by Mitch Albom
“Mmm-hmm!”
“Shoulda been dead!”
“Mmm-hmm!”
“Woulda been dead!…But his grace!”
“Yes!”
“His grace…saved a wretch. And I was a wretch. You know what a wretch is? I was a crackhead, an alcoholic, I was a heroin addict, a liar, a thief. I was all those things. But then came Jesus—”
“Jesus!”
“I call him the greatest recycler I know!…Jesus…he lifts me up. He rearranges me. He repositions me. By myself, I’m no good—”
“Way-ell—”
“But he makes all the difference!”
“Amen to that!”
“Now, yesterday…yesterday, friends, a portion of the ceiling done fell down. It was leaking in the sanctuary. But you know—”
“Tell it, Rev—”
“You know-you-know-you-know…how that song go…Hallelujah—”
“Hallelujah!”
“Anyhow!”
He began to clap. The organist joined in. The drummer right behind him. And off they went, as if a floodlight had just ignited the altar.
“Haaaa-llelujah anyhow…” Henry sang, “…never gonna let life’s troubles get you down…
“No matter what comes your way,
“Lift your voice and say—
“Hallelujah…anyhow!”
His voice was beautiful, pure and crisp and almost too high-pitched, it seemed, to come from such a large man. The whole congregation was immediately engaged, inspired, clapping, dipping shoulders and singing along—all except me. I felt like the loser who got left out of the choir.
“Hal-le-lujah…anyhow!”
When the song stopped, Henry picked right back up with his preaching. There was no line between prayer, hymn, word, song, preach, beseech, or call and respond. It was apparently all part of the package.
“We were in here last night,” Henry said, “just looking around, looking around, and the plaster was peeling and the paint was chipping everywhere—”
“Sure is!”
“And you could hear the water pouring in. We had buckets all over. And I asked the Lord. I began to pray. I said, ‘Lord, show us your mercy and your kindness. Help us heal your house. Just help us fix this hole—’”
“All right now—”
“And for a few minutes, I despaired. Because I don’t know where the money will come from to fix it. But then I stopped.”
“That’s right!”
“I stopped, because I realized something.”
“Yes, Rev!”
“The Lord, you see, he’s interested in what you do, but the Lord don’t care nothing about no building.”
“Amen!”
“The Lord don’t care nothing about no building!”
“That’s RIGHT!”
“Jesus said, ‘Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.’ God don’t care about no building. He cares about you, and what’s in your heart.”
“Lord of Hosts!”
“And if this is the place where we come to worship—if this is the place where we come to worship…if this is the only place we can come to worship…”
He paused. His voice lowered to a whisper.
“Then it is holy to him.”
“Yes, Rev!…Preach it, Pastor!…Amen!…Way-ell!”
The people rose and clapped enthusiastically, convinced, thanks to Henry, that while their building might be disintegrating, their souls were still in sight, and perhaps the Lord was using that roof hole to peer down and help them.
I looked up and saw the red buckets and the water dripping. I saw Henry stepping back, in his huge blue robe, singing along in prayer. I wasn’t sure what to make of him—charismatic, enigmatic, problematic? But you had to figure his mother was right all along. He was going to be a preacher, no matter how long it took.
I begin to read about faiths beyond my own. I am curious to see if they aren’t more similar than I had believed. I read about Mormons, Catholics, Sufis, Quakers.
I come upon a documentary about the Hindu celebration of Kumbh Mela, a holy pilgrimage from the mouth of the Ganges River to its source in the Himalayas. The legend is that four drops of immortal nectar were dropped when the gods fought with the demons in the sky, and that nectar landed in four places on earth. The pilgrimage is a journey to those places; to bathe in the river waters, to wash away sins, and to seek health and salvation.
Millions attend. Tens of millions. It is an incredible sight. I see bearded men dancing. I see holy men with pierced lips and powdered skin. I see elderly women who have traveled for weeks to seek the majesty of God in the snowcapped mountains.
It is the largest gathering of humanity on earth and has been called “the world’s largest single act of faith.” Yet for most in my country, it is totally alien. The documentary refers to Kumbh Mela as “being part of something big while doing something small.”
I wonder if that applies to visiting an old man in New Jersey?
A Good Marriage
I haven’t said a lot about the Reb’s wife. I should.
According to Jewish tradition, forty days before a male baby is born, a heavenly voice shouts out whom he will marry. If so, the name “Sarah” was yelled for Albert sometime in 1917. Their union was long, loving, and resilient.
They met through a job interview in Brighton Beach—he was a principal, she was seeking an English teacher’s job—and they disagreed on several issues and she left thinking, “There goes that job”; but he hired her and admired her. And eventually, months later, he asked her into his office.
“Are you seeing anyone romantically?” he inquired.
“No, I’m not,” she replied.
“Good. Please keep it that way. Because I intend to ask you to marry me.”
She hid her amusement.
“Anything else?” she said.
“No,” he answered.
“Okay.” And she left.
