passed on, and several congregations I served back in the day dwindled and closed for good. Those that remain are full of people who couldn’t remember me because they never knew me.
Most of us fade away only to be remembered by a handful of friends and family. I’m more at peace about that now.
But I still think about him—an old preacher, forgotten in the church he helped build. And I stand in quiet solidarity with all who have faded, or soon will, in the places where we once gave our hearts.
Deep Calls 
David, I wonder the same thing. After I got terminated from the last church I served — just shy of 19 years — those folks made sure they smeared me and trash talked me as much as they could. I’ve not faded from their memory I’ve been violently excised.
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We’ve seen it happen a lot. It’s a terrible thing to do to a person, and it’s rooted on their guilt.
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Beautiful, David. I feel a little that way sometimes, we are always just one turn of the great wheel of time away from being closer to that place. We have an old piano that makes me feel this way. It has been sitting idle because no one plays it, the kids have grown up and gone, and I have forgotten how. It is terribly out of tune and not unsightly, but no longer beautiful and grand like it no doubt once was. You can’t beg people to take them, no one wants an old upright piano, especially one that needs work. We recently have made the decision that the piano must go, and I have been sick about it, feeling (quite rightly) that I have neglected it. Just yesterday, as the time for it to hefted out of the house approaches, I panicked, furiously googling things to do with it. My hubby was unimpressed, but patiently agreed to have it rolled unto the deck where (mostly he) we can disassemble it, saving the keys that are surely ivory due to the colour and the ebony ones. We can save the wood and the carvings, the columns. The brass plate can be recycled. It will take forever, but I cannot see it be forgotten and discarded like an empty beer can. It brought joy to our home, and at least a couple of others, I suspect. It has been an impromptu art stand and furniture piece, it has made great seating when the chairs were all occupied around the table (it has an old bench seat). It has been incorporated into makeshift forts with blankets draped over it, when little feet pounded the floors. It deserves better, and so did your aging pastor. Your story is instructive and provides a teachable moment for us all. Appreciate whose shoulders we are now standing on. A new splashy antique cabinet, long coveted, is scheduled to arrive that is destined to occupy the space where the piano still sits, but I think I will always see the ghost of it there.
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I love those old uprights. They weigh over 800 lbs but they contain the workings and the resonance of a grand piano. I had one for a while. A church gave it to me, because they needed to get rid of it. I learned to tune a piano with it (although it was a continual process, and I wasn’t very good at it). We couldn’t keep it, as we moved so many times.
It seems like you’re finding a way to let it go and still honor the memory of your piano, and that makes me glad. I hope we can do that with the people in our lives, too.
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And, although you were never my pastor, as long as I am around, I will remember you.
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Thank you, Debbie. And I you.
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Thank you so much, David!
I’ve been thinking a lot about this during the past several years, given my husband’s and my ages, 91 and 87. It’s endlessly fascinating thinking about change — from clouds to the I Ching : )
Process Philosophy & Theology have an interesting view, I’ve discovered — everything about us becomes part of “God” and so is eternally preserved along with everything that is. I am agnostic, but I enjoy puzzling over this : )
I’m so happy about your new work — newest expression of your lifetime of compassion and service. So thankful for you, wishing you well!!!
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Hello Elizabeth. Our. Evolution of thought never stops, does it. I think about the concept of unity and oneness, with no conclusions, but curiosity. Thank you for your well wishes.
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