Audrey Finds The Light

When the last of the community had finally left, Audrey locked up the church and made the short trip home. Though the two buildings stood within shouting distance, today the walk felt like a Tolkien-esque journey. Where the roadside met their sidewalk, she paused a moment and glanced down the road. Before they’d left, Jen offered to come stay with her, or to have Audrey come and stay with her and Jim for a few days. Audrey appreciated the offer, but declined. She had to learn to go on without her husband sooner or later, she may as well start now. But now Audrey reconsidered for a moment, knowing full well they’d welcome her in. Instead she sighed, then made her way up to the porch. 

Audrey let herself in the house and then dropped her key in the little basket on the stand next to the door. She scanned the room, lit by the last rays of daylight as the sun sank behind the hill. But despite the sunlight, the room felt cold. She sat at the kitchen table and for a while watched as dust motes float on the air.  

Audrey closed her eyes and imagined herself floating along with them, as if without a care in the world. How wonderful it would be to simply drift to wherever the slightest breeze took you in any given moment. The very thought of it put her mind at ease and for just a moment Audrey felt herself smile for the first time in days. 

Her reverie was broken by the realization of how quiet the house was around her. The house being quiet was hardly new now that television or radio no longer served as a distraction. Yet even in their new normal, in the quietest moments, the house had never truly been silent. The sound of a page turning as someone read in the next room, the shuffling of papers as Jay worked on his next sermon, the soft snoring as Evy napped on the couch… all served as a reminder that someone was there. 

Now it was truly empty, a house more than a home. The silence was deafening and Audrey felt as though she no longer belonged there. She’d lost her entire family, and now the comfort of her own home was lost to her as well. 

Since her husband’s passing, Audrey had been treading water in an ocean of grief but somehow managing to keep her head above the water. Now the grief crashed over her like a tsunami and she buried her face in her hands, sobbing. The walls around her remained indifferent to her pain. 

Audrey wept, even though she felt she had no more tears left to shed. She lifted her head and opened her eyes, now puffy and swollen. She took a deep, hitched breath in and slowly released it. She noticed that the room had darkened and couldn’t help but wonder how long she’d been crying. She rose from her chair and went to the counter. There, she lit a small kerosene lantern, which bathed the room in the dim, soft light of its flame. Audrey remained there a moment, her mind racing through all of the so-called stages of grief at once. She cursed God, knowing full well Jay would disapprove. She looked towards the ceiling, tears streaming down her face as she silently begged God for her husband back. She’d give ten years off of her own life right now for just one more day with him here beside her. Knowing full well it didn’t work like that, Audrey resigned herself to the pain. Ahe wished she could lay down to sleep and never wake up, or rip her heart out of her chest. Anything to make the pain go away.

Then from across the room, a glint of metal in the corner caught her eye.

Audrey crossed to the other side of the room and picked up Jay’s shotgun. She hefted the twelve gauge in both hands, looking over the wooden stock and the cold metallic blue barrel. He’d used it in self-defense on at least one occasion, which haunted him for the rest of his days. Despite that, he kept it loaded and ready in the corner by the door and taught her how to use it, just in case. Though she’d never had cause to. 

At least not until now. 

Her mind, clouded by sorrow, suddenly cleared and filled with resolve. An end to her pain was a simple trigger pull away. 

But not here, not inside the house. Her friends would have enough to deal with without having to clean a mess off of the walls and floor as well. She’d do it outside instead. Holding the gun in one hand, Audrey bent down to grab her shoes, then decided being barefoot wouldn’t matter in a minute anyhow. She opened the door and, standing at the threshold, paused for one last look around the home she and her husband once shared. 

Her eyes came to rest on the antique old roll top they’d bought years ago at a rummage sale somewhere despite not needing it. For years the desk served as more of a catch-all for mail, car keys, and the like. However once the electricity went out, Jay took to writing more there than in his office. And it was there he’d been writing his last sermon when he died. The sheaf of papers still lay there unread on the desktop. 

Audrey closed the door and returned the shotgun to the corner where she’d found it. In the time since she discovered him, lifeless and slumped over on the desktop, it hadn’t occurred to her to look at what he’d been writing. Throughout all of the years since they were first wed, she’d always been the first to hear, or at least read, every one of his sermons. Then together they would make revisions where needed before anyone else got to hear it. 

“One of the unofficial duties of a pastor’s wife,” he’d joked with her on numerous occasions. 

So it seemed only fitting that she’d read her husband’s writing one last time; a final act of closure before she went to join him. 

She sat down in his chair and she realized it was too dark to read in that part of the room. Luckily there was another lantern on the top of the desk, the one that lit many a late night as Jay worked. She lit that one, and, able to see better, she began to read.

It’s been several years now since catastrophic events shook the world, the effects of which reverberated and turned our lives here in Hammond’s Corners upside down.

Audrey paused and managed a weak smile. Jay liked big words and sometimes overdid it with them. She’d have told him to work on that particular sentence right out of the gate. 

