A Canopy of Golden Leaves
David R. Weiss – June 10, 2026

“Say, when you’re ready to leave, could you drop me off somewhere along your way?”

Posed as if it were the most natural request for a simple favor, it made no sense at all. True, I used to drive Marguerite everywhere, but it had been close to two years since I’d helped her into my car. And I knew she had nowhere to go today.

I met Marguerite seven years ago, in January 2019. She had just turned 83. Her daughter Rebecca, with whom I’ve been friends for two decades, had posted on Facebook about needing a trustworthy and reliable person to drive her mom to and from rehab appointments following knee replacement. I was underemployed at the time, so I offered myself up as a driver. Assuming it would mean a little extra cash for the couple months Marguerite would be going for physical therapy. Well, a couple months became four-and-a-half years.

By the end of her PT, Marguerite was so taken with me (it’s true!), she asked if I could drive her to other appointments. And so it began. We went every Monday to the hairdresser and every Thursday for body work. Then there were dentist appointments, a few doctor appointments, and several rounds of book club at her church. Before long every-other-week lunches were part of our routine—usually after one of her appointments.

Even when our routine was paused by Covid, we still occasionally went out for lunch, getting take-out food that we took to the Wabun Picnic area in Minnehaha Falls Park. We ate in the car, chatting and admiring the trees. Marguerite loved trees. They were like extended family to her. On every car ride we’d pass several trees that elicited gasps of awe from her. We drove a pretty consistent route, so it was often the same trees, but the exuberance of the “oh my!” was fresh each time.

Marguerite is a retired UCC pastor (widowed about six years before we met). Her husband Bill had also been a pastor. Indeed, her daughter Rebecca became a UCC pastor, too. Early on, she found me (being a trained theologian myself) a superb conversation partner. She was an avid reader—and eager to discuss whatever book she was currently reading or an article from the latest issue of Christian Century. She also consumed the newspaper every day and most lunches included our respective takes on the world.

Because I’m an avid blogger, with essays that often tilt theological, I brought copies of each piece I wrote to her, and they also helped set the course of our conversations. She’d often exclaim to me, pulling the folded essay out of her purse, “You’ve got the goods! This is just marvelous.” She became such a fan of my writing that when I launched a Patreon account to help fund my work, she was one of the very first persons to put in a pledge.

Besides theology and politics, we talked family. I told her about mine, and she told me about hers. One story, told several times, always delighted me. When they were pastors in Chicago, her husband Bill had a sailboat and loved to go sailing. Marguerite, not so much. They finally struck a deal. She would go sailing so long as Bill bought her a large showy piece of jewelry. E very time. I don’t think Marguerite ever developed a fondness for sailing, but she did acquire quite a collection of big jewelry.

It proved useful in her ministry, which involved meeting street people in downtown Chicago, connecting them with services, when possible, but mostly listening to their stories. She told me, “Everybody just walked by them as if they were invisible, but I saw them, and I listened to them. And they loved me for that.” These were tough streets to be out on by herself. But she learned one day that some of the big guys on the streets had put the word out: “When you see the woman with red hair and big jewelry, you let her be. She’s on our side.” She always told that story wearing big jewelry, and I always smiled at the surprising ways that good news get told.

I heard countless tales from her younger years, tales populated by her parents and a special aunt and uncle. I heard about her living family: Rebecca, Rebecca’s wife Maggie, and their child, Shannon Makenzie, over whom Marguerite fawned with wonder and delight. And I heard several accounts of near mystical moments she experienced late in life.

For four years and then some, this was the rhythm of our lives. I’d guess I drove Marguerite close to 400 times.

But eventually her legs became unsteady and her balance uncertain. Falls became more frequent and outings more rare. After a serious fall in the summer of 2024, Marguerite was relocated from Episcopal Homes to Villages Shores in order to receive more supportive care. My days as her driver ended.

