Fred

Fred and Mavis have been together for fifty-four years, and today, as he sits across the table, he is sitting by himself. On Christmas Day, they got to their daughter’s house, went in, and then Mavis had a stroke. Scarcely could there be a better place to have a stroke, other than a hospital, but so it goes.

He gets to Colin and Kath’s house not to visit us who have just arrived in South Lincolnshire, and, actually, I don’t think he knows why he came. He just dropped in and Kath offered to fix him a plate, as dinner was in an hour and a half or so. He says no. Kath gets him talking, which he realizes he needs, and suddenly the hour and a half is up and she says to Fred, “Well, Fred, dinner’s dished up and I’ve made you a plate; you might as well stay,” and he does.

He’s a cross between jovial and maudlin. An old pastor, he is marvelous at getting on our level, and a good, active listener. He cracks jokes and smiles with old, genuine smile lines. Eventually, though, the weight of it all settles upon him and he grows quiet, closing his mouth and misting over his eyes. Mavis is in hospital, looking good, but, when she asks Fred to send her daughter in, Fred says the daughter isn’t there. Mavis replies, “Yes, she is… I can hear her.”

Being with the South Lincolnshire folks we experience a depth of community unlike that to which we usually subject ourselves. I am not used to old folks, nor am I used to strokes and death. This, perhaps, is one of the Church’s greatest elements of community: people from poverty to riches, black to white to Asian, birth to death. I realize, knowing Fred, that he knows something like this will happen someday, he’s given Mavis his heart anyway. I don’t think we can prepare ourselves emotionally for a surprise event like this, cannot protect ourselves from them, less we take our hearts from the people that would otherwise have them (or have a larger piece of them), and we hold out our hearts from God, who teaches us so much about His love for us through the people we love.

This is as much a story as it is a prayer request: Fred looks around over his plate, at Kath, Colin, Ryan, me, half-smiles, and says, “This has done me good.”