He stopped beside the bench. My mother didn’t look up at him. She was looking at the hymnal.
“Mrs. Hoyt,” he said.
His voice was not his pulpit voice. It was quiet. It shook.
“Mrs. Hoyt, did you play my grandmother’s funeral?”
My mother closed the hymnal.
“I did,” she said.
“I didn’t know.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“She asked for this one. She wrote it down.”
“On a little card with violets on it. Yes. I remember.”
He stood there.
“I don’t remember you,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I don’t remember anything about that day except the hymn. I remember hearing it from the hallway when my dad took me out. I’ve heard it a hundred times since. I never once thought about who was playing it.”
“You weren’t supposed to,” my mother said. “That’s not what you were there for. You were there for her.”
He looked out at the room. Still standing. Every one of them.
“Are they all—”
“Most of them,” my mother said. “Not every one. Some of them are just standing up because everyone else did. That’s how people are.”
She finally turned on the bench and looked up at him.
“I keep a list,” she said. “I didn’t bring it. I wasn’t going to. But it’s at home if you ever want to read it. Six hundred and forty-one. Your grandmother is on page eleven of the 2009 book.”
Pastor Whitfield went down on one knee beside the organ bench.
He did it right there in front of everyone. In his robe. On the carpet. So that he was looking up at her instead of down.
“Mrs. Hoyt,” he said. “I was wrong. I was wrong about all of it. I came in here thinking this church needed to be new. I never once asked what it already was.”
My mother put her hand on top of his head.
The way she used to put her hand on mine when I was small and had done something I was sorry for.
“You’re young,” she said. “That’s not a sin. It’s just a season.”
He laughed. It came out wet.
“That was my sermon.”
“I know. It was a good one. You just had the end wrong.”
He stood up. He turned to face the congregation. And for a moment he couldn’t say anything at all. Then he cleared his throat.
“Please,” he said. “Sit down. Please. I think I need to say something, and I’d rather you were sitting for it.”
Nobody sat.
Lois Ferris, still on her feet in the third pew, held up one bony hand.
“Young man,” she said. Her voice carried the whole room. “We’ll sit down when Ruth’s done being thanked properly. Not before.”
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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