My Jehovah’s Witness

 

My husband and I live in the country, and we don’t have many visitors who don’t call first – not out of consideration for us, but to avoid the inconvenience of traveling into the boondocks to find no one at home – which means we rarely have visitors we aren’t expecting. So, on a recent Saturday morning, it took me a minute to identify an unfamiliar noise as knocking at the front door.

Hmm . . . it couldn’t be one of my husband’s friends. He was mowing the lawn, and when he is outside, his friends never make it to the front door. The same would be true if it were a utility worker. That meant the knocking heralded either a lost stranger who thought he had turned down a county road instead of the lane leading to our house, a desperate salesman with the deal of a lifetime just for me, or a Jehovah’s Witness to trying to make his quota. As I hurried to the door, I really, really hoped it wasn’t a salesman. Salesmen can make me feel so guilty for not buying anything from them.

I opened the front door to find Walter Mitty and the hero of a Harlequin romance standing with Bibles in their hands. Jehovah’s Witnesses. Oh good, I hadn’t visited with a Jehovah’s Witness in a long time.

I listened politely to their spiel. Romantic hero did most of the talking. He was sincere in his beliefs. I’m sure Walter Mitty was too, but like the hero of Thurber’s short story, he was out of his depth when confronted with reality. Romantic hero was articulate. Walter Mitty was rote. Romantic hero was gorgeous. Walter Mitty lived on the other end of the attractiveness scale.

I must admit to a bit of perverseness on my part. I did not invite them in out of the sun. I stood in the shade of my doorway, holding the door open with the air conditioning cooling my back while they baked. I was very aware of this, but after all they hadn’t called first, had they?

In the course of conversation, I learned that romantic hero was the son-in-law of a Jehovah’s Witness who came to my home several times many years ago. She had had terminal cancer at the time, and we talked about holistic medicine versus conventional medicine, among other topics. She would always lead the discussion back to her beliefs, and I would always find a way back to the secular world. I was very open with her about what I believed, and she never judged me, never worried about me going to Hell. She didn’t believe in Hell, which made her very pleasant to visit with. I liked to think that she enjoyed my company, too, and that she didn’t come by occasionally just to recruit me into her faith. I learned of her death in the obituaries. My heart broke a little. She was my Jehovah’s Witness, and now I would never see her again.

The next time Walter Mitty and romantic hero come calling to ask if I read the literature they left me (I didn’t), I will invite them in to sit in the comfort of my living room to converse on other worldly topics in honor of my Jehovah’s Witness.