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OUTSIDE, I PULLED OUT my phone to call Sokolov with the news, but before I could dial, it rang.
Al was calling.
“Hi, how’s Diane?” I asked.
“Are you back from Berkeley?”
“Yes.”
“Good. She wants to talk to you, Alma. Hurry. It won’t be long now.”
“Okay. I’ll be right there.” My pulse froze and my vision sharpened. For a moment, the adrenaline shooting through me promised I was a super-pastor who could launch myself from the top of Nob Hill and fly to the bedside of the dying woman. I was scanning the sky when two cars nearby began honking at each other, shattering my fantasy. “Actually, I’m at Grace Cathedral. It may take me a while.”
I was ramping up to argue with my always-take-public-transport-ethic when an honest-to-God yellow cab crawled by. In my thirty-one years on earth, most of which I’d lived in SF, this had literally never happened before—the Holy Spirit had sent me a taxi. Hopefully, she would also pay the fare and neutralize any greenhouse gasses the car emitted.
“Sixteenth and Church,” I told the driver, a middle-aged black woman with a batik scarf around her hair.
“You got it, girl.” Her accent was African, maybe Nigerian. If I were casting a Bible movie, I would totally hire her to play the Holy Spirit, and I didn’t mind her calling me girl in sisterly solidarity. I told her, “I’m on the way to see a dying woman. It’s pretty urgent.”
She didn’t even blink, just hit the gas. Her breakneck maneuvers would have terrified me if I wasn’t so grateful she'd help me reach Diane in time. The driver may have set a world record for the fastest journey from Nob Hill to the Castro as I held the oh-shit bar and concentrated on keeping my lunch down. There was no way I could text Sokolov.
The taxi driver pulled up to Al and Diane’s building, and I left her a generous tip. Sydney let me in, waved at a hospice nurse, and led me to her mom. Al was lying on the bed next to a slack-faced Diane, holding her hand, his eyes puffy from exhaustion and emotion.
I took the vacant chair where I’d sat on my first visit, smiled at my senior warden, then spoke to his wife. “I’m here, Diane. Do you want me to pray with you?”
Her eyelids fluttered. “God, no. Just listen.” Then, in a surprisingly strong voice, she told me the whole story of why she hated church. “I grew up outside Sacramento. My aunt’s husband was a pastor in the suburb where we lived. They were the picture-perfect couple. My mother always felt she had to live up to their ideals, or her sister and brother-in-law would judge her.” Here Diane faltered, and I realized how much effort speaking took.
“This is your aunty Penny? The one I never met?” Al pushed himself up onto his elbow, frowning at his wife as if he’d never heard this story. The moment was what me and my clergy gal pals called a pastoral fantasy—deathbed conversions and final confessions—which mostly only happened in books and movies. Later, Diane’s unburdening, if this was that, would give me bragging rights, but that didn't matter now.
Diane tucked her chin—an answering nod to Al. “Mother always told us to be good around Penny and Matthew. She fussed if we got our clothes dirty... If we ever said darn or God. They didn’t have children. So our attendance at church...” She took a hitching breath. “Reflected on them. That’s what Matthew said.”
I didn't know where her story was going, but I already disliked this Penny and Matthew and their self-righteousness.
“When I was younger, I didn’t know what happened. Only that they died, and we never went back to church.” She trailed off.
I waited, impatient for more. They’d both died? Addled by pain killers or exhausted, she’d skipped the middle of the story. Her chest rose and fell with two laborious breaths. “What did happen, Diane?”
“Penny found him in his office with another man, someone who attended the church with his wife and children. She was shocked. In their church, it wasn’t like San Francisco.” I took her to mean they weren’t what the Episcopal Church called welcoming and affirming of GLBTQ folks. “Penny told my mother, wanted to tell the other man’s wife, but...” She closed her eyes.
This time I didn’t rush her. A tingle of foreboding on the back of my neck told me this was the difficult part of the story, and I wouldn’t prod, even though I dreaded that she might take her last breath without finishing.
“He poisoned Penny, then shot himself.”
“Oh, hell, Diane. I am so sorry. How awful.”
