Tag: old age

Barry and Me

~ David Mercer ~ 2 Comments

At this stage in my life, I’ve had to let some things go. Strength ebbs, friends and enemies move on or die off. Wisdom may abound, but the brain cells do not flow as easily, and neither do my words. They’re still there. It just takes a little more digging, hemming, and hawing.

 

I’ve noticed that Barack Obama has that same issue, and it makes sense as we are the same age.  He has always had a facile tongue and eloquent elocution, but he does it a little slower than before. Good thoughts, big ideas with subtle nuance but they come out slower with longer pauses between the words.

Me too.

Barry (that’s what his friends call him) and I may be a step slow but we are in step with each other, forging our paths a little more deliberately than before.

We are the same.

Well, he can still play basketball even at our age, while I never could at any age. And he still speaks to tens of thousands, holding them spellbound, while I once spoke to, uh, tens of people.

But I think it’s safe to say, we are both accomplished. He was a President of the Harvard Law Review, a US Senator, the President of the United States, currently a respected Statesman who just opened his presidential library in Chicago

While I was a small-town preacher, who once carried the honor of having the highest GPA in fifth grade spelling. After stepping away from the ministry with as much dignity as I could muster, I moved to the emeritus position of deli worker and then kept moving up to accept the position of cashier at a respected grocery store. 

Plus, we both married well, and are espoused to tall good-looking babes. 

So, we have traveled our parallel paths. However, I guess I’ve gotten off track before I even started up the old mental locomotive to say what I wanted to say. Perhaps I should fire up the engines now and start creaking down the tracks.

I’ll try not to leave Barry in the dust.  

When No One Remembers

~ David Mercer ~ 8 Comments

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.