Answers

Last night I went to the bar again. Alone. I drank beers and watched the hockey game. I wasn’t saying much of anything – just keeping to myself, as I have been. A part of me wanted to talk, but I didn’t have the courage or the energy. Furthermore I didn’t have the right person to talk too. I prayed for comfort and peace.

A woman came and sat down next to me. She wasn’t quite old enough to be my mother, but she was pretty close. She was dressed kind of like a rural hippie professional, and when she ordered wine and pulled out a stack of papers and a pen, it became obvious that she was college professor doing some late grading. She made some idle chitchat – I was polite, but kept my eyes fixed on my beer.

Not what I had in mind, I said to myself, in the hopes that God would hear me. I don’t think this is what I need at all.

And that’s when she started talking. She actually lived in NYC, and taught sociology. She was down here visiting her mother, who lay dying at a nearby hospital. She, her brother, her aunt, and the medical community seemed not to be on the same page with regards to their loved one’s final wishes. “Organizational death” as she called it, was a terrible thing to witness. She went to tell me that this particular bar was where her family gathered after he father died, and she quietly – though desperately – hoped that maybe by coming here this particular evening her mother would peacefully die a dignified death.

Somewhere in there I understood that maybe, just maybe, I was actually the answer to her prayer, and that perhaps I was what she needed in that moment of grief. And I realized further that maybe what I needed wasn’t so much the right person to talk to or the right set of words to say – what I needed was to feel wanted. And at that moment, in that bar, I had a strong sense that I was, in fact, needed, and that I had a definite purpose, and a future to fulfill.