Dear Vanessa,

Pastor Drew is leaving his church.

He’s the one who did your funeral. He stood up there while I read your eulogy, the one I rewrote twenty times. Gave me a compliment for the joke I snuck in.

I found out he was leaving and felt it drop in my stomach.

Which makes no sense. I didn’t know him before your funeral. He was just a guy. We’ve met maybe a handful of times since. I’m Jewish. He’s a priest. On paper there’s no reason he should matter to me at all.

I’m closer to him than I am to my own rabbi.

About a month after you died Luciana got baptized, the parents are supposed to commit to Jesus. That’s the whole point. You stand up and you say it. Parents. Plural.

I can’t say it. I’m Jewish. Pastor Drew knew that.

He stopped the ceremony and changed the words. Right there, in front of everyone. Rewrote it so I could stand up for Luciana without promising something I don’t believe.

He didn’t have to do that.

Then he pointed out, in front of the whole church, that I was Jewish and standing at our daughter’s baptism anyway. He didn’t keep it quiet. He made it the point. He praised my Spanish too, which was absolute garbage at the time.

I don’t have more faith now than I did before I met him. Pastor Drew built his entire life around believing something that I will never believe. He never once tried to hand me his. He just showed up, did the thing, and treated me like family at a ceremony that wasn’t even mine.

He didn’t have to be kind to the Jewish guy at a baptism. He chose to.

Will I ever see him again? Probably not.

It’s not like we’re getting the band back together to reminisce. What would we even say? “Hey, remember the time my wife died?”

And that’s okay. Nobody is in your life forever.

I hope wherever he lands, he keeps doing that for whoever shows up next.

Besitos,

Michael