The main floor of the sanctuary of Callie’s church is filling up. There’s her banker coming in with some others, and just before it starts, the dry cleaner slips in. Several of the neighbors I visited scatter throughout the room. And her church turns out in a way I never would have expected.
I’m surprised by the group I see crowding through the doorway. My dispatcher, LuAnn, trots in, wearing stretchy black pants too tight for her not-so-skinny hips, and her teased flip-up hairdo and cat’s-eye glasses. She’s followed by Lamar, with his Duck Dynasty beard, and at least a dozen other taxi drivers wearing their usual jeans and T-shirts. It has to be a big day for Uber.
I get their attention, and they squeeze into the pew next to me.
“How ya doing, Finn?” LuAnn says.
“Good. How’d you get all these guys here?”
She grins. “I told them she was your mama.”
I groan. “LuAnn, you’re kidding.”
“Hush now,” she whispers. “They think they’re doing something nice.”
I make room as the ragtag team of drivers scoot past me, each shaking my hand and offering awkward condolences.
The more I think about it, the funnier it gets. Still, I’m touched that they would come. You wouldn’t get a bunch of Uber drivers here.
By the time the pastor takes his seat on the stage, there’s a respectable crowd gathered to pay their respects to Callie. Her body has already been donated to the local medical college, but there are flowers and sprays that people have sent. I want to kick myself. I should have sent some. Why didn’t I think of that?
I’m beating myself up about it when Conrad and another funeral guy go to the front and motion for us all to stand. Then the door opens, and Sydney walks in, followed by some strangers I assume are relatives. I wonder if she even knows them. I watch as her gaze sweeps the crowd, and she smiles with soft surprise at the number of people. She takes her seat on the front row. The rest of the relatives file into the row behind her. I don’t like her sitting there alone, but I can’t very well walk up there like I’m somebody.
I’m still just the cab driver.
“Why aren’t you up there?” Squint-Eyed Bill asks me as the pastor walks to the stage.
“I don’t like people staring at me,” I explain. He’s satisfied with that.
A woman goes up onto the stage and sings “I’ll Fly Away,” and Callie’s church friends begin to clap like they’re at a hoedown. I’m not sure it’s appropriate for a funeral. But when the pastor gets up, he tells us why.
“That was Miss Callie’s favorite song,” he says. “And every time she heard it, she would clap a little off rhythm, until the whole church was clapping along. I never hear that song without thinking of her.
“Those of you who knew Miss Callie have stories of your own, but I want to share some of the Callieisms that I witnessed personally,” he says. “She was always funny and blunt, but as she got older, she kind of lost her filter. Like the time she told a guy whose pants were sagging that nobody wanted to see his patootie.”
The crowd laughs, and I smile, too.
“Yes, she really said patootie. She asked him how he could even walk with his pants falling down. He mumbled something about it being comfortable, and she said, ‘It’s sure not comfortable for those of us who have to see it.’”
The audience cracks up, and I see that Sydney is laughing, too.
“Back when my dad was the pastor here, Miss Callie had the youth group over for tea to talk to us about a mission project. After the tea, she revealed that the mission project was in her yard. Before we knew it, she had us weeding her garden and planting flowers. She had a way of getting you to do what she wanted. You didn’t say no to Miss Callie. And if she told you to pull up your pants, you did.”
We laugh our way through the ceremony, and somehow that makes the sorrow seem a little more manageable. When the pastor lists the things Callie did for the church over the years and reads her Post-it note scripture about heaven, I find a sense of peace falling over me.
I’m glad I knew Callie and got caught up in the tornado of her intentions. I’m glad she entangled me in her schemes. I’m honored to have been there with Sydney at the end.
And I’m glad I had the chance to meet the God she trusted in. I hope someday I can trust him like that, too.