Easter

Holy Week has my favorite service of the Episcopal church -- the Maundy Thursday foot washing.  I find this the most Jesusy of services and I like washing other people's feet. This time the feet I washed belonged to the sermonizer who said my washing gave her chills. I tried to put a lot of love and concern into the act. I missed doing the Great Vigil this year but I also didn't miss it because it's a lot of work and our altar guild is small right now. The flowers were beautiful on Easter morning, thanks to the flower ladies who worked so hard on Saturday.

Pope Francis washing feet of female inmates 2024 (Reuters)

Dear Will -

I asked you once, maybe a dozen years ago and probably after your dementia had already started, whether or not you had this beautiful memory. You said you didn't. But I still hold it.

It was the Easter of our first year together, before most people knew about us. You were living in the apartment next to Audrey Greenwood. It was in the days when we could hear her two kitties (One was called Hercules, I remember) racing back and forth down the hallway next door that paralleled your hallway. You had put on Handel's Messiah, which I had always thought of as Christmas music. But you explained that it was Easter music. And we made love in the couch in the front room near the grear windows while listening to it.

The first year was so magical, perhaps because it was secret. And writing that reminds me of the time I met you while we were each crossing the perfect square of Caldwell park on some Saturday and you leaned in and kissed me! It felt so rash after months of secrecy! And yet so perfect when you smiled that smile of yours.

That smile that was on your mouth the day before the day before you died, when you told me you loved me for the last time. 

Until we meet again,

 

Kake