There’s an apple tree by the interstate highway near several small parks and bridges and abandoned houses where people are trying to eke out shelter and rest. On one side is a community urban garden, not one of the lush neighborhood patches with heirloom produce but one with like zucchini growing up salvaged car fenders. Outside that patch there is a small green-apple tree. Every year it carpets the street with hard green apples piled up gathering wasps. No wonder: the apples are pure cringe-sour instead of sweet. So those apples carpeting the ground are generally missing one human bite apiece from disappointed fruit seekers.

This year instead of tiptoeing around the mess I decided to pre-empt the issue, and started snipping apples from the heaviest branches, the ones bowed down fit to break. In 5 minutes I gathered 14 pounds. (“I guess it’s like petty theft?” I said to my neighbor. She said “Why? What’s the ‘petty’ part?”) I washed and quartered them up and stewed them soft, peel & all; these are hard instead of juicy, so they needed a little water added for cooking. But first, in a small pot I cut the cores and discarded the seeds (the seeds contain some amount of cyanide), then simmered the cores in water and strained them out to make a very sour clear fruit stock. To blend the apples into sauce I used the fruit stock as blender liquid. The purée has a nice smooth texture, but is truly sour even with some coconut sugar added. It’s still valuable in salad dressings or to flavor other stewed fruits. They’re labeled and in the freezer now.

Yesterday evening I was strolling home and nearly slipped and fell on some slick uneven pavement. Fruit! Overripe fruit was trampled and slopped around all over the street, sidewalk, and the grass strip in between. At 5:30 this morning I took two quart containers and went back for a good look. A real prune plum tree! A couple dozen plums were still sound, but so ripe they were swollen with juice and splitting open. I gathered those from the grass, gave them a bath of salt water and another bath with vinegar, and stewed them right away.

Today after work I felt like visiting Mother N.’s old church and garden. There was no sensible reason and nothing to see; it’s doubtful that her soul is still lingering around there. Still, I felt like paying a visit to a place that was once hers. Nothing was blooming but some valiant lavender-colored phlox, now fading out. I stood there sending up some prayers for her, and then turned to go. Crossing the side alley to the building I glanced to the far end of the parking lot. The fence was buried in shrubbery. What kind? Sometimes weeds are the most interesting thing around, so I took that walk to the far end. And there was a whole thicket of the largest ripest Himalayan blackberries I’ve ever seen, jet black and brimming with juice. These rascally spiny-caned invasives invite themselves into fencerows and lots all over the city; virtually no one even notices or bothers to pick the berries. But these fell right off the canes into my spare jar. After careful washing and drying I spread them apart on little baking trays; they’re in the freezer now, and when they’re frozen they can go into sealed labeled bags. It was a marvel to find such large sweet berries. What accounted for that? Maybe that patch was nourished by Mother N. Maybe she stepped out the church kitchen door after suppers in the parish hall, and threw out coffee grounds or leftover borscht. We can eat them in good health to her memory.

Thank you, Mother!

The neighbors just sent a group text that we’re meeting outside in the garden this evening. Nice! But what to bring? Well, there was a double-size pot of pinto beans hot on the stove, just cooked. Hm…

So while they cooled off, I put a can of no-salt stewed tomatoes in the Cuisinart, and spun then around with some red onions pickled in balsamic vinegar, raw walnuts, dried garlic granules, teaspoon of coconut sugar, lemon oil, paprika, and a bit o’ cumin. There was also a little handful of Trader Joe vegan mozzarella shredded cheese, so that went in too. The beans pureed nicely, half and half with the tomato mixture.

We’ll just have to keep it away from the dogs; garlic and onions are poisonous to them. But I can serve it in a jar with a lid, instead of putting it in a bowl.

A dish of black olives can go as a side dish, and a plate of celery sticks for dipping.

Oh, that plant is a horseradish. The greens are good raw as a bite or two of spicy cruciferous vegetable. Weeks ago I put the cut root top in a dish of water and kept it fresh for a few weeks while the sprouts got started. One cut root grows a lot of leaves.

