How Can He Not Be Among Us?

Here's a photo of James Seth Edwards, age 23. We called him Seth. He was well on the way to becoming an outstanding guitarist and musician, almost completely self-taught on the guitar. Once he took on something, he was into it. This picture is in front of Mt. Shasta on a road trip in September 2004 with Kathy and I to visit Sacramento. He was a good sport about going to visit family. We had a great time on this trip. Such a lovely person. Today our house is quiet and empty on Thanksgiving for the first time in many years. Seth's sister is in Munich. Many friends invited us to spend Thanksgiving with them, but we are black holes right now and would only suck the joy from any gathering.

We did get out of the house to observe the holiday. We went to downtown Seattle and parked a few blocks from shiny high-rise towers and the Pike Place Market. Down an alley, between two dumpsters we found a small doorway with a locked steel gate. In response to the doorbell a young woman let us in and led us down stairs into a basement.

"Man on the floor!" she shouted, to announce my presence. We entered a large basement with several small rooms surrounding a large open area in which there several round tables. Next to the tables were white metal lockers for the belongings of the women housed at the shelter. It is run by a charitable organization that is part of the Lutheran Church. Usually, the women must spend the day outside and can be in the shelter only at night. But on Thanksgiving and Christmas they can stay inside. We had brought pies and whipped cream and I expected to be washing dishes or something like that. Instead, we chatted with various women and wound up playing hearts. Roxanne Roberts took a shine to us and kept us amused with her obvious intelligence. She has no teeth even though she's probably no more than 50 years old, but I never inquired what had happened or why she was in the shelter. She kept joking she was going to borrow some false teeth so she could bite me......usually because I took no points in the latest hand of cards. There were a variety of women, different ages and races, some of them plainly out of touch with reality. The shelter was clean and nicely painted, but not a window in it. It had a couple of TV rooms, a laundry, showers, and a large dorm area. For most people it would be a grim place to have to be, but for these women it was warm and dry and companionship was possible. As we left, Roxanne went outside with us, and said "hope to see you next year....from the same side of the tracks as you....a volunteer". I hope so, too.

Seth, we found this volunteer opportunity because there is no Thanksgiving in our hearts this year. But seeing Roxanne and the other women was good for us. We needed to do something kind and positive to console ourselves for your absence. No one there knew about out family's pain, but it was the source of any good that we may contributed to those women. The world is full of pain. It's amazing we go on, and that those poor women in that shelter go on. They are hoping for better days, and so am I.