At that point—because the roots of our friendship had mutually entangled themselves—I switched to simply visiting her every Wednesday. It was the one weekday that Karin, her longtime and beloved Visting Angel didn’t come, so my visits brightened those days. I often brought lunch for us to share. Usually fresh pizza from Pizza Luce, a chilled can of Diet Pepsi with a straw, and a sweet treat to end the meal. She still enjoyed—and still enjoys—going out to Pizza Luce with her family almost every Sunday. They just roll her down the block in her wheelchair. Pizza Luce is just half a block away.

I did that several times, but as her sense of presence began to falter, it felt safer for me to eat with her in her room. She always loved that, remarking how much she enjoyd the casual informality of eating right there in her room.

By now our conversations have long thinned out to mostly reminiscing about memories that sort of free-float in her mind. She is always happy to see me, though I’m not sure my name is always at the tip of her tongue. But her smile and twinkling eyes say plenty. Her memory is increasingly confused—Alzheimer’s is afoot. Her sense of time is fluid and expansive. One moment she’ll tell me about going out for pizza with Rebecca and five minutes later she’ll be talking about her parents or her aunt and uncle as if they’re still quite alive and just across town.

Her room has at least half-a-dozen family photos of her surrounded by Rebecca, Maggie, and Shannon Makenzie. All beaming with love. Several times lately, her eyes will settle on one of those photos, and she’ll say, slowly to let the certainty build: “That’s my family.” And as though a young child just learning names, she carefully tries to find each one in her mind so she can place it on her lips. She pauses from face to face, but most days she finds the name to match. On those rare occasions that she falters, I offer timid assistance: “I think that might be so-and-so,” and I let Marguerite confirm my guess so that she has the final say.

I’m sure she knows each of them when they enter the room, but all the memories in her mind are a roiling swirl these days. For that matter, while she is always happy to see me, I doubt she could tell anyone exactly who I am or how we met. But there is no doubt on either of our parts that we are happy to see each other.

Marguerite has been in hospice since February. Our visits these days are like mini Zen retreats. Every brief conversation is its own present moment. Followed by another present moment and another. Chronology is optional at best.

Last Wednesday, maybe a dozen times, Marguerite started down a memory, but half-way through the sentence her words faded away. That present moment had ended. And before long a new one unfolded, until it, too, fell to silence along the way.

I sit patiently with these moments. I have learned it doesn’t help to ask a follow-up question. Once the sentence stops, that memory has been left for another. And anyway, my role as friend is not to question or correct—it’s simply to be present. To offer my gracious attention to wherever she happens to be in this Zen moment of NOW.

Last week she was everywhere. All over the place. That’s when this image came to me. I already told you she loved trees. Our regular route took us on Fairview, from Ford Parkway to University. And for some stretches of blocks along there the tree son either side of the road reach their branches high overhead toward the middle, where they meet in leafy green.

Until the fall. Then, having turned thin and yellow, they’d give the impression of shimmering stained glass above us as we drove beneath in the afternoon sunlight. Marguerite’s awe at this was palpable.

And so last Wednesday, I observed to her, almost reverently near the end of our visit, “Marguerite, I am amazed at all the memories that press in on you these days. It’s like they have become a golden canopy of leaves just above you. And no sooner do your eyes settle on one leaf, than they’re called away to another and another. But they’re all golden. And there are so many of them.”

She paused before responding, as if to measure my analogy against her inward experience. And then she nodded. “A canopy of golden leaves. Yes, I like that.”

Me, too.

And I have to tell you, even though I don’t drive Marguerite anywhere anymore, and even though she may well cross the veil before summer’s end, I can’t wait until fall comes round. So I can drive down Fairview for no reason at all except to feel Marguerite’s presence beside me in the car beneath that canopy of golden leaves.

***

David Weiss is a theologian, writer, poet and hymnist, “writing into the whirlwind” of contemporary challenges, joys, and sorrows around climate crisis, sexuality, justice, peace, and family. Reach him at drw59mn@gmail.com. Read more at www.davidrweiss.com where he blogs under the theme, “Full Frontal Faith: Erring on the Edge of Honest.” Support him in Writing into the Whirlwind at www.patreon.com/fullfrontalfaith.