enlightenment

"aha," thought stephanie as she stepped out of her house on sunday morning. "this is why i stayed home from church."

she wore a polka-dotted skirt: white spots on navy blue. it was her second-best church dress. she wore white pumps and a white belt. her hair was freshly curled.

sparrows sang and the shade stretched a long way across her front yard. she could see the neighbors across the street on their lawn, doing outside summertime things. it was 10 in the morning and they'd be serving coffee now in the church dining room, and someone would be unwrapping cellophane-covered muffins that had been donated by max's grocery.

peter had always wanted to leave right after the service. he would be on the sidewalk before the bells stopped ringing if she didn't grab his arm and say, "just one cup of coffee..." of course, he always had a fine time jawing with the cleaned-up farmers and the old men and eating the sugar cookies.

stephanie was surprised to find tears had sprung to her eyes. she hadn't cried about peter's death for going on ten years. lots of things that should have made her cry didn't anymore, she''d noticed. she wiped her soft cheeks with the back of her hand.

the jamesons had sounded surprised when she'd called this morning to say she was staying home. she may have been a little surprised herself. she was already up, already dressed; her purse sat by the door with her shoes and she'd even eaten a boiled egg despite having no appetite. the neighbor's sprinklers had awakened her at 4 in the morning and she'd been letting the t.v. play in the background while she folded and refolded the newspaper in her lap. she'd never been one for reading the paper but peter had been a paper-reader, and she'd just never gotten around to cancelling it. sometimes she worked on the sudoku puzzles; usually she read the obituaries.

this morning she'd seen a death notice for someone she'd remembered teaching a long time ago. jimmy agnew, a sad and slouching boy who'd been mediocre in school and everything else. he was 44, it said. that meant it had been over 30 years since she'd seen him, sitting in the slanting sunlight in the back of the classroom, picking his nose while the rest of the class copied notes from the board. why did she remember him? she wondered.

she suddenly did not want to go to church this morning. she couldn't remember ever having felt that way before, though she sometimes had to miss church if she was unwell or out of town. but church was the only thing she looked forward to every week, and she liked to get out of the house and see people once in awhile.

but not today. she couldn't imagine singing "it is well with my soul" and correcting the grammar mistakes in the program during the sermon. she couldn't imagine digging her five dollar bill out of her purse when the donation plate was passed. suddenly, she couldn't imagine that she had done those things already so many times, it must have been a thousand Sundays' worth of the Apostles' Creed.

"I believe in the Father Almighty," she whispered as she walked out onto the grass. "Creator of Heaven and Earth." Her heels sunk slightly in the damp grass, and she stumbled and laughed. the neighbors across the street laughed too, but at something else. something she couldn't see.

"what is your faith?" pastor roland had asked her, the day after peter had died.

"well, lutheran--"

"no, no. i mean," he groped for words. "i mean... what is your faith to you? how is it to you?"

she shook her head. "it's... it's the way i'm surviving this thing. is that what you mean? it's how i'm not going crazy right now, with peter dead and we're supposed to leave tomorrow for vacation."

"yes, that's what i mean," he'd sounded relieved. and during the eulogy, he'd quoted her word for word, and tied it somehow to Isaiah, and she hadn't been comforted.

"what is my faith to me?" she wondered aloud. she fell over but hardly noticed her falling; the sun was piercing through the spaces between leaves. the ground was dirty and cool. "the ressurection and the body. the life everlasting?"

it had never been a question. but now her body felt as light as a balloon; her heart young in a way she would not had recognized if she hadn't lived to be so old. now she did not want life everlasting. she did not want peter and angels and heaven.

"lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight," she hummed, her eyes blinded by the sun. "the clouds be rolled back as a scroll." and the tree branches parted. and the sky came down to the earth.

[...] embraced the light though it was not god, and it was not jesus, and it was not peter with a harp, and left stephanie behind on the grass.