It took months for him to follow up, his shyness having taken over, but he did, eventually, and they courted. He took her to a restaurant. He took her to Coney Island. The first time he tried to kiss her, he got hiccups.
Two years later, they were married.
In more than six decades together, Albert and Sarah Lewis raised four children, buried one, danced at their kids’ weddings, attended their parents’ funerals, welcomed seven grandchildren, lived in just three houses, and never stopped supporting, debating, loving, and cherishing each other. They might argue, even give each other the silent treatment, but their children would see them at night, through the door, sitting on the edge of the bed, holding hands.
They truly were a team. From the pulpit, the Reb might zing her with, “Excuse me, young lady, could you tell us your name?” She would get him back by telling people, “I’ve had thirty wonderful years with my husband, and I’ll never forget the day we were married, November 3, 1944.”
“Wait…,” someone would say, doing the math, “that’s way more than thirty years ago.”
“Right,” she would say. “On Monday you get twenty great minutes, on Tuesday you get a great hour. You put it all together, you get thirty great years.”
Everyone would laugh, and her husband would beam. In a list of suggestions for young clerics, the Reb had once written “find a good partner.”
He had found his.
And just as harvests make you wise to farming, so did years of matrimony enlighten the Reb as to how a marriage works—and doesn’t. He had officiated at nearly a thousand weddings, from the most basic to the embarrassingly garish. Many couples lasted. Many did not.
Can you predict which marriages will survive? I asked.
“Sometimes,” he said. “If they’re communicating well, they have a good chance. If they have a similar belief system, similar values, they have a good chance.”
What about love?
“Love they should always have. But love changes.”
What do you mean?
“Love—the infatuation kind—‘he’s so handsome, she’s so beautiful’—that can shrivel. As soon as something goes wrong, that kind of love can fly out the window.
“On the other hand, a true love can enrich itself. It gets tested and grows stronger. Like in Fiddler on the Roof. You remember? When Tevye sings ‘Do You Love Me?’?”
I should have seen this coming. I think Fiddler on the Roof was pretty much the Reb’s worldview. Religion. Tradition. Community. And a husband and wife—Tevye and Golde—whose love is proven through action, not words.
“When she says, ‘How can you ask if I love you? Look at all I’ve done with you. What else would you call it?’
“That kind of love—the kind you realize you already have by the life you’ve created together—that’s the kind that lasts.”
The Reb was lucky to have such a love with Sarah. It had endured hardships by relying on cooperation—and selflessness. The Reb was fond of telling young couples, “Remember, the only difference between ‘marital’ and ‘martial’ is where you put the ‘i.’”
He also, on occasion, told the joke about a man who complains to his doctor that his wife, when angry, gets historical.
“You mean hysterical,” the doctor says.
“No, historical,” the man says. “She lists the history of every wrong thing I’ve ever done!”
Still, the Reb knew that marriage was an endangered institution. He’d officiated for couples, seen them split, then officiated when they married someone else.
“I think people expect too much from marriage today,” he said. “They expect perfection. Every moment should be bliss. That’s TV or movies. But that is not the human experience.
“Like Sarah says, twenty good minutes here, forty good minutes there, it adds up to something beautiful. The trick is when things aren’t so great, you don’t junk the whole thing. It’s okay to have an argument. It’s okay that the other one nudges you a little, bothers you a little. It’s part of being close to someone.
“But the joy you get from that same closeness—when you watch your children, when you wake up and smile at each other—that, as our tradition teaches us, is a blessing. People forget that.”
Why do they forget it?
“Because the word ‘commitment’ has lost its meaning. I’m old enough to remember when it used to be a positive. A committed person was someone to be admired. He was loyal and steady. Now a commitment is something you avoid. You don’t want to tie yourself down.
“It’s the same with faith, by the way. We don’t want to get stuck having to go to services all the time, or having to follow all the rules. We don’t want to commit to God. We’ll take Him when we need Him, or when things are going good. But real commitment? That requires staying power—in faith and in marriage.”
And if you don’t commit? I asked.
“Your choice. But you miss what’s on the other side.”
What’s on the other side?
“Ah.” He smiled. “A happiness you cannot find alone.”
Moments later, Sarah entered the room, wearing her coat. Like her husband, she was in her eighties, had thick, whitening hair, wore glasses, and had a disarming smile.
“I’m going shopping, Al,” she said.
“All right. We will miss you.” He crossed his hands over his stomach, and for a moment they just grinned at each other.
I thought about their commitment, sixty-plus years. I thought about how much he relied on her now. I pictured them at night, holding hands on the edge of the bed. A happiness you cannot find alone.
“I was going to ask you a question,” the Reb told his wife.
“Which is?”
“Well…I’ve already forgotten.”
“Okay,” she laughed. “The answer is no.”
“Or maybe no?”
“Or maybe no.”
She walked over and playfully shook his hand.
“So, it was nice to meet you.”
He laughed. “It was a pleasure.”
They kissed.
I don’t know about forty days before you’re born, but at that moment, it wouldn’t have surprised me to hear two names shouted from the heavens.
As a child, I am certain I will never marry out of my religion.