In the time since, and particularly early on, we as a community faced what seemed to be insurmountable adversity and suffered tremendous loss. Yet somehow, in some way that I would say is arguably unique, we as a community endured. We worked together to survive. Together we stood shoulder to shoulder against those who sought to, in the most unspeakable ways, prey upon others. Like a plague of locusts of old, they brought destruction and we stopped them. A government, drunk with power, saw the opportunity to upend our nation’s laws for its own benefit and enslave its people. However we the people, and not only the people of Hammond’s Corners, but from surrounding communities, we banded together to make a stand. By the grace of God, we were able to avoid a fight we surely couldn’t win. 

Audrey felt the strain on her eyes as she read in the dim light. Still holding Jay’s papers in her hand, she went to the livingroom to fetch a third lantern. She lit it and brought it back into the kitchen, setting it on the table then sitting down to resume reading. 

That said, we paid a heavy price though.  Lives lost not just to ignorance, evil and violence, but sickness, accidents, and malnourishment as well. 

It’s only natural that, after so much loss, we feel unbearable sadness. It hangs over us like a dark cloud. It’s been there for years. It’s still there and, over time, it will consume us, if we allow it. It’s in times like this we must remember that this is only temporary, for we’re promised in the Book of Revelation, “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

Of course some of you are probably thinking, “That’s all well and good Jay, but what gets us through the here and now?” Well, I must confess that I had those same thoughts, those same doubts, more than once. And I’ve spent a considerable amount of time trying to find an answer. Then one day it hit me, a line from my all time favorite of all the sci-fi sagas. I’m talking, of course, about Star Wars. It’s a simple line, spoken by Jedi Master Luke Skywalker from which I finally found some comfort as well as a path towards healing. In one of the movies he says, “No one’s ever really gone.”

Audrey looked up from the papers and laughed a little.Jay was an unabashed Star Wars fanatic ever since he saw the movies as a boy. It wasn’t uncommon for him to quote lines from the movies around the house, but surprisingly this was the first time he’d ever injected one into a sermon. It kind of surprised her it’d taken him this long. 

As much as she wanted to continue reading and see where on earth her husband was going with this, she felt chilly, and went to the next room to get her sweater. After putting it on she went to the kitchen stove and put the teapot on. While there were many technologies they’d learned to manage going without, the return of propane, even in small supply, was a welcome convenience. While she waited for the water to boil, she decided to light a couple of scented candles she’d dug out of the attic a couple of weeks ago. She carried them over to the table where she was sitting. 

When her tea was steeped and ready she returned to the table and resumed reading. 

Again, I’m sure you’re wondering what this means, or that I’m simply offering platitudes here, but I want you to stick with me, folks. Hear me out, alright? You see, it’s in that simple phrase I found great meaning. Let’s break it down. Why is it that no one’s ever really gone? It’s because even though we don’t see them, a part of them lives on in all of us. Certainly there’s the most direct way, we carry the genes and perhaps some traits of our parents, grandparents, and so on. We carry on traditions that were passed down to them, them to us, and so on. We are their legacy. 

But one’s legacy exists in ways beyond physical or family ties, in ways we may not think about. Ruby Fisher lives on not only in her namesake, but in something as simple as the loaf of bread she taught Jen Miller how to bake. This very church where we gather every week is the legacy of those who first built it. And it’s in those seemingly simple, ordinary actions — baking a loaf of bread or attending Sunday services, that they live on. As long as we continue their work, though they may be gone from this world, they live on through us until we join them in the next. 

Audrey stopped, looking up from the papers, her brow furrowed in thought. Suddenly her mouth opened with a gasp as an idea came to her. She looked down, reading her husband’s last words, written in his own hand, once again.

As long as we continue their work… they live on…

It was a message from Jay, of that she was certain. He knew she’d be lost. Yet somehow even in death he knew exactly how to find her, to guide her on a path without him, and how to continue his own work through her.  

Fresh tears streamed down her cheeks and, smiling, she let them. She gazed heavenward, and nodded her head. 

“I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll take it from here.”

The despair left her and hope flooded in to fill the void. Elated, Audrey jumped up, knocking over her chair, and ran across the room to get her shoes. She intended to run the entire way to the Cranes’ house and tell them the good news. That she would pick up where Jay left off; she would lead the congregation as their new minister. Then she remembered it was late, and decided it could wait. 

Excited by her new purpose, Audrey knew she wouldn’t get much sleep tonight. Instead, she grabbed a beat up notebook and a pencil from the desk. She lit several more candles, lighting them and lining them across the table before sitting down to jot down some ideas as fast as they came to her. 

And so it was that Audrey worked late into the night, the first steps on her new path as the pastor of her late husband’s church. The room was awash in the light so bright that not a shadow could be found. 

Except for one in the far corner where a loaded shotgun, forgotten, leaned against the wall.