"Gone To Chicago"

I often, for some reason, don't know, done it my whole life, don't like to trying to explain where some obscure place is, so instead of making it part of the explanation, I just use the name of whatever is nearb and might be known.

Last month,  Himself and I told our cohorts in ministry, some staff, and the nursing home congregation that we'd see'em in a few weeks, we were heading for Chicago.

Alas.
We did not know, when we told them this, that "going to Chicago" was the nursing home residents' euphemism for "dying."

It caused some unnecessary consternation.

When we returned from the Colloquium, etc., I found someone I had often cajoled into conversation, and visited with, had gone to Chicago.

She was a tiny, feisty woman,often  mean as a snake, who was constantly wishing her fate on EMTs who helped her, threatening and taking swings at people, and loudly complaining that the food was lousy and they never fed her anyway, (it isn't and they do.)

She was cranky, but never outright mean to me, the worst she did was yell, "Too much damn Jesus for me!" one day while I was reading the Epistle and storm, or rather, wheel out.

Understandable, since she was Jewish, (though she knew it was a Communion service when she had asked to come, whihc she did often -- anything to relieve the killing boredom, I imagine.)

But nature abhors a vacuum, and the universe has sent a replacement who is more than her equal -- and a biter besides.





We all have all of that in us.


And we'll all go to Chicago one day.

It is a great gift that I was asked to help out with this ministry. It has been a source of great healing for me.