I went to evening Mass with a heavy heart, having spent the greater part of Saturday at a memorial service for an old friend. He was a fourth grade teacher who had taught two of our four children, but more than that, he was one of my husband’s dearest friends, and practically a part of our family while our daughters were growing up. After he retired, we saw him less, in the way that people who no longer travel in the same circles meet less often in the course of a day. When his son called to tell us that he had died – finally succumbing to the skin cancer we thought he’d successfully battled – we realized guiltily that we hadn’t seen him in quite a while. He was one of those low-maintenance friends, the kind you pick up with right where you left off the last time you’d been together. Only now, there would be no next time to get together.
Our friend was not a religious man. His memorial actually took place at the community theater, where he had appeared in many local productions. He had been a wonderful father, a delighted grandfather, a reliable friend, a beloved teacher, an involved citizen, a good neighbor, a dedicated soccer referee, as well as a gardener, a hiker, a spelling bee judge, an actor, a music lover, a crossword puzzle aficionado, a history buff, and all that only scratched the surface of a rather private man. He said that he did not believe in God, but I’m pretty sure he believed in what I think of as God; he just didn’t call God by name. Or else he was the kindest, most selfless, most loving and peaceful atheist I’ve ever known. As a woman at the service mentioned, he lived the second of the two great commandments Jesus gave us better than anyone we knew. He would never have said that he loved God, but he truly loved his neighbor as himself.
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