Remembering My "Choir Boy"

Allen (right) with best friend in front of the Episcopal church in Wallace ID with the Methodist church in the background

As many of you know, I lost my husband on this day back in 2000. I have always chosen to spend this "anniversary" alone, often at home, in some form of contemplation of our life together and of all that he meant to me. Today has been a particularly quiet and contemplative day as I also recover from the visit from my goddaughter and her family over the last two days (more on that later). Whew! I am not used to the constant activity and occasional high decibel shrieks of a 1-1/2 & 3-1/2 year old but it was lovely to meet them finally and even lovelier to spend some time with my goddaughter, who remembers my husband and enjoys hearing stories of our life together (and the occasional story about her parents).

I incorporated into my day an IRest session to help me focus on Allen's memory and it left me peaceful, relaxed and with a helpful insight. The session led me to thinking about the joyful times in our relationship, how much we enjoyed each other's company, shared inside jokes, laughed together. After the joyous time with my goddaughter, I loved the opportunity to extend that joyful feeling. So this has been such a good day.

For some reason, the photo above got lodged in my consciousness, maybe because my goddaughter's stepson is off to church camp in a few days, the very church camp where my husband and I and his best friend were counselors back in the late 70's, and I was able to make a connection with this 12 year old by mentioning that. This time when we courted and those early years of marriage were years of a lot of joyful times, and many of those times involved that best friend, who was the one to gently draw us into working with the  youth program of his diocese. Both he and my husband were Episcopalians while I was a Methodist, but it wasn't long before they had won me over to their particular version of Christianity. It really wasn't a hard sell! As luck would have it, the Methodist Church and the Episcopal Church in my home town were just a short block apart, and it wasn't long before visits home to see my parents included attending not just the church I'd grown up in, but that Episcopal church down the block that I'd hardly stepped foot in when I lived there. And in this photo I've captured my husband (on the right) and his best friend after the Episcopal Easter service at which they helped at the altar in 1977. They were a rascally pair and I've always thought of this picture as "The Choir Boys" whose smiles would tell you they were going to be up to no good soon.

In fact, my husband felt he had a calling to the priesthood, and shortly after we married, we moved to Berkeley CA where he attended seminary classes for a few weeks until the financial aide office broke the news that he did not qualify for financial aide after all. It broke his heart to have to drop out and it took us a long time to recover from the resentment and ill feelings that followed. I'm not sure he ever got over it. In retrospect, it may have been a blessing in disguise, this diverting from the priesthood, one we could not understand at the time. He went on to find different jobs to sustain us, but always looked for ways to serve in whatever town we ended up in (and there were many). Chalice Bearer, Lay Reader, singing in the choir, playing his trumpet, and generally doing good deeds, many of which I was not aware of until after he died. My "choir boy" was a bit of a choir boy after all.

And since leaving this earth, I always think of him playing his trumpet in the biggest orchestra of all, and I suppose when I join him, I'll find my place in the choir he's playing for. I can think of worse ways to spend eternity . . .