She ignored me. “When I heard the story years later, I hated the hypocrisy. Murder and suicide more acceptable to God than sex with a man?” In her outrage, she’d found strength and energy again.
I doubted that Matthew believed God sanctioned what he’d done, only that he couldn’t live with his unnecessary but fatal shame.
“I know it’s okay to be gay in your church—so many churches now—but there's still moralizing, judgment, people telling you you’re right or wrong...”
My chest locked up with defensiveness, and I was constructing arguments in my head. I preached that judging others was wrong, and love was what mattered. The accepting people of St. Giles’ embraced that inclusive message. But I swallowed the rebuttal. Soon God would welcome Diane into loving arms, and her mistaken impressions wouldn’t matter.
“When you came before and told me you wished you could give me Al’s time back so we had it together—that helped me. I think I expected you to puff up and tell me how important the church was and everything Al did there.”
It was important, but not more important than his marriage or his last years with his wife. Or, at least, that wasn’t my priority to set—it was theirs.
“I realized then you aren’t pretending,” she said. “According to Al, you’re such a mess that no one can accuse you of trying to appear perfect.”
Geez. First Jorgé, then Diane. So much for my pastoral fantasy moment. Her painkillers were not making her more diplomatic. The defensiveness resurfaced and tightened up behind my sternum. I breathed through it.
“Like Al—he is good to the bone. He doesn’t give a damn about what people think, just doing the right thing.”
“Yes.” She was right about her dear husband. Sometimes he was so unaware of how his good actions appeared to others I thought he disapproved of me for most of my tenure at St. Giles’.
“So, I guess, if this God of yours is up there waiting for me, I’m not mad at Him...” I winced, and she must have seen because she added, “Or her, or whatever.” And she chuckled hoarsely, her eyes closed again.
I smiled, finding I liked Diane after all. “God is waiting for you, but not up there.” I took her hand gently. “God is here, holding you in love, letting you know you will not be alone, and you don’t have to be afraid.” I stroked across her knuckles. “There is nothing to fear.”
Her body relaxed as if deflating of all its energy. Only her rattling breath proved she was still with us.
Al sniffed, and tears ran down his face, which glowed with love for his wife.
“Is there anything you need to say?” I whispered.
He shook his head. “No. We said it all after you left last time. But she needed to see you one more time to make peace with what comes next.”
I nodded, my eyes stinging with unshed tears. I inhaled through my nose, trying to hold them in.
“Will you pray?” he asked.
“Diane, is that okay with you?”
She didn’t respond.
“Loving God, receive our sister Diane into the courts of your heavenly dwelling place. Let her heart and soul now ring out in joy with you, O Lord, the living God, forever and ever...”
“Amen,” Al said. Sydney echoed the word from the doorway.
I stayed a little longer, cocooned in the peace at Diane’s bedside. The light in the room, the colors of the quilt covering her, the expression on her loved one’s faces—it was so gentle and lovely, transformed by the reconciliation she’d made with Al and God. I was honored she’d asked for my help in this hard work and felt blessed to sit in its holy aftermath.
Eventually, Al stirred and the hospice nurse came to the door. My neck had grown stiff as I'd leaned forward to hold Diane’s hand. I released her fingers and looked at her face.
Oh—she wasn’t breathing anymore. I glanced at the nurse who was watching me. She nodded. I looked at Al. He was wiping his eyes and trembling with tiny, silent sobs. Sydney went to him, and they held each other.
Oh, Diane. She was a complicated woman, but thoroughly loved. And now she was with the source of all love. I thought of my favorite words from the funeral service. Even at the grave, we make our song. Because death cannot separate us from the ones we love.
I didn’t want to interrupt Al and Sydney, so I slipped out. He would call me when he was ready to talk about the funeral.
Out on Church Street, a blast of wind hit me. The fog had blown in, and it was bracing.
“You aren’t pretending,” Diane had said to me. Beneath the words, her fair critique of religious institutions rang true. Within them was pressure to pretend all manner of things—competencies one did not have, beliefs that were too simplistic, or identities too singular. Is that why Damien claimed that he only desired men?
Why did he hide his bisexuality from me, of all people? And what had he been doing with Dara at the Tonga Room?