Goodbye, Stranger

Published May 7, 2014 in slightly edited form in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     "Hello, Stranger," he'd say to me as he wheeled his cart through the market door, coming for groceries.  But I didn't know how much that meant until Sunday when I heard the news that Henry Servin left us early that morning.  Whether he went voluntarily (and by that I mean that he was in some way ready,) or the Lord just came and took him, I don't know.  All I know is that his beaming spirit will be missed among those of us he befriended regularly, constantly.


     "He was my only hope," one checker commented as we closed that night.  When I asked what she meant, she said something about decent customers.  We have many decent customers, so I contemplated what he brought that was so special, and it was that he reached out to each of us as unique, equal individuals.


     He had different names for each of us.  I thought he called everyone "Stranger," but discovered that may have been saved for me.  One of the newer checkers he simply called "Mija," while he used the real names of those who'd worked there longer. I may have been the lone Stranger.  I felt somehow properly identified.


     Elise Boulding, one of the great Quaker peace activists from the last century, wrote a beautiful passage about the word.  "I would like to suggest a new word to replace enemy.  It is "stranger."  It's a very old word, and a good one.  We have no more enemies, but we have strangers.  Sometimes we are estranged from ourselves and God.  When we meet a person we call a stranger, that person has to be listened to... There is no tribal group to my knowledge that does not have a tradition for dealing with the stranger."


     And maybe that was Henry's gift:  listening.  He was always full of words, and they came out fast, like a man on a mission.  But when he asked how we were, he was looking us in the eyes and really wondering.  He noticed.  And he brought life into the store every time he came.


     I was missing in action the night before he died, at least from the market.  We held our concert celebrating Lindsay's recovery community at the Methodist Church, and I took the night off from work in order to hand out programs, emcee, sing a couple of songs and clean up.  It was a glorious night.  Spirit Driven, the band that performed, knocked the socks off of everyone who came to sit in the pews.  The people who run the two 12-Step programs that meet in the church were there to speak of their hopes for the community.  One longstanding participant in 12-Step programs bore witness to the spiritual training inherent in those Steps.  Most important, we built a sense of community: that those who suffer from addiction and those who help them are not alone.  Anonymous, yes.  Alone, no.


     The truth is we are members of each other, to borrow from Wendell Berry's Wild Birds:  "All of us.  Everything. The difference ain't in who's a member and who's not, but in who knows it and who don't."  Henry knew himself to be a member of this community and recognized the rest of us as members also.  As we feel his loss, may we keep that spirit alive.


     Goodbye, Stranger.  See you later.
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Trudy Wischemann is a cashier at RN Market who writes.  You can send your stories of Henry and other strangers to her c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.