My Friend Gloria

In a world full of disease and corruption, some people shine like stars. You just know you can count on them, and what they say is the truth, THE TRUTH.

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I’d like to introduce you to Gloria. To see us back in the early 80’s, you’d never guess we’d be friends. Gloria still wore her hair in the short, curly style of the 1940’s and carried the kind of handbag that snaps shut and is heavy enough to be used as a weapon. I was a child of the 60’s, with straight long hair, cutoff jeans and a T-shirt from Smith College that read, “A century of women on top.”

I met Gloria when I moved to the small town of Greenfield, Massachusetts, and my husband and I bought a fixer-upper across the street from her immaculate home and manicured lawn which her husband, Bob, mowed every Saturday morning to keep it as short as his crewcut.

Up until my first child was born, I’d worked at a local publisher and knew none of my neighbors. But late one morning, postpartum, still in my husband’s plaid bathrobe, Gloria appears at my back door with some kind of goodie, I don’t remember, maybe snickerdoodles, and invites herself in for tea. I put on the kettle, and we sit at the small table that looks out on my back porch.

While we wait for the water to boil, she tells me how she met her husband in Germany while he was a serviceman and she a teacher on the base. She shares tales of their adventures and eventual marriage, interspersing the conversation with lots of praise the Lords which hit me like notes off key. I wasn’t used to including God in my conversations even though I went to Sunday School my whole childhood. But by the time we’ve eaten all the cookies, I decide I like Gloria even if she’s not my usual, pardon the pun, cup of tea. 

Gloria’s husband, Bob, is president of the Madison Circle neighborhood association Every year he organizes a caroling party for all who want to participate. The first Christmas I wrap my three-month-old daughter in a Snugli and sing with the group, songs like: “The First Noel,” “Silent Night,” and “Angels We Have Heard on High.” All are about the baby born far away, placed in a manger, and referred to as Emmanuel, which Gloria explains means God with us, something I didn’t know or believe at the time.   

My daughter grows to be a toddler, and Gloria’s son and daughter sometimes babysit. I select them above other sitters because they seem like nice kids, and I know if anything happens, Gloria and Bob, Mr. and Mrs. Rock Solid, are right across the street. Gloria is becoming a kind of local mother and friend rolled into one.

I say, mother because she’s always ready to offer her guidance whether I want to be guided or not. If what I’m doing is wrong, she’ll call a spade a spade. If it’s right, then more praise the Lords. She doesn’t scold, but in her gentle, elementary-school-teacher way, there’s no question her compass points towards True North.

Gloria comes over another morning when I am still in my husband’s bathrobe and pregnant enough that it’s barely big enough to wrap around my baby bump. Over bagels and tea, I let slip that I’m considering divorcing my husband.

Interesting to note here, I don’t remember anything she said except, a seeming non-sequitur, “Would you like to come to adult Sunday school with me this week?”

I didn’t know adult Sunday school was even a thing, but because it’s Gloria who asks, I say, “Yes.”

And because it’s me, the skeptic, who answers, I add, “But I’ll drive myself.”  

Long story short, Gloria in a way, saved my second child from being separated from his father before his first breath.

Gloria also hosted a lavish baby shower for my third child who received a stuffed lamb with a Jesus-Loves-Me music box inside that two of my grandsons now play with.

Yesterday morning, Gloria’s daughter called to say her mom had gone home to heaven. Forthright like her mother, she didn’t use euphemisms like passed away, or no longer with us. Yet, the word dead had no place in our conversation because we’ve both come to understand that souls are eternal, and that God is like our infinitely good heavenly father who can’t stand to be separated from his children. Not from before our first breath or after our last. No matter the many evils in our hearts and deeds.

That’s why God sent the babe named Emmanuel, I sang about so many years ago with my own first born strapped close to my heart, to pay the universal retribution a just god must demand.

Towards the end of our conversation, Gloria’s daughter shares, even though her mom, at 90, had become a bit senile, she still knew all the words to the old hymns they sang together at the piano.

Surely one of those songs was, “What a Friend we have in Jesus.”

I write this to say, what a friend I had in Gloria, whose name means something like praise the Lord.

I hope to see her again whenever I move to her new neighborhood.

For now [in this time of imperfection] we see in a mirror dimly [a blurred reflection, a riddle, an enigma], but then [when the time of perfection comes we will see reality] face to face. Now I know in part [just in fragments], but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known [by God]. (1Corinthians 13:12 AMP)