Now to pack up everything and take it to the garden.

(Jerusalem Sage. Not a missed signal; just something nice to look at.)

Here from the past week are examples of small near-misses in messaging. If only our human communications were a little more fine-tuned, it would be a safer and warmer world.

Incident 1.

This week before wakeup time, group texts were pinging to my phone. The phone number of the sender and group member numbers were all unfamiliar; so were the area codes. In the distant past I might have reached out in friendly fashion to let everyone know that I’m me, and not someone else. But I’m more cautious now, and simply deleted them. There’s a history of incorrect group emails from mysterious social clubs, and from online retail advertisers. What’s more, for the 18 years that I’ve had this phone, the former subscriber to this number (we’ll call him Morris) has received texts in Spanish, urging him to vote or fill in a survey or enter a contest or open a link promising alluring photos of ladies wanting to meet & greet.

To this soundly sleeping person, the group texts (probably meant for Morris) bypassed the thin veneer of good nature, and seemed like a nuisance. The texts had an official now-hear-this tone, commanding us all to await orders on where to go, and when. The texts kept coming in, this time in Spanish, insisting that we all had to be patient and wait to be escorted out. It sounded like instructions for people picked for jury duty, but they named landmarks that were nowhere near here.

What?

In no cheerful mood, and wondering why people can’t proofread the phone numbers in their subscriber lists, I hauled out of my blanket roll and logged in to the computer to look up the phone numbers. There was no online information on any of them. But some of the area codes were in Dade County, Florida. That called to mind news of the week, reporting heavy rains in the Southeast. Huh. Sure enough, a quick check of weather alerts showed a flash flood warning at “Catastrophic Threat” level, with many Florida area people stranded and waiting for orders and the safest route to evacuate.

Oh Goodness! That put-upon feeling can vanish instantly, once one knows the back story. Perhaps some sheriff or county agent was trying to contact as many residents as possible? I considered texting back to let them know the error, but decided that emergency services had enough to worry about without being corrected by some former grammar teacher.

Instead I prayed about it, hoping that Morris and all of them got out okay.

Incident 2.

On the back of the bus I sat enjoying my book and the evening commute. Idly I glanced out the opposite window up front, and noticed a man resting on a street bench who looked to be no older than in his forties. He was very pale and thin, stooping over with his back bent at an angle of over 45 degrees. As passengers filed on to the bus, the man stood up in an unsteady manner. It took a moment for it to dawn on me, that he was trying to walk to the bus stop. It took another moment to realize with concern that he wanted this bus, and actually thought he might make it. I couldn’t fathom why he was out without a walker or even a cane. It was alarming to watch him shamble off balance, trying to pick up speed.

“HEY!” I called to the driver. “Somebody here is trying to –” But the driver had already closed the door and pulled out. At that point drivers are not allowed to stop the bus and swerve back to the curb, because injuries occur when passengers fall off the curb or run into traffic after the bus.

Another bus was due in 15 minutes. But it was sad to see this man left behind. The college students all around him looked up from their phones, registering the problem as we drove away. Hopefully they were able to step up and intervene to flag the next driver, and perhaps lend the man an arm.

Incident 3.

One of our neighbors has never spoken to or looked at me. That’s fine; everybody has the perfect right to privacy and to be left in peace. I still give him a nod and a smile in case he looks up, but so far he hasn’t. The other day I smiled again, and he passed by looking distant and unaware. I dropped off my recycling, and passed his door on the way back.

Behind the door there was the sound of a man sobbing bitterly.

I stood there frozen, wondering what to do. If this were any other neighbor I would have knocked to call through the door, asking whether they were all right. At least I’d have slipped a note under the door. They would do the same for me. In this case, a strong inner intuition ordered me to back off, leave him alone, and walk away. I did, but it troubles me. What if he just needed somebody to talk to?

He passed by me yesterday. I said hello.

Incident 4.

About twenty steps from the bus stop, on a recent warm sunny morning, a young man stood swaying and stumbling about on the sidewalk. Despite the unseasonably high temperature, he stood in the sun overdressed in a ski hat and puffy coat. Judging by his gestures and speech he was unaware of his surroundings and was in a labile emotional state.

