The Girls in the Back Pew

I’ve been thinking about friendship a lot lately. Thinking about how we show up for people in our lives, how we are present in hard times, how we find language to articulate support when our friends are struggling. We model the qualities of a good friend to our children- share, listen, take turns. But somewhere down the line, the role of a friend becomes more challenging, and more often than not, being a true friend cannot be taught. It is an innate instinct to do the next best thing you know to do for someone you love.

The Girls in the Back Pew

I’m not sure how they found the old church. It has no physical address, instead you are guided there by landmarks: old oak trees, a downed fence, a fork in the isolated road. To find it generally means you know the way, like a blind dog that can still maneuver their path home. Giving directions to this place would be like tracing a map made entirely of memories. I was mostly familiar with stories of it- ancestors who built the chapel, weddings, baptisms, loved ones long lost. 

But now it had my mother, so it had my everything.

I had turned down their offer to be there. It seemed the right thing to do, not to burden them with my burden. My violent, messy, incapacitating loss was one I would not ask them to bear with me. I already understood the concept of pity and felt I’d been doled my allowance for it while she was living. Pity seems to be easily given. Solace is harder to come by. 

My presence in the receiving line felt as foreign as the notion that she was truly gone. I grasped numb hands methodically like a worker on an assembly line: shake, nod, thank, repeat. The stained glass windows could do little to punctuate the bleak, gray February light. Instead the sanctuary was washed in a dull sepia hue. She was gone, and all life’s color went with her. 

That’s when I saw them- a row of girls filed in the pine door. I exhaled deeply, feeling my chest tighten with more tears, unable to determine if the pang was one of happiness or sadness. Like a cosmic defibrillator shocked my broken heart- it was never going to fix the break, but with luck, it buys you more time to heal.

As they slid into the mahogany pew I scanned their faces. My incredible girls, all so different in their own ways. The gamut of tenacity, tenderness, humor and heart encapsulated in them. Yet on that day, their faces mirrored mine. My grief and sadness reflected back on me as if they carried my heart in theirs. The perfect amalgam of solitary strength sat in the back pew. 

They had come for me. 

As I processed behind the white coffin, I stopped and looked back at them, woozy with anguish.

“I can’t do this,” I mouthed. No words came out.

“Yes, you can,” one said. Her words landed firmly over the piano’s music.

“We’re here,” one said. Her words were soft.

Then fervent nods in unison from them all.

I nodded back and found the stability to keep walking, not sure of what stunned me more, my current loss or the acute realization that my friends intended to walk the longer path with me. 

Decades go by and these girls, now women, don’t shrink away from my melancholy moments. 

They found the place with no address that housed all of my hurt, opened the door and sat in servitude with my grief. A seemingly small act, but it taught me everything I ever needed to know about compassion and friendship.

To the girls in the back pew, wherever you go-

I will brave your violence.

I will help make sense of the mess.

I will carry your burden and I will hold your trembling hand.

I will stare into the darkness with you, until the small glimmers of light begin to emerge and we make eye contact once more.

As you walk, you need not look back. I will be there, as you were for me. I will sit in your pew and pray so fervently for your healing, because you sat in mine. I am humbled by your friendship and will carry it through.

This pew, reserved in solidarity for you.