Of Fall, Feasts, and Freddie

Of Fall, Feasts, and Freddie

Fall is starting to give some hints, winter will be here soon enough. The days are growing shorter. The mornings are cool, and sometimes almost cold. The leaves are dropping after brief bursts of red and orange and yellow. Manna House is transitioning from welcoming guests into the shady backyard to escape summer’s heat to welcoming guests to the front porch and inside the house to seek warmth.

            In the midst of these changes, from light to darkness, from warmth to cold, from life to death, the church gives us the Feast of All Saints (November 1) and the Feast of All Souls (November 2).  Both remind us of those who have gone before us in the faith, our ancestors both recently and long dead.

            And so, I remember Freddie Adams who died October 10^th. I wrote about Freddie a few weeks ago as “Donald” whom we could not find. He had been hospitalized at the Med after suffering a broken neck earlier in the summer. He had fallen from a wall, one day before he was supposed to get off the streets and into his own place. For weeks he was in intensive care. We visited him. We prayed with him. We saw his frustration with not being able to speak (he had a tracheotomy and was on a ventilator). Then suddenly he was gone from the Med and we could not track down where he had gone. About a week ago a rumor began to go around that he was dead. The search intensified. Enough phone calls were made by enough people that the truth finally emerged. He had gone from the Med to a nursing home and then to St. Francis and there he had died.

            Freddie was not a man of many words. In the ten years that I knew him, I do not think I ever had a conversation with him of more than a few minutes. He often wore sunglasses, even on cloudy days. He was behind that shield. He was a private person. He had a few close friends; a tight circle it seemed to me. I would guess that he was a loyal and faithful friend. He was also even keeled, not prone to highs or lows. At least at Manna House he was a quiet steady presence. Not sullen, just usually silent.

            Because he was so quiet, Freddie was not well known among volunteers or guests. His personality did not make him “popular.” He did not seek out attention. He mostly stayed to himself. He was not hostile or even distant. He simply did not play the game of trying to impress people. Perhaps for Freddie words were overrated. And so it was easy to pass him by and not even notice him, except for those sunglasses he almost always wore.

            I joked with him on occasion that he had to wear shades because his future was so bright. I do not know if he caught my obscure cultural reference to the one hit wonder of Timbuk 3 from 1986, but he would chuckle and go on and get his coffee.

            Death has a way of making the future not seem so bright. The shorter days remind me of the shortening of our lives. Age makes me more aware of mortality, as does the loss of those I have known. Death comes more frequently, it seems, in offering hospitality to those on the streets. Twin just a few weeks ago, and now Freddie.

            Against the darkness of death there is an old practice of lighting a candle for the dead. Catholics lit votive candles on All Souls Day in memory of the departed. The word “funeral” was perhaps derived from the Latin “funale” meaning “torch.” Torches and lights at a funeral are to guide the departed soul to their eternal home. I am praying for Freddie and imagining him still wearing his sunglasses in his future, which the Feasts of All Souls and All Saints proclaim, is finally truly bright.