That’s normal. Every day on our streets there are people who seem unaware of their surroundings, and/or in a labile emotional state, and/or saying things which seem unconnected to situational awareness. They have every right to stand on the street and talk to themselves as they wish. Still, to watch for the bus I preferred to step out of sight around a corner to the front door of a restaurant. It felt more comfortable to be in sight and sound of the restaurant staff and other shopkeepers right nearby.

A little girl came along, no more than 10 or 11, with long fair hair and skinny jeans and a cute little summer top. To me she seemed a bit young for traveling by herself. She was dragging an awkwardly made and inadequate child’s luggage cart in bright colors. The cart kept tipping over and dragging on the pavement, hampering her progress. Every few steps she had to turn around and bend over to right the cart. That made it impossible for her to stand straight, to walk at a normal pace, to keep balanced, to keep her hands free, to watch where she was going, or to take in the scene on the street. My first impression was annoyance that her responsible adults didn’t give her a usable cart or better still a knapsack.

She dragged the cart around my corner, spotted me, and instantly shied away to go wait at the bus stop.

Reluctantly I left my hiding place to keep an eye on the girl. The man nearby seemed unaware of us, and went on talking and waving his arms. But soon his speech grew louder; there were general random threats with profanity.

At that, I spoke to the girl. The goal was to get us both out of view in a respectful discreet manner without provoking attention. “Let’s stand behind this corner,” I said to her quietly. “We will see the bus from there.”

Now mind you, I was not inviting her into my car, into a phone booth, or behind a shrub. I was inviting her to an open populated parking lot with shops and pedestrians and drivers. But she gave me only a blank look, clearly uncomfortable with I had approached her. Perhaps she had been trained to never speak to strangers under any circumstances. “Huh?”

The man turned and noticed us.

“We. Can. Wait. Over here.” Shifting into mom bear mode I beckoned, and pointed. Let’s GO!

That gesture works quite well even on dogs; dogs are good with hand signals, they understand pointing, and they know real fast when you mean business and want them to move. But apparently to the girl, given a choice between two strangers the suspicious one was me. (In his books, my hero Gavin de Becker teaches parents how to teach their children to assess strangers on the street, and to pick out likely people (= women) who are likely to help when needed. Any kid of mine would get a bazillion hours of field work on checking out people around them.) But this girl turned her back to the man, and ignored me. She stood gripping her little cart, aiming for an air of sophisticated nonchalance while the man stood looking at her. I stayed nearby, but felt it unwise to speak again to an underage girl who wanted no contact with me.

A neighbor from our building spotted this drama from the supermarket far across the street. He charged right through the traffic to stand and watch over both of us. He kept up an outspoken friendly assertive presence until the bus finally arrived.

The girl got on, and sat in a side-facing seat. I got on, and beelined to the back. The bus was nearly empty, but the man with the puffy coat sat down right next to her. In response, she shrank down in her seat, pulled up her cute summer top, and used it to cover her nose and mouth. What a startling sight in this day and age, to see a modern child strive for safety by looking smaller and covering her ability to breathe and use her voice!

At last she did get up and move to the back near me. I wanted very much to seize that chance to talk to her, to say that we women on the street need to watch out for one another. But she was back there only to ring the bell. She hopped off, yanking her cart as it caught on the door.

But here’s a happy ending: I got to tell it all to Angelina and the women tonight, as they sat outside with their dogs; it was very satisfactory to hear them all talk at once, about how outrageous it was and how we-all as a culture need to empower our girls.

And, Mrs. Wing gave me red and gold raspberries, just picked from her bushes, along with a glass of some kind of delectable health-giving transfusion of juice, made from a blend of berries and other fruits.

Here’s to good neighbors, and people everywhere who look out for one another!

(There were lots more berries, but I wolfed them down on the way upstairs.)

