While out to dinner with friends, I notice an older gentleman sitting alone. On his table is a wooden plaque, presumably with his name etched in gold:
FRED WINNOW, VIP
He interrupts us at one point during our meal, and I’m so glad he did. I remember sometime during the blur of months that was 2020, a friend and I talked (safely over the phone, not in person, don’t get mad) about how much we miss the potential that comes with leaving home every day. The chance encounter you have with a stranger. A conversation that leaves you laughing or tearing up or seeing life differently. The way someone says a particular string of words to you that unlocks something in your heart and you suddenly look up, you realize you’re gonna be okay.
I once heard author and humorist David Sedaris say that he never wears headphones when he’s out and about. He sees other people missing out on a thousand opportunities, buried in the predictability of whatever it is their phone or an algorithm serves them—something that could be served later just as well as now. While he, on the other hand, chooses to dive into conversations with grocery store clerks and taxi drivers and rude ladies with thinly veiled impatience hovering behind him in TSA security lines. These are how stories are born. By first of all noticing life and then engaging with it. Now, in this moment. Because moments don’t wait. Babies teach us this over and over again as they continue to grow up, despite just about every parent’s well-meaning but futile protestations. All this to say, I’m glad I wasn’t buried in a screen tonight. Glad the potential of meeting Fred was realized.
About three sentences into whatever it is that Fred and the rest of us are talking about, he mentions his wife, Betty, who had been a 1st grade teacher for 32 years. He tells us she died eight years ago. My heart squeezes at the realization that we’re talking to a widower—someone who, judging from the way he keeps Betty so present in his conversation with a few strangers—loved his wife well. No, loves her well, present tense. I’m not sure why people insist on using past tense in reference to how we feel about our loved ones after they die. It doesn’t make sense to me, because though they die, our relationship to them doesn’t.
“I think Betty must’ve had a premonition,” Fred tells us, “because a few weeks before her death, she told me I’d be a good fit to lead our church’s grief group that was starting up. She suggested I get trained.”
This past spring, I got a message from someone I hadn’t talked to in years. In the message, she asked me if I could sing at her dad’s funeral. She didn’t know if I even lived here anymore, but said it was worth a shot in the dark. I sang the funeral and walked away with a full heart. I’d never met her dad, but I’m not sure how you can be in a room that is heavy with both grief and love and not feel something too. When you throw a sponge into water, nobody’s surprised when that sponge becomes heavy with water too.
A week later, my friend called me. “I can’t believe I’m asking you this,” she said, “but I’m wondering if you can sing for another funeral. This time my mom. I can hardly believe they’re both gone, but I need to plan the funeral, so at least it’s something I can do while I’m overwhelmed by everything else.”
I said yes right away. And a few weeks later, after both funerals, my friend sat across from me and my husband TJ at a sushi restaurant. We shared edamame and she talked about being an orphan suddenly. She talked about grief and dreams and wondered aloud how one might be a bridge to the other. We listened with our ears, but also our eyes and our hearts. Our friend told us what she thinks might be next and we listened in a way that reinforced the word as a verb.
And that’s it, isn’t it? We meet tragedy, our world goes dark, we blink and the darkness is still there, but then we’re faced with this wild question that hints at more freedom than we realize is ours: what’s next?
A few weeks ago, almost my whole family was gathered on cold metal stands, watching my nephew play quarterback in his high school football team’s opening game. In general, I don’t watch sports, but this was an electrifying experience. It’s exciting to be part of something as in-the-moment as a football game is. Any Given Sunday—isn’t that the saying? There’s a chance, potential, with each new game—no matter what the stats say—that you could go out there and do something as glorious as win. And that’s what had the whole crowd glued to the present moment.
The rival team was up 17-0 at one point. My brother, along with my nephew, had flown from Los Angeles for the game, and said in a reserved tone, “Well, at least they have the whole season ahead of them.” We all wondered if we’d gathered to watch them lose. But then we saw resilience at play. We watched guts and daring and determination and hope and skill all coalesce into a second act we were glad we stuck around for. We all shouted and stomped and it sounds a little foolish, but it was actually unifying. We forgot about our own individuality and became part of a collective. When a person dressed in a large animal costume motioned for us to do the wave, we did. And we liked it. The energy was electric. Anyway, my nephew led the team to win 40-38 and we all went full on Buddy from Friday Night Lights in the stands as he did.
