“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been about 50 years since my last confession.”
Edith felt a surge of self-consciousness and began to pick
little bits of Styrofoam from the edge of her coffee cup. She stared at her
half cup of bitter coffee as the priest across the table from her took an
awkward bite out of a half smoke. Father Martin realized he had put way too
much mustard on the half smoke and wondered if he could walk over to the
condiment bar and get more napkins. But Edith had just said the first words of her
confession and, thus the sacrament had begun. The excess mustard would have to
wait.
It was two days before Thanksgiving. When Edith saw the long
checkout lines at Costco she immediately regretted going there to do her
grocery shopping. But she needed some wine and a gigantic pumpkin pie to bring
to Melody and Gary’s house and she had promised to bring a veggie platter to
the pre-Thanksgiving volunteers’ luncheon at the Veterans’ Home. She calculated
how long it would take if she just ditched her cart, left Costco, and went to
her little neighborhood market but decided just to stay in line and get it
done. She began to chat with the middle-aged friendly man in line behind her,
the man with the kind face whose cart was full of apple cider and frozen turkeys.
They quickly bonded in their agreement that it was crazy to have expected a
quick trip to Costco so close to the holiday that was centered on food. But
maybe it was just part of getting in the holiday spirit.
"You must be having a lot of people for dinner,” Edith said,
nodding in the direction of his cart.
“Oh, no,” he said. “These turkeys aren’t for me. I’m the
pastor of Our Lady of Mercy and we give turkeys to all of our church staff
members for Thanksgiving.”
Edith’s face turned red. “You’re a priest? Oh, I’m so sorry,
Father. I didn’t know you were a priest.”
“No reason to be sorry,” laughed Father Martin, “I’m here in
disguise, dressed as a real human being.”
The line barely moved. Among the bright lights and the
clamor of carts and voices and electronic gadgets, Edith began to tell Father
Martin her life story. She had been raised Catholic and she was a young German
war bride in the wake of World War II. Her husband Al was in the U.S. Army, an
officer with the final wave of liberation troops. She married Al and moved to
America in 1946, leaving behind her German heritage and her Catholic faith. And
now Al, his memory nearly completely gone and his body failing, would probably soon
die. She feared being alone and she wondered what would become of her without
her husband. She told Father Martin that she thought it ironic that she
unknowingly struck up a conversation with a priest, when in the past few months
she had felt a strange need to return to the church of her youth.
“Sometimes I drive by the church and feel like God is
telling me to go to confession and come back to church. But I never do it. I
just keep driving.” She got out her Costco membership card and began to unload
her purchases on the conveyor belt.
“Don't think about it too hard. Why not do it?” asked Father Martin. “Let’s just do it
here. I can hear your confession now. Find a table in the café and I’ll
meet you there as soon as I’ve paid for my turkeys. Trust me, God is speaking
to you and there’s no time like the present.”
Edith looked at him and nodded, wondering what she had just
agreed to do.
So she got a cup of coffee and a pretzel and found a table
under an umbrella, off to the side near the ladies room. Father Martin bought
his half smoke and pulled up his cart beside hers. He sat next to her so her so
he could hear her quiet voice with his good ear. And it seemed that Edith and
Father Martin were the only two people in the Costco café on that busy day
before Thanksgiving.
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