Every day, walking down the street or waiting at the bus stop or passing a weedy lot that at first glance seems unattractive and dull, I feel so fortunate that they all feature some kind of plant right nearby. Whenever there is a moment or a bit of ground, it’s good to look at plants and to learn them one face and name at a time, and to marvel at them all.

A special interest is, how do people recognize or decide which plants are welcome? Which ones belong where they bloom?

Nature and plant devotees have a social image of being peaceable folks. One might think that fondness for plants would always draw people together. It came as a surprise, to read and hear that plant people can differ about which plants belong in our local habitat, and which ones do not. There are good collegial and neighborly relationships which have frayed apart over this issue. One native plant advocacy group were called “purist Nazis” because they wanted to preserve a restoration site for only those plants which flourished before the city was founded. Another example of the complexity of these debates came from a bulletin courtesy of our dedicated and sincere local extension service. They advised that from now on, the Syrian Bean Caper Zygophyllum fabago should be called just Bean Caper; it reasoned that former names like that one had a nationalist and exclusionary origin, and could stoke xenophobia. But it gave me a chuckle to see that the same extension service cautions about the invasive nature of Russian thistle, Canada thistle, and those pesky English holly and English ivy.

Our food coop, an upscale place with very conscientious product sourcing and social awareness, has a lovely display of Chameleon plant for shoppers to take home for their gardens. They probably don’t know that the dear little thing happens to be classified as an “extreme invasive”:

Chameleon plant is a variegated cultivar of plain green fish mint (Houttuynia cordata), which has cheerfully spread all through our little vegetable patch. (Our fish mint makes a sturdy ground cover, and Mrs. Wing will harvest the roots in the fall for traditional Chinese medicine remedies, so for us it’s all good.) But both have a habit of taking up all the space they can.

That’s a complication in deciding which plants belong here: our nurseries can make a good profit stocking plants which easily jump the garden wall and take over whole landscapes, because many are attractive and reasonably priced and easy to grow.

It’s surprising to discover that some plants which strike delight and awe should be grubbed out and dumped in a garbage can. A neighbor’s yard holds this treasure, with its hooded flowers and showy stalks. Until today I thought it was some rare woodland Jack-in-the-Pulpit. But yikes! no, it’s poisonous toxic Italian Arum (Arum italicum) or orange candleflower, classified as a noxious weed. Don’t even touch without gloves! Keep the kids and dog away!

Adding to more confusion, some other invasives were introduced deliberately as food plants which then got out of hand. There is one local that I’d like to find but will not name or picture here; apparently it’s a healthy cruciferous with good flavor. It would be nice if we could just harvest it into extinction. But I won’t forage any until I can go with an expert. It’s not safe to pick stuff and taste it without solid knowledge.

This morning for the last day of spring, I took an early walk at a favorite small pond. It used to be a weekly year-round destination to a neat clean little body of water. But today I didn’t recognize the place. It was so choked with brown algae and green scum that the herons and usual water birds were nowhere; a few Mallards hung around, but instead of swimming they were huddled on a bit of mud flat. Along much of the walkway, the water wasn’t even visible; there was a massive amount of invasive thorny Himalayan Blackberry about fifteen feet high, along with invasive hedge bindweed, spotted jewelweed, butterfly bush, knotweed, and unfamiliar new plants like the ones below.

The hardwood forest side of the pond is muffled up with masses of this white-flowered overgrowth. Silver lace vine? Goat beard? Old man’s beard (wild clematis)? Some kind of knotweed? None of the on-line images quite fit. There certainly is a lot of it.

Update: This might be Ocean Spray (Holodiscus discolor), a native shrub. The wood has been put to many uses, carved into utensils and tools.

Scruffy little yellow-flowering trees have taken over one bank. It looks like a member of the legume family, some of which are poisonous, so I didn’t touch it.

My guess on this is Hardhack or Spiraea douglasii, in its fluffy cotton candy season. It’s crowding around on the shore. The county extension calls it “aggressive” when grown under moist conditions.

What could have happened? At our local pond, there was an army of retired folks who really knew their animals and plants. Their houses adjoined the pond, and one of them even donated the land. They were out there every day at all hours with their cameras and dogs, checking on the system; I once saw a group of them with butterfly nets, patiently scooping up algae and bagging it up for the trash. But those neighbors were in their eighties and nineties; perhaps they don’t have opportunities to cut down these out-of-balance plants any more? Now I’d like to find out whether anybody is still keeping an eye on the property, and whether there are cleanout days planned.

A lot of nature seems off kilter at the moment: cropland coping with feral hogs, songbirds coping with pet cats, the Everglades coping with pythons dumped out of aquariums, on and on. One python hunter made an excellent point: “The pythons didn’t ask to be here.” And when it comes to invasives, a compassionate co-worker reasoned that when a plant is thriving in its very own habitat, then it co-exists peacefully with a whole range of other plant types, and the necessary insects and animal predators that keep the whole ecosystem in check. When the plant is part of a supportive network, everyone can thrive. But when a plant is torn up and dragged in to unfamiliar turf, it has lost its original connections. Then its survival is more precarious; to grow at all, it has to grab up all the space it can.

Her view is very compassionate. I don’t feel that compassion yet for the Poison Hemlock taking over our main walking trail, but she has a good point. It also makes me wish for some picture of what our lovely landscape looked like in former times, in all its lush variety and balance, before just a small handful of species were dumped here and started rampaging around.

Here is the delicate social balancing act: in order to honor and protect our unique indigenous native plants, perhaps we really do have to make some firm decisions about which plants belong in one defined area, and which do not? After all, we know that for good health our inner microbiome needs a rich assortment of bacteria so that disease-causing strains don’t take over. I used to be delighted at the sight of a uniform carpet of Yellow Archangel or Herb Robert or Shiny Geranium blooming in a whole colorful patch. But now I know: that kind of uniform thriving prettiness probably means that some other plants got crowded out.

That pond walk was food for thought. It inspires me to learn more about our changing ecosystem. Hopefully I can help with good plant stewardship to cultivate balance, for the sake of the plants themselves and the creatures around us.

Ten days ago I took a different walk home from work. I felt like a nostalgia visit to the 2012 site of the Orthodox church, at its rented room upstairs in the community building. I wanted a look at Mother N.’s old garden too. Back then, Mother had it planned out so that the plants stood in height order like children in a class picture. The tallest (giant sunflowers) were against the south wall. Next were tall hollyhocks. Then, the flowers bloomed in layers and stages, drawing the eye in and upwards, with different colors every season to give us something beautiful to see all year.

Well, I should have known better than to take that scenic detour. At the old site, nothing was in bloom. There was shrubbery and undergrowth crowding around the community building, but even in mid May there were no flowers. After a little hunting around I found just this brave little volunteer:

What can it be? My search terms didn’t turn up anything similar. It looks like a yellow version of Platycodon, or blue balloon flower.

Update: Just figured it out — it’s Lysimachia punctata, Large Yellow-Loosestrife. Live & Learn! -m

The overcast drizzly day got a warm ray of setting sun as I turned away for the walk home. And right there was a great field of dandelions, the biggest and healthiest that I’ve ever seen. This was no wan fading garden, but acres of edible greens knee high and thriving between the bus station, the bridge underpass, and the interstate highway — enough nourishing food for the whole summer! I sure was tempted to pick them. But I didn’t pick any dandelions, because the field is home base for men living in tents and in cars parked all around. That is why this photo is so narrow and cropped; it wouldn’t do, to bother the men by taking pictures of them or their setup. I photographed only a discreet little snippet aiming away from them, and then I hit the road.

If Mother were around, and just maybe she was, she would tease me and make fun about my looking for signs of life in an old garden left behind. Then she would have been delighted by Life being Life at its medicinal best right across the street. Yes, the visit to the old garden felt like a wee bit of a letdown. But that walk was just one of the rituals that we create, to fill in the empty space and make meaning out of losing someone dear.

As a consolation prize, at home I searched for and looked through a couple of views of the old church. Mother made every possible effort to deck that little upstairs sanctuary with flowers, often from her garden at home or the garden right outside. This first view is from a warm day, when the woodwork in candle light enhanced her peach-toned lilies.

