Monday Morning Musing: Lean on Me

Lean on me, when you’re not strong, I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on, for it won’t be long ‘til I’m gonna need, somebody to lean on.  – Bill Withers

The refrain from this decades old song lingers in my heart and mind today as I answer a thoughtful text message from my next door neighbor.  They’ve been so gracious about being available to help with those things I’ve been able to name (could you grab the Sunday morning newspaper that the carrier can never toss past the common sidewalk?) and with offering support in ways that just make the days easier.  Showing up with food and flowers and checking in from time to time. 

I’m deeply grateful to my/our various communities who have been so supportive in this time of grief and shock and confusion.   The care we have received grounds us in the midst of feeling entirely untethered.

Yesterday I had planned to spend the day with friends who are in town for another event.  Brad was my seminary professor and then became a colleague and when Bruce and I lived in the Bexley neighborhood, he and Ann became friends.  We enjoyed meals together and glasses of wine outside around the firepit.   We distilled the plan for the day down to only lunch, along with another couple who Brad and Ann know from many decades ago and who happen to be my parishioners.  It was good to be out in the world together

 on a sunny afternoon.  It was good to remember Bruce together.  And at one point, when the conversation became particularly tender, I felt Ann’s hand cover mine.  Lean on me, when you’re not strong.

The examples go on and on…the cookies in the post, the friends who sit with me on the deck or take me out for a frozen peach bellini.  The invitation to dinner where we feasted in the warm cocoon of a back booth in a local Italian spot.

Somehow, the algorithms have also discovered my grief.  My feed is full of grief programs, grief podcasts, grief poetry, grief websites, grief webinars and the number of widowers/bots who want to be my friends and followers has skyrocketed.  My son recently remarked that he was glad I have online savvy.   That impersonal support is strange, because to be honest at least one of the podcasts and some of the poetry has been, if not helpful, at least distracting in a helpful way.

I’m not sure what will actually help.  Time, I suspect.  And music.  And poetry.  And probably the Memorial Service where three of my most amazing friends will preside and others will play music and sing.  Walking will probably help, although that does entail being intentional about it.  Writing helps and I thank you for being willing to follow along with these particularly disjointed reflections in these days.

It is not only the grieving who need someone to lean on.  Like the song says, we all have pain and sorrow of one kind or another.  We all experience challenges of one sort or another.  Even if those challenges are full of growth - a new job or relationship or baby or place to live – we need people to lean on.   Our task as we walk in the world is to look for the people who need us in those seasons and then to figure out how to appropriately support them without making it become about satisfying our own needs. 

As a person whose vocation is a helping profession, helping others, when it is self serving, can become the equivalent of producing a widget. It can give us justification in a world that tells us that this is where our self worth will be found.

But our world is made better when we care for one another in ways that are not tracked or counted and in which there are no strings attached to our acts of kindness. 

Bruce was very, very good at this. 

It is famously said that Mr. Roger’s mother told him to always look for the helpers in scary situations.  This is good advice.  And I’ll just bet that she and her son paid attention to the ways they could be the helpers in the world.  Someday, soon, I will too. 

Sometimes, buying me a burger was how Bruce took care of me when I was feeling sad or stressed