Early morning, day light hangs loosely on our shoulders, in our hair as we walk, silent, sniffing like the deer who crosses our path, who stops – still as a statue – sees us, darts away.
We make a narrow path in the darker places, walking in a line. We are One then: with the path, with the eager birds, with the sky, with the silence that holds us, carries us.
***
“Early morning, day light,” poem by Mary Elyn Bahlert, May, 2025, at the Ridges, Baileys Harbor
“At the Ridges,” photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, May, 2025
I hadn’t visualized living in the American West for most of my life, but here I am. I’ve lived in Oakland for over 25 years, after I completed my work as a Pastor in Oakland, and I expect I’ll be here for another while – God willing.
When I was young, I imagined that I would leave the Midwest, and I was certain I’d move to the East, to New York City, perhaps, or to Washington, D.C. My imaginings always took me to cities. To big cities. I love the diversity of cities, the abundance of neighborhoods, each one with its own personality, and I love the choices we take for granted in the cities. I love the bustle of things, and I love the way even cities become quiet on holidays, or on early Sunday mornings. I love the diversity of people – diversity of color, of background, of education, of family. I love it all.
And I’ve been privileged to have come West, where I arrived as a student in seminary in Berkeley in the 1980’s. I was fulfilling my dream to go to seminary, to become a pastor.
My husband Jeff is from the Milwaukee area, from Brookfield, a suburb of Milwaukee. Part of him yearns for the quiet country life he came to love and to respect when he spent time with his maternal grandparents on their farm, northwest of Milwaukee, where Jeff’s mother had grown up. His mother, though, waited for the day she graduated from high school to leave that place for another life. Sometimes Jeff reminds me that it’s his turn to choose a place, a country place… I expect he must be dreaming again of finding a place that gives him love and care and a respite from whatever might be bothering him at the moment.
But we are connected here more than by time and a place. We have strong community here; community is important to us as a value, and we know it would take a long time to build that again in a new place.
And – I remind myself – we are not 40 years old anymore!
And so, from year to year, our connection, our deep bond to this place deepens and deepens. And when we travel, living in the West makes it easy to tell people, when they ask where we are from: we’re from California. Everyone knows where California is!
Looking out to the West, over the Pacific, from home. Photo by meb, 3/2025
Jeff and I were driving home from Sacramento on Saturday, March 21, 2009. I leaned over to turn on the radio in the car. There was a repeating news story from Oakland – where we were headed, and where I was pastor of a downtown church -being broadcast on the news, details changing and being added as more information came to the broadcasters. Four Oakland police officers had been shot by one young man that afternoon. Two were motorcycle police officers, two were members of the SWAT team that had gone to the home of the suspect and were murdered by the suspect as they climbed the stairs to the apartment he was holed up in. The attacker was shot dead by officers.
When we arrived home, I checked the messages on our answering machine and discovered several calls. John Hege, the son of a family I served in the church in Oakland, was one of the motorcycle officers who had been shot. John would not die for a day or two, after he had been declared brain dead.
Like so many others, I was in shock. I tried to call John’s parents, John and Tam, but they were not home. The police department had brought the affected families together and they were in the care of officers. I tried to get to John Hege, Jr., who lay brain dead at Highland Hospital, but I was not permitted access to the officer.
*
Friday, March 27. Like so many others, I watched the funeral of the four police officers who had lost their lives on television, broadcast from the Oracle Arena. As the service ended, I walked to Mountain View Cemetery from our house, and met the funeral director who was caring for John’s family. I sat in the hearse as we waited for the family to arrive. I looked back at the hearse, realized there was no casket – four caskets had been visible at the community service. In one of those simple moments at such a time, I asked the funeral director where he was. He nodded toward my arm, leaning on the urn that held John’s ashes. We almost laughed as we broke the silence of that moment.
I rode in the hearse to the Hege plot, high in the hills, and waited with the family at John’s graveside. Tam and John and their two daughters and their families stood silently with us. I said a few – unimportant, but necessary, I suppose – words in the presence of this sombre gathering, and the funeral director nodded at John, the officer’s father, giving him the urn with his son’s ashes.
I stood behind John as he kneeled over the grave and leaned over to place all that was left of his son into the grave. As he kneeled, he appeared to fall over, and I leaned over him, reaching for his shoulder, just as he set his son’s ashes in the grave.
Years later, telling the story to someone who has not heard it, I come to tears each time. In my role that day, I did not cry. I witnessed. I was a witness to the grief that hung over us all, to the grief that enveloped John’s family.
*
There are some moments in life that remain, some moments as a Pastor that I remember, vivid moments that come to mind as if I am living them again. That day on the hill, witnessing the grief and the resignation of John’s family, comes often to my mind. When I pass the sign on the freeway that names the four officers killed that day, I nod, as a witness, and to my memory.
Sometimes it seems strange that beauty remains after such a grave loss.
Some would call it a blessing. For others, it is something they are not able to attain. Many people need – and want – only one or two. Some think that everyone they meet is a friend.
I call mine a blessing.
This past week, I spent several days with Vicki, a friend I met in high school. I met her brother Bruce before I met Vicki, when I sat behind this tall, painfully shy boy in Art Appreciation Class, my first elective course as a senior at Washington High School in Milwaukee. During our college years, Vicki and I started to hang out together more often. The course of our lives has been very different, but our friendship remains. When we met in Denver – as close to halfway between New Berlin, WI and Oakland as we could figure – we spent the evenings together in our hotel room, talking and talking, until after we’d turned out the lights and lay in our beds.
I remember meeting Joanne for the first time, when she sat down at my desk in Green Bay, Wisconsin, smiled her bright smile, and said, “do you golf?” (My answer: I didn’t, but I could try. I never did). We took road trips together, and we flew together to Montreal and Quebec with another friend, Carla, who is still in Joanne’s life. Joanne commiserated with me as we mourned our lack of dates, until we finally met the men we would marry. Joanne stood up with me in my wedding. Because I was at school in Berkeley, I wrote a prayer for her wedding and posted it in the U.S. mail, instead.
The Bug was my best friend in high school, and we keep in touch via email now. Her sister Bonnie and I stood up in the Bug’s wedding. My heart hurts for the Bug now; her son died unexpectedly – at only 46 – in the past year.
I knew Pat’s family from the time I was little in Milwaukee. Her aunt was one of my mother’s good friends, a friend from her neighborhood in Milwaukee, too. Later, Pat and I, her brother Bobbie and the Bug, and several other teenagers from our neighborhood worked together at the Times Fine Arts Theater on Milwaukee’s North Side. Now, I talk to Pat very few months on the phone, and even now, we’ve got plenty to talk about. And to laugh about.
Later in my life, I’ve continued to make friends. I’m grateful. I met Alexis and Linda, both clergy, through meetings with other United Methodist clergy in Northern California. Staying in touch with them is important to me. A year ago, Judith rode home with me from a retreat where we’d both led small groups of clergy in reflection sessions, and we’ve been friends ever since.
Some of my friends, like Lana, live locally, so I get to have lunch with her, where we discuss books we are both reading, and with Jean, another Oakland person.
I hope their friendships keep me healthy, and I hope I have something to give them, as they do to me. Conversation with each one is different, full of history, often serious, and always interesting.
My life is richer for each one of my friendships. I am grateful.