I’m telling this story, not because of all the football enthusiasts who are also huge fans of this newsletter (it’s time we use a Venn diagram just to show how large the overlap really is), but because something my nephew said after the game stuck with me. He’d thrown an interception that felt particularly discouraging early on in the game, so afterward, my brother asked him what was in his mind after he did it. And listen to this, my nephew answered, “Next move.” That’s it. No time to sit and wallow, no time to get in your head about how you lost ground and might not get it back. When he misses an opportunity, he’s thinking, Next move. He’s wondering, How do I make it count?
My friend who buried both her parents in the space of a few weeks tells us she doesn’t think she can go back to her toxic living situation. She needs home to be peaceful, a safe space, somewhere she can exhale. She needs to make a change. That sounds like a next move, I think. She’s an artist, an advocate, and grief is lending her clarity. “I don’t have time to do something that isn’t purposeful,” she decides. She dives into the nitty-gritty details of what that means for her. Another next move, I think.
At the restaurant with my friends, I’m eating salad and listening to Fred. I marvel over the way he introduces Betty to us with his words. He talks about her devotion to her students, to him, to their family. He shows us her photo, but I’ve already seen her through his stories. He laughs as he remembers out loud how Betty hated that he kept a photo of her on display in his wallet. “She actually asked me why I’d do something like that, can you believe it?” Fred told us. “So I asked her my own question, “What kind of photos do you like to keep around the house?” Betty told me, “People I love.” I told her, “That’s exactly the kind of photos I want, too—that’s why you’re in my wallet, so I can see you every time I pay for gas or groceries or just want to look at your face.” I listen and feel the reverence for stories, for history, for all the pieces of our past that hover in our memory, informing us of who we are today.
Fred continues, “The last day we spent together, she asked me if I’d swam my mile yet today. She knew I’d committed to swimming a mile a day, and when I told her I hadn’t yet, she said, “Well, get the hell up and go to the pool!” He laughs, we all do. Surely Betty, the beloved 1st grade teacher, doesn’t say hell, but now we learn that if it means getting her husband to exercise, she does, and we love her even more for her verve and spunk. Fred goes on, “It was my neighbor who found me at the pool. I couldn’t figure out why he was there until he told me there was an ambulance and fire truck and police car outside my house and I better go home. By the time I got there, she was gone. An aneurysm. But I had a message from her on my phone—it’s been there for eight years and I won’t erase it. She told me she thought she was dying but she wanted me to know that she loves me. I haven’t listened to it for years, but I don’t need to. I know every word and sigh, and it’s right here,” he says with his phone in hand.
As I listen, I wonder how appropriate it is to start sobbing at the table. I stopped attempting to eat salad a while ago. My head hurts from trying to hold tears back. They slip down my face anyway, but silently. Despite how I feel, I don’t let myself sob.
(I always read my essays aloud to TJ, and the first time I read this one, I could barely get through it because I was crying. Do you want to know his one remark during this section? Sounds like he ruined your dinner. That’s it, that’s all he said. I went from crying to laughing and rolling my eyes and isn’t the mobility of emotions something else?)
“It took me a while,” Fred says, “but about six months after she died, I made it to the grief group Betty told me I should lead. I sat there with a blanket—that’s what we do there, everyone gets a blanket to drape over their lap as they talk, the weight and warmth provide a tangible comfort—and I started talking and I started listening. It’s a beautiful group. She was right. Betty’s always right, death didn’t change that. Now I lead it every week, and it’s a blessing to me. You know, I’ve been retired for a while now, but I didn’t stop working, how could I? There’s too much to do.”
I ask Fred what he does, besides eating at this restaurant enough to earn a plaque. He smiles and says that he has three ministries, “I run the ministry of Eucharist at church, I run the grief group, and I run my street ministry. Do you know what my street ministry is?”
“Is it this?” I guess, “Gifting strangers like us the beautiful reminder of what life is really about on a random Saturday night?”
“Close,” Fred says, smiling again. “I don’t need any money, but