LIMITING DISAPPOINTMENTS [T, 8-18-20]

 

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

LIMITING DISAPPOINTMENTS                  [T, 8-18-20]

Ed [1] and I were good friends, even close friends. We were both clergy, in different denominations. We each had two daughters, the same age. It made sense for us to pal around with one another, as individuals and as families.

Once Ed needed surgery, back in the days when patients spent the night in the hospital before surgery the next morning. I waited until the close of visiting hours, the way I always did, and then went to see him. Pastoral visits are better if other people aren’t around.

Ed was sitting on the side of the bed, looking lonely and forlorn. He brightened up when he saw me. “Just a little while ago, I was thinking, if anybody came to see me, I hoped it would be you.” We had a good, deep conversation.

After a while, we both moved on to other states. We kept in touch for twenty years the way you do—occasional letters, Christmas cards, prayers.

Then I was delighted to learn that Ed had moved to my state, taken a congregation only thirty miles away. I called him to invite him to lunch. He wasn’t able to. He was busy. I didn’t think too much about it. So was I.

A little later, though, I got cancer. I really wanted to see Ed. We had a history. I needed his pastoral friendship. I called him again with an invitation to lunch. It would not require much of him, since I was doing chemo in his city, and we could meet after one of my sessions at the cancer center. He was not very enthusiastic. He turned down a number of dates I suggested, but finally accepted one.

As we ate, I told him about my cancer, about my fears of dying young, my daughters not walked down the aisle, my grandchildren never having played trotty-horse on my knees. He expressed some minimal sympathy and then launched into a long discourse about the problems he had with the president of his congregation.

I was disappointed. I had really expected a friend who had been so close at one time would be more empathetic. I didn’t think that I should be the one to do the pastoring. After all, I was worried about dying, and the miseries of chemotherapy. He was only worried about dealing with a jerk; that’s every-day stuff for a preacher.

Also, it wasn’t the Ed I knew. I hoped the current Ed had just misplaced the real Ed temporarily. I hoped that someday when he was praying for me, he would realize that I was thinking, “If anyone comes to see me, I hope it will be Ed,” and act like the old Ed, and call me up to go to lunch again. I really didn’t want this current Ed to besmirch the memories I had of the old Ed. Those memories were important to me.

They still are. I am still disappointed in the neglectful Ed, but I still cherish my old friend, Ed.

We’re all disappointed now, in just about everything and everyone. And hardly anyone has the time or the energy to be too worried about anyone else. It’s important, though, that we not let our current disappointments obscure the joys of the past or our hopes for the future.

John Robert McFarland

1] Authors learn early that in choosing a false name for a real person, or just a name for a character in a story, it’s good to go short, like Ed. If you name someone Aloysius, you’re going to waste a lot of time tapping keys and then using sphelczhek. There are other reasons, also, for not naming someone Aloysius.