The other view is a cold day, when the very last ray of sun shot in against a white chrysanthemum.

Mother’s church has moved away. Her garden is gone, and so is she. What comes next? It’s up to me to honor her by tending our own little patch outside with the neighbors, and by appreciating flowers all around us, wherever they grow and whatever they are.

For one life topic, Mother N. had no mechanical aptitude or herbal remedy to share. It came up during one of our car junkets. As we talked I shared with her that despite my best efforts at attitude and actions, life alone was a lonely place. Mother thought that over during a long reflective silence. After all, her life was teeming with people day and night, all of them needing her for everything. Her answer illuminated my perspective. “I’ve never in my life had a whole day off of rest.”

For other life contingencies, Mother was flat-out in charge with a workaround in hand. She was everywhere, a strong deft limber woman in sensible shoes, always neat and tasteful in long colorful dresses and long light head scarves, with keen bright eyes and cameo skin and a thick crown of pure silver braided hair. She moved with endless energy and endless equanimity and precise soft speech and self-effacing humor. She had earlier careers in agriculture and textiles, and still created installations of fine artisan metalwork on commission. After raising her own children she welcomed other young ones into the home as well. She kept chickens, knitted sturdy winter hats and gloves in rich colors, farmed and preserved a family garden, taught evenings at a local college (her students posted sparkling online reviews), foraged for herbs, and crafted herbal tinctures and essential oils.

At their Orthodox Christian church, Father was the head — and Mother was heart and hands and feet. The two served a devoted united congregation, speakers of Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Armenian, and Georgian, with new American converts coming in. Mother trained and rehearsed and directed the choir. She supervised the renovations and cleaning of their little rented sanctuary. She managed donations and expenses. She coordinated the sumptuous potluck dinners cooked on the premises after every Liturgy, vestments for all the men serving on the altar, the flower beds outside, altar breads and beeswax candles and icons and chrism and holy water, baptisms and weddings and funerals, lists of prayer intentions, counseling for new converts, emotional support and car rides and home nursing and hospital visits and child care for members in need.

Their sanctuary and altar and iconostasis were in a lavishly reconverted rented room, upstairs in a nondescript community building; for years I’d peered out the bus windows of my evening commute, pondering the enigmatic little plaque on the door. In 2012 I was in their neighborhood searching for an office holiday party. Hopelessly lost, I finally gave up on the party and tried their door. The chanted candlelight Vespers service was so beautiful that I came right back for Sunday Liturgy. There the women brought bags of groceries and cooked a whole feast. Then the men washed the dishes and watched the babies while Mother and the women walked in pairs out in the park, arm in arm, singing Russian folk songs. I fell in love with these people and their faith. It was a sad loss when the church moved to a larger space farther away. That meant three bus rides with a stopover early Sunday mornings in the riskiest part of town, away from home for up to 10 wearying hours every Sunday. Considering the history of Orthodoxy, and how the faithful faced tribulations unto death to practice their religion, it is humbling to confess that when pandemic lockdown made the downtown more openly dangerous I gave up altogether on the intention of regular attendance.

But Mother never gave up on me. On special feast days she would call and offer me a ride to church. Every few months she would pick me up for a shopping trip to the produce markets for vegetables. I loved her conversation about the Desert Fathers, the wonderful Orthodox monastics and families she’d met in other countries, her personal witness of miraculous answers to prayer, her gifts of home grown greenery and herbs and knitted gloves and natural remedies. Any free hour that she set aside for me over the years was a privilege and a blessing.

Mother’s emails were always sent at wee hours when the household was asleep. They were missives warmed with reflections on faith, housekeeping, and wry humor, signing off as “your unworthy, MN.” In one of them she let me know that she and Father were leaving for another summer pilgrimage, and that she would contact me for a visit upon their return. It was a pleasure to see the lovely trip photos on the church website, and to anticipate her stories. I emailed her back that I greatly missed our church, but was not leading a totally unflocked life: for the time being I was walking to a friendly little Bible-teaching church right up the street. While Mother was away I prepared a packet to give her at our next meeting. It held readings for her to enjoy in case she ever had time to sit down and open a book. One was The Kitchen Madonna by Rumer Godden. Another was by Kathleen Norris (not the author of Cloister Walk, but an earlier author of the same name), the 1911 novel Mother written as a tribute to motherhood.

Summer ended, with no word about the pilgrimage. There were no more email replies. Messages on her cell phone went unanswered. As time passed the realization dawned: many Orthodox Christians would feel concerned and hurt to hear that I was attending services at another denomination. Mother must have given up on me after all.

Then, a cryptic text email appeared from an unknown phone number account. It arrived by chance; the sender had inadvertently used an outdated church contact list from years before. The message was one sentence announcing the funeral for the departed servant of God Mother N____.

I stared at the message, then tracked down the phone number to a member of the congregation, and called her. During our conversation she told me that after the pilgrimage, Mother had made rueful jokes about the sin of sloth, accusing herself of chronic laziness. But she kept soldiering along for months. Finally her family compelled her into the car and took her to a doctor. By then, it was too late for treatment. The women of the church cared for Mother through a long ordeal of immense suffering. (One Orthodox tradition cautions believers to never be scandalized or disillusioned, if a patient has an especially difficult death. It can be one way for God to truly perfect an especially pure soul, and a means of atonement and relief for the sins and sufferings of others.) Holding the phone, I thought what a grace it would have been, to be on hand to perform any service of care for her. Apparently during that illness Mother mentioned my name to the women, in the certain and hopeful faith that they would all see Mary in church again very soon. She was right.

The funeral was profoundly heartbreaking and beautiful. In a bank of candles and bouquets Mother was laid out in her coffin facing a white wreath at the Golgotha, the large Crucifixion icon before the altar. The customary Trisagion band of white embroidered cloth crowned her shining silver hair. The customary icon of Christ and the Harrowing of Hell was clasped in her hands. Father sat straight and still on a chair beside her. Every man woman and child, gracefully suited and gowned and veiled all in black, stood at attention with candles in hand, rapt in absolute reverence. Our choir director was gone, but the service was chanted by her grown children standing at her feet. The celebrant priest serving the funeral concluded with a solemn ritual prayer for the forgiveness of every possible type of sin that any deceased person might ever have committed over a lifetime. But after the service he added a personal word of his own: what a profound honor it had been for him, to serve as confessor to a soul like hers.

Each member of the congregation venerated the icon of Mother’s body. Each one took turns handing over their babies and their candles, then approached her for three full floor prostrations. Then they leaned close to kiss the image of Christ, then her forehead, then her hands; they lifted their children, who reached out to her with eager warmth and trust. Then family by family they picked up their bouquets and slipped away to prepare for the drive to the cemetery. As an outsider, I spent the service out of sight off in the farthest corner. Later I left by the back door, passing through the dark parish hall filled with boxes and bags of groceries, casseroles, and baked goods. The congregation had prepared it all, to return from the burial and share a funeral meal and final prayers.

I waited and tiptoed last to the foot of the coffin. Too timid to attempt those three floor prostrations, I only made the Orthodox sign of the cross. With one arthritic trembling hand I touched her fingers, and rested the other arthritic trembling hand to touch her crown. I stood staring in dumbfounded wonder and warmth before backing away.

Do I remember all that? No, not in the emotions of the moment. But there must have been a tiny movie camera tucked in at Mother’s feet. My YouTube recommended algorithm presented a startling display of me to me: clown-sized bunion boots and velcro felted lymphedema leggings, a dumpy bowing torso, a head scarf slipping all agley, arthritic hands looming in front and center, and finally an awestruck final gaze. Now it’s a public spectacle for the internet: a meeting between two faiths, from two sides of the veil, of two loving women. One of them at rest.

“…Do Thou, the same Lord, give rest to the souls of Thy departed servants in a place of brightness, a place of refreshment, a place of repose, where all sickness, sighing, and sorrow have fled away.”