As an adult, I do it anyhow.
My wife and I are wed on a Caribbean island. The sun is going down, the weather is warm and lovely. Her family reads Bible passages. My siblings sing a funny tribute. I step on a glass. We are married by a local female magistrate, who offers us her own private blessing.
Although we come from different faiths, we forge a loving solution: I support her, she supports me, we attend each other’s religious functions, and while we both stand silent during certain prayers, we always say “Amen.”
Still, there are moments: when she is troubled, she asks Jesus for help, and I hear her pray quietly and I feel locked out. When you intermarry, you mix more than two people—you mix histories, traditions, you mix the Holy Communion stories and the Bar Mitzvah photos. And even though, as she sometimes says, “I believe in the Old Testament; we’re not that different,” we are different.
Are you angry with me about my marriage? I ask the Reb.
“Why would I be angry?” he says. “What would anger do? Your wife is a wonderful person. You love each other. I see that.”
Then how do you square that with your job?
“Well. If one day you came and said, ‘Guess what? She wants to convert to Judaism,’ I wouldn’t be upset. Until then…”
He sang. “Until then, we’ll all get alonnng…”
Life of Henry
I couldn’t help but compare the Reb and Pastor Henry now and then. Both loved to sing. Both delivered a mean sermon. Like the Reb, Henry had been shepherd to just one congregation his whole career and husband to just one wife. And like Albert and Sarah Lewis, Henry and Annette Covington had a son and two daughters, and had also lost a child.
But after that, their stories veered apart.
Henry, for example, didn’t meet his future wife at a job interview. He first saw Annette when she was shooting dice.
“Come on, six!” she yelled, throwing the bones against a stoop with his older brother. “Six dice! Gimme a six!”
She was fifteen, Henry was sixteen, and he was smitten, totally gone, like those cartoons where Cupid shoots an arrow with a boinngg! You might not view a dice roll as romantic, and it may not seem a fitting way for a Man of God to find a lasting love, but at nineteen, when Henry went to prison, he told Annette, “I don’t expect you to wait seven years,” and she said, “If it was twenty-five years, I’d still be here.” So who is to say what a lasting love looks like?
Every weekend during Henry’s incarceration, Annette rode a bus that left the city around midnight and took six hours to reach upstate New York. She was there when the sun came up, and when visiting hours began, she and Henry held hands and played cards and talked until those hours were over. She rarely missed a weekend, despite the grueling schedule, and she kept his spirits up by giving him something to look forward to. Henry’s mother sent him a letter while he was locked up, saying if he did not stay with Annette, “you might find another woman, but you will never find your wife.”
They were married when he got out, in a simple ceremony at Mt. Moriah Church. He was slim then, handsome and tall; she wore her hair in bangs, and her high smile gleamed in the wedding photos. There was a reception at a nightclub called Sagittarius. They spent the weekend at a hotel in the garment district. Monday morning, Annette was back at work.
She was twenty-two. Henry was twenty-three. Within a year, they would lose a baby, lose a job, and see the boiler in their apartment burst in winter, leaving them with icicles hanging from their ceiling.
And then the real trouble started.
The Reb said that a good marriage should endure tribulations, and Henry and Annette’s had done that. But early on, those “tribulations” were drug abuse, crime, and av
oiding the police. Not exactly Fiddler on the Roof. Both Henry and Annette had been addicts, who cleaned up once Henry came home from prison. But after their baby died and the boiler burst and Annette lost her job—and a broke Henry saw his drug-dealing brother with a fat bankroll of hundred-dollar bills—they fell back into that life, and they fell all the way. Henry sold drugs at parties. He sold them from his house. Soon the customers were so frequent, he made them wait on the corner and come up one at a time. He and Annette became heavy users and drinkers, and they lived in fear of both the police and rival drug lords. One night, Henry was taken for a ride with some Manhattan dealers, a ride he thought might end in his death; Annette was waiting with gun in hand if he didn’t come back.
But when Henry finally hit bottom—that night behind those trash cans—Annette did, too.
“What’s keeping you from going to God?” Henry asked her that Easter morning.
“You are,” she admitted.
The next week, he and Annette got rid of the drugs and the guns. They threw away the paraphernalia. They went back to church and read the Bible nightly. They fought back periodic weaknesses and helped one another get through.
One morning, a few months into this rehabilitation, there was a knock at their door. It was very early. A man’s voice said he wanted to buy some product.
Henry, in bed, shouted for him to go away, he didn’t do that anymore. The man persisted. Henry yelled, “There ain’t nothing in here!” The man kept knocking. Henry got out of bed, pulled a sheet around himself, and went to the door.
“I told you—”
“Don’t move!” a voice barked.
Henry was staring at five police officers, their guns drawn.
“Step away,” one said.
They pushed through his door. They told Annette to freeze. They searched the entire place, top to bottom, warning the couple that if they had anything incriminating, they had better tell them now. Henry knew everything was gone, but his heart was racing. Did I miss anything? He glanced around. Nothing